Culture can be understood as systems that produce and reproduce meaning, or as stable sets of meanings within a community. The authors illustrate how educational games produce and reproduce meaning, both related to the content being addressed and about the educational process itself. Educational games also rely on shared meanings and norms, which can often be sites of conflict among educational stakeholders. Cultural alignment in games, then, is the degree to which the meanings constructed through game mechanics, game content, and the socio-cultural context of gameplay reinforce one another. Current research on educational games suggests that a high degree of alignment should support learning. However, cultural misalignment can also be educationally productive in some situations. To enable both approaches, a reflective process around cultural alignment in games is needed.