When gods from Hindu mythology appeared in the popular MOBA game SMITE, the Hindu American Foundation filed a complaint with the FCC. When Age of Mythology included Hindu deities as playable characters, cultural organizations protested the trivialization of sacred figures.
These incidents point to a fundamental tension: game developers want to draw from rich mythological traditions, but when they directly copy religious figures, they risk cultural appropriation and community backlash.
This case study documents the development of AstraVerse, a framework for creating culturally-inspired game characters that are both novel and respectful. Rather than transplanting gods wholesale into games, AstraVerse enables designers to remix cultural elements systematically—creating original characters that honor traditions without copying sacred figures.
The Problem
God Transplantation
The common industry practice of directly copying religious figures into games creates ethical, creative, and business challenges. Sacred significance becomes secondary to gameplay mechanics.
Community Backlash
When gods like Kali or Ganesha appear in combat games, cultural communities react strongly—protests, FCC complaints, and boycotts follow misrepresentation of sacred figures.
The Designer's Dilemma
Avoid cultural themes entirely and miss creative opportunities? Or risk backlash by copying figures? Neither option serves games, players, or cultural communities.
Research Approach
As Project Lead and Primary Researcher, I developed AstraVerse through a rigorous UX research process combining ethnography, design systems thinking, and participatory validation:
Visual Ethnography
Conducted fieldwork at 4 Hindu temples in California, collecting 429 cultural artifacts to understand authentic visual language.
Grounded Theory
Applied systematic analysis to identify 141 granular cultural elements (syntagms) organized into 22 categories (paradigms).
Card-Based Toolkit
Developed a design toolkit enabling designers to remix cultural elements like building blocks.
Designer Workshops
Validated through participatory workshops with game designers from UCSC's Game Design program.
Quantitative Analysis
Evaluated novelty using vector embeddings and statistical analysis across 141 dimensions.
Cultural Validation
Assessed sensitivity through interviews with Hindu temple priests and cultural experts.
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Game designers participating in a design workshop using the card-based system.
Key Outcomes
The framework successfully balances creative freedom with cultural respect.
Visual Ethnography
To understand authentic cultural visual language—not stereotypes or Western representations—we conducted visual ethnography at four Hindu temples in Sunnyvale, California. This wasn't tourism; we systematically documented actual visual elements, rituals, and objects in these sacred spaces.
Over multiple visits, we collected 429 photographs systematically categorized:
- 248 Images of Idols: Sculptures showing canonical poses (mudras), clothing styles, ornaments, weapons, and symbolic attributes
- 63 Images of Rituals: Live ceremonies revealing contextual uses of objects, gestures, and spatial arrangements
- 45 Images of Objects: Ritual implements, ceremonial items, architectural elements, and symbolic objects
Collecting visual data from Hindu temples: idols, rituals, and cultural objects.
Understanding Cultural Stakeholder Concerns
We showed temple priests examples of how Hindu gods appeared in existing games like SMITE and Age of Mythology. These conversations were critical for understanding what cultural appropriation actually looks like from the community's perspective.
Key concerns from cultural stakeholders: misrepresentation, trivialization, and manipulation of sacred narratives.
This insight shaped the entire framework. Rather than asking "How do we copy gods respectfully?", we asked "How do we create original characters inspired by cultural aesthetics?"
Building the Design System
The breakthrough: Rather than treating whole gods as units, we identified their component elements—ornaments, postures, symbolic attributes, color palettes. By making these elements modular and remixable, designers could create new combinations while staying culturally grounded.
From ethnographic data to a structured design space using Grounded Theory analysis.
The Final Design Space Structure
Granular, remixable elements—the "building blocks" (e.g., "trident with flames," "lotus mudra," "golden crown with peacock feather," "saffron-colored robes")
Thematic categories organizing syntagms (e.g., 'Headwear', 'Hand Gestures/Mudras', 'Handheld Objects', 'Mounts/Vehicles', 'Postures', 'Color Palettes', 'Symbolic Animals')
High-level conceptual pillars: Character Features (physical attributes, postures), Weapon Design (tools, weapons), Fashion (clothing, ornaments), Game Mechanics (symbolic associations)
The AstraVerse Toolkit
The framework was translated into a tangible design tool: cards representing identified cultural elements. Designers can search for specific elements similar to how Character Creation Interfaces in games present structured choices.
To make the taxonomy concrete: imagine a designer starting with the "Headwear" paradigm and selecting a mukut (a tall, ornate crown with tiered flanges) rather than the full regalia of any specific deity. They then open "Hand Gestures / Mudras" and pick the abhaya mudra, a gesture of protection with the palm raised outward, without pulling in the iconographic context of Vishnu who is often depicted making it. From "Mounts / Vehicles," they select a hamsa (swan) rather than Saraswati's full compositional arrangement. The resulting character arrives with a coherent visual logic (royalty, protection, grace) without mapping onto any figure a practitioner would worship.
