EA introduces Māori wahine character Mad Maggie in Apex Legends game
Gaming giant Electronic Arts has included a Māori character in the latest season of one of its most popular shooters.
Character Margaret Kōhere aka Mad Maggie has been introduced into Apex Legends, a free-to-play hero shooter where players team up to battle for glory, fame, and fortune.
Studio Respawn, who developed the game and character, told The Gamer website that they'd put in a lot of work to ensure the wahine character was authentic for the 128 million people estimated to play the game.
“It's really important that we work with a consultancy, with genuine Māori to make sure that [Maggie] is as authentic as possible, that she is someone that can be aspirational in her own way,” Apex Legends’ narrative lead Sam Gill said.
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“And so we worked with a team called Māui Studios in New Zealand, specifically with a guy named Vincent Egan who's incredible - one of the smartest dudes I've ever worked with really.
“Each Legend has about 1600 lines [of dialogue] that we write and that grows every season as more content comes out. Each of those was vetted by Vincent. And he made a lot of suggestions: ‘what if what if we push it this direction, that'll make it more authentic? It's gonna make it more Māori.’ ‘How about this phrase?’ or, ‘here's an opportunity to express something that I wouldn't have thought of.’ So that was really important to us.
“But it's not just the dialogue. Maggie's base skin has all sorts of cultural touchstones - some are really
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