His reference to past attempts to create indigenous Aotearoa characters is well taken. “It’s true that being from New Zealand gives me a good base to start from, there’s a certain familiarity through osmosis – but that’s not enough, and in the past that hasn’t been enough.” “The first mistake we could’ve made would to be like, ‘I’m from New Zealand, I know our slang, I can do it,’” says Gill. It was clear from the outset that he’d need support in bringing tikanga Māori to the screen. It became apparent to him early on that here was an opportunity to create a character from his own country – and not a Pākehā like him (“we’ve covered that, really!”) but a character who could help present Māori culture to the world at large. “The answer’s a very selfish one: I’m a Kiwi.” says Bafta-nominated Sam Gill, Mad Maggie’s primary writer. This time it’s clear the game’s creators wanted to get it right, right from the start.
Mad Maggie, in contrast, is a fully realised Māori woman, with a backstory and authentic grounding in her own culture. Introduced at the game’s launch in 2019, Gibraltar – named as a play on Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – was Polynesian, but only vaguely so: his actual nationality was never specified. Mad Maggie isn’t Apex Legends’ first Polynesian character, though. For comparison, that’s more players than World of Warcraft at its peak. It’s estimated that around 128 million people have played Apex Legends, a spinoff of the critically acclaimed Titanfall series. Most importantly, though, when the season dropped this week, she made video game history: the first Māori wahine to be represented in a game with such a huge player base. In gameplay terms, she encourages aggressive play and is a high-speed competitor. She is, depending on your viewpoint, a staunch freedom fighter or a vicious war criminal. That’s how Respawn announced the new character in the 12th season of its hugely popular battle royale shooter Apex Legends, would be Mad Maggie (full name: Margaret Kōhere). They push her against the wall, but she lashes back. A captive woman stumbles forward as heavily armoured men walk her to her surely unfair trial.
It’s a dark and stormy night, on some other planet, several hundred years from now. Sam Brooks talked to the creatives behind the game about bringing the Māori freedom fighter to life with sensitivity and authenticity. On Tuesday, season 12 of Apex Legends dropped, and with it new character Mad Maggie.
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