That combination did not exist in any idol we photographed. The elements are real. The character is not. That distinction is precisely what the priests said they needed.
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The AstraVerse card system: Paradigms structure the choice of granular Syntagm elements.
Validation
Three-pronged evaluation: usability, novelty, and cultural sensitivity.
Participatory Design Workshop
We invited three game designers from UCSC's Game Design program to create two characters each using the toolkit, tasked with saving a fictional planet called "Vritra."
Intuitive & Engaging
Designers found the card-based system easy to navigate without training. The systematic structure facilitated more experimental combinations than free-form brainstorming.
Coherent Concepts
Designers consistently created characters with cohesive visual languages despite mixing diverse elements. "This gives me a starting point when I don't know what to design."
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Designers actively using the toolkit in the participatory workshop.
Quantitative Novelty Analysis
Each character was represented as a 141-dimensional vector based on syntagms. We calculated Canberra distance to measure novelty—comparing participant characters against all original Hindu gods from our data.
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Every character represented as a vector across 141 dimensions.
Participant characters demonstrate clear distances from original gods across multiple dimensions.
Statistical analysis confirming significant differences (p < 0.05, Cohen's d = 1.57).
Statistically Significant
Participant characters were distinct from copied gods across the entire design space (p < 0.05, Cohen's d = 1.57—a large effect size).
Comprehensive Novelty
Differences spanned multiple categories—Character Features (d = 1.8), Weapon Design (d = 1.1)—indicating comprehensive novelty, not minor variations.
Cultural Sensitivity Validation
I recruited three cultural experts for the validation: two practicing temple priests from the Sunnyvale temples where I had conducted fieldwork, and one scriptural scholar with formal training in Hindu iconography. Each session ran as a structured interview. I first showed them screenshots of Hindu deities as they appear in SMITE and Age of Mythology, then showed them characters generated by workshop participants using the AstraVerse toolkit, without telling them in advance which was which.
Their criterion for judgment turned out to be more specific than I had anticipated. They were not asking whether the generated characters "looked Hindu" in some general sense. They were asking something narrower: could this character be confused with an actual deity that people worship? A character could draw heavily on the visual vocabulary of Hindu iconography and still pass, as long as it did not resemble any specific sacred figure closely enough to be mistaken for one. That is a higher bar than cultural sensitivity in the abstract, and it is also a more actionable one for a designer to work against.
All three experts approved every character generated through the toolkit. None of the 37 participant-created characters was flagged. The same experts who were visibly upset by the SMITE and Age of Mythology examples said the toolkit characters felt like fiction inspired by their culture, not representations of their gods.
Positive Reception
Experts recognized mythological elements throughout the generated characters but described them as fictional creations inspired by the tradition, not replicas of anything sacred.
Creative Freedom
All three experts said designers could take narrative liberties with the generated characters that would be completely unacceptable if applied to actual deities.
Industry Adoption
After the research was published at ACM FDG 2023, two game studios reached out directly for consultation. The teams working on Star Wars Eclipse and Spellcasters Chronicles had found the taxonomy through the paper and wanted to apply it to their own character pipelines. This wasn't passive "being used in the wild." The studios read the work, understood the methodology, and contacted me to discuss how to implement it. Both projects deal with fictional worlds that draw on cultural traditions, so the need for a principled way to distinguish inspiration from copying was immediate and practical.
That kind of follow-on is unusual for academic HCI work. Most published frameworks stay in citation lists. The fact that working studios came looking for it suggests the taxonomy solved a real problem they already knew they had.
Conclusion
AstraVerse demonstrates that it's possible to move beyond direct appropriation in culturally inspired character design.
Through rigorous UX research and design, we created a system that provides designers with structured yet flexible tools for creative exploration grounded in cultural aesthetics.
The framework produces characters that are statistically novel and perceived as visually distinct from any specific deity, while earning approval from the cultural stakeholders who matter most. The methodology is replicable and applicable to other cultures and traditions seeking respectful creative engagement.
Skills & Methods Demonstrated
Visual Ethnography, Grounded Theory, Participatory Design, Statistical Analysis, Cultural Research
Game Design, Character Design, Design Systems, Framework Development, Workshop Facilitation
Qualitative Coding, Vector Embeddings, Novelty Assessment, Cultural Validation
Academic Publishing (FDG, ICEC), Cross-Cultural Design, Ethical Design Practice