AstraVerse: Establishing a Culturally Sensitive Framework for Integrating Elements from Mythological Backgrounds

Game designers often refer to sources of inspiration for creating new characters and narratives, with cultural and mythological references being a prominent choice for orientation. This however implicitly entails the importance of preventing the misuse of mythological or religious references to respect affiliated groups and believers. In this paper, we present a three-step framework to augment the ability of designers to create innovative characters using mythology as an inspiration while addressing and avoiding cultural backlash. The efficacy of the framework is verified by implementing the framework on Hindu Mythology. We present qualitative and quantitative findings which indicate that characters designed using the framework report significantly higher appraisal from a Hindu population than controversial portrayals of Hindu deities from actually shipped games.