How Microsoft enlisted a Native American tribe to design a Killer Instinct character

SEATTLE — When Microsoft announced a few years ago it would reboot the Killer Instinct fighting game, fans were ecstatic. The original game came out in 1994, but now it would come out as a free-to-play game on the Xbox One video game console.

But Shannon Loftis, the general manager of Microsoft Global Games Publishing, said in a talk at the IGDA Leadership Summit that at least one of the characters from the series didn’t age well. The development team wanted to bring back Chief Thunder from the first Killer Instinct. But as they designed the modern character, they realized that the it made sense to make a culturally sensitive version of the Native American warrior. To do that, they enlisted support from a Nez Perce tribal member in Washington state.