Not from Outer Space, Just Another Country: Why We’re Called Legal Alien Games

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m not from outer space. I’m just from another country.

But according to the U.S. government, that still makes me an alien. Not the fun kind with a spaceship… Just the kind who has to jump through flaming hoops of red tape to stay in the country legally.

The term alien has a long, strange history in American immigration law. It dates back to the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, a set of four laws passed during a moment of full-blown political paranoia. The short version? The government freaked out about “foreign influence,” and immigrants (especially those who spoke out) became the target.

One of the acts gave the president the power to deport any non-citizen deemed “dangerous.” Another made it harder for new immigrants to vote. And perhaps most chillingly, the Sedition Act made it a crime to publish anything “false, scandalous, and malicious” about the government.

So basically: fewer rights for immigrants, and fewer rights for anyone who dared to criticize that decision.

It was a blatant attack on free speech and dissent, and although most of the acts were eventually repealed or allowed to expire, the legacy of the word alien stuck around. It’s been baked into U.S. immigration law ever since—a word that defines people not by who they are, but by what they’re not.

And centuries later, it’s still doing its job: othering, distancing, dehumanizing.

Cold, clinical, and weirdly sci-fi sounding, “alien” became the bureaucratic catch-all for human beings who happen to be from somewhere else.

For a while, things were shifting. More modern, humane terms like noncitizen or foreign national were making their way into official documents. It felt like a small but meaningful step away from dehumanization.

Then came the Trump administration.

In a move that felt both petty and symbolic, all official government forms were updated to replace Legal Permanent Resident with Legal Alien. Just like that, the term was back in full force—rubber-stamped across the documents of millions of people trying to build lives in the U.S. It was a reminder that no matter how long we’ve lived here, no matter how hard we work, we’re still “other.” Still aliens.

So... why Legal Alien Games?

Because if you’re going to be labeled something that ridiculous, you might as well lean into it. We lived in New Mexico for three years—land of green chile, the best night skies in the world, and of course, the infamous Roswell Crash. The space theme practically landed in our laps. It was too perfect not to run with.

Our name is tongue-in-cheek, but the frustration behind it is real. Legal Alien Games is our way of reclaiming the term, flipping the narrative, and using humor and creativity to spark conversations about something very real: how immigrants are treated, labeled, and boxed in by systems that were never built with us in mind.

Why Skeletons?

Our first game, Unsettled, is packed with chaos, sabotage, and immigration drama, but every single character you’ll play as is a skeleton. No race. No gender. No age. Just bones.

Because underneath it all, that’s what we are: flesh and bone, trying to survive. And that shared humanity is what the system too often forgets.

We use skeletons to strip away all the assumptions that come with appearance. Because when you're dealing with immigration policy, what people think you are often matters more than who you actually are.

A Name With Teeth (and Maybe a Spaceship)

Legal Alien Games is more than just a clever name. It’s a response. To the labels we’re given. To the systems we’re stuck in. To the policies that try to define who belongs and who doesn’t.

And while the current administration claims to be changing things, the truth is: their policies and actions are pretty damn unsettling.

So we’re telling our story. One card at a time