Indigenous Worldviews in Digital Games: Sami Perspectives in Gufihtara eallu (2018) and Rievssat (2018): This paper examines how two digital games produced during the 2018 Sami Game Jam, Gufihtara eallu (2018) and Rievssat (2018), embody and model Sami Indigenous epistemologies.

The author has requested minor, non-substantive changes to the VoR and, in accordance with ACM policies, a Corrected VoR was published on January 7, 2022. For reference purposes the VoR may still be accessed via the Supplemental Material section on this page.

This paper provides two case studies of Indigenous digital games to demonstrate how serious games afford Indigenous developers the opportunity to embed Indigenous epistemologies into the core of game design, while mobilizing Indigenous storytelling methodologies through the participatory nature of play. In particular, by exploring the themes and game mechanics of Gufihtara eallu (2018) and Rievssat (2018), two of the six games developed during the 2018 Sami Game Jam, this paper identities the ways in which serious games might model Indigenous storytelling traditions, an Indigenous understanding of and relationship to nature, and an animistic worldview. This paper thereby demonstrates the value of new media in recentering Indigenous systems of knowledge and cultural practices through an engagement with Indigenous epistemologies at the very foundation of game development, revealing how serious games can offer insight into Indigenous ways of knowing and experiencing the world to Indigenous and non-Indigenous players alike.