Empire Perspectives of Sid Meier's Civilization and other Historical-World Strategy Games

[Dewar]

Wow, a lot of interesting thoughts came in over the last few hours.

 

How about a version of you, or rather not you, who is 12 years old, and plays CIV 5. The 12 year old does NOT "know" who "General Rommel" really was. Of course, the Rommel in the game is not the "real" General, nor is it trying to be. It is most likely a (not-so) randomly generated NPC name, which some game dev must have thought is funny. Context either makes it funny ... or not. Depending on who you are, where you grew up. I recall hearing some developer talking about the "real" Shoshone and some interaction with the native American tribe in context with a representation of them in the game. The developers DO see some responsibility of what they are doing, it seems. Or they are forced to not ignore it. So, this kid plays Civ, conquers all of Africa and a month later - depending on where you live, of course - might hear about Erwin Rommel in school. Your video game character has suddenly a second life. I cannot imagine how the fake history game world is informing the real history "knowledge" of children and what will "stick" and what not. To say the least, as trivial as this all may sound to some, it sounds at least "problematic", if not troubling to others? Maybe not a single name of a single character, but how about the underlying "philosophy" (the mechanics) of the game. The representation of cultures, technology, philosophies. While it still IS a game, "it" (rather the developers) cannot hide behind that argument of the reductionism that is at work here? idSofware, teaching me how to shoot in a FPS, doesn't make me a better soldier (at least, I don't think so). Telling me something about "Civilization" (even the bland Intro video of Civ 5 - it is offensively annoying to my ears, if not yours), is making statements in this (real) world. It's not making me a bad person, but it informs my real world views, one way or another (just listen to some remarks I think Troy Goodfellow was making jokingly(?!) in the podcast). Even if it is "just a video game"?

 

I think this is a good thing, because twelve year old me would have probably gotten curious about Rommel and who he really was, and maybe I would have checked out an encyclopedia.I did that sort of thing a lot when I was younger (one game I remember doing this with a lot was Castles.) I accept the idea that a lot of other children may not be as curious, but I'd like to think few would accept what happens in the game as historical fact.

 

 

Like I said, the issues with Civ are emergent out of three simple axioms:

1. The game is about winning.

2. Only one player (or an alliance of players) can win.

3. A player winning ends the game.

If there's a win condition that doesn't require industrialisation (for example, happiest country), then the game would abruptly end in 2000BC when someone halfway across the world builds a church or something. In the real history of the world, what happened was that people running the countries had their own individual objectives, and for many of them, their objectives were already achieved in their lifetime. You want a sandbox of history, but Civ isn't a sandbox, it's a 4X strategy game clothed in history.

 

I like a lot of games without win conditions. I've put a lot of time into Minecraft (which I guess you can technically win now) and Dwarf Fortress. However, I do think there's value in having win conditions in Civilization because, if there was no end, then wouldn't that imply to most people that you win when you conquer the world? There are so many world conquering games (even before video games there have been board games) that I would assume if handed a map an no instructions that my goal is to take over the whole thing.

 

An additional small point, if you don't wish to respect the win conditions, you can always keep playing after the game has given you your score.

 

 

the Civ games would be called "Alpha Centauri 2, 3, 4...", and all units and names and countries would come out of the SciFi/Fantasy realms, I would not bother anyone with anything. I am not saying Sid Meier's Civilization is his (the man) or the studios attempt to accuartely mirror our world. It's a game. I get that. But they intentionally set this game in historical context! For whatever reasons. And even unintentionally, this game, the design, the mechanics, implicitly are making a statement about "history", about "the world" and the worlds "mechanics", etc, etc.

 

I think there's value in setting something in a hisorical context as there's a lot of information there that a good portion of the game playing public shares. For instance, I don't really need to be told what a musket is in Civilization. I have a decent idea of what makes a musket, and a stats on the unit tell me the rest of what I need to know. It's not trivial to create a new space-musket and accurately explain what it does as well as enough backstory to make it fit into a new game. Now multiply having to do that a hundred times for each unit and technology in the game, and you're talking a decent chuck of writting time. A lot of folks seem to really like Alpha Centauri but, when I played it, I had a hard time figuring out what most of the stuff there actually meant (I was young at the time) while the surface level of Civilizations 2 spoke a language that I immediately understood.

 

That being said, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a Sci-fi or Fantasy version of Civilization (Elemental: Fallen Enchantress tries this but doesn't quite make it.)

[Gormongous]

If there is no 'truth', who is to say that your interpretation of history is any more valid than Sid's? What makes you more trustworthy than anybody else?

 

All interpretations are valid. All interpretations should be critiqued and discussed.

 

It's all well and good to criticize the game of having a Western bias, but lets at least display a little bit of self-reflexive criticism if we're going to pursue this. When we start demanding more rigor, serious consideration of the flow of power, a less top-down approach, consideration of other agencies than the state and its self-appointed leaders, the perspective of subaltern communities, the de-centering of a European perspective, are we not implicitly endorsing history as a scientific practice, in other words, historical practice through the lens of the West?

 

Yeah, post-modernism is self-defeating in the end, but that doesn't mean elements of it can't still be used to inform different perspectives on a video game. It's not zero-sum; we can criticize Civilization for having a Western bias, then you can criticize our criticism for having a Western bias, then we can all go home happy and a little more self-aware.

 

I think this is a good thing, because twelve year old me would have probably gotten curious about Rommel and who he really was, and maybe I would have checked out an encyclopedia.I did that sort of thing a lot when I was younger (one game I remember doing this with a lot was Castles.) I accept the idea that a lot of other children may not be as curious, but I'd like to think few would accept what happens in the game as historical fact.

 

I wouldn't be so sure. Last history class I helped teach, the most missed question on the final exam was "What nations won World War 2?" These are college freshmen, by the way.

[colinp]

 

All interpretations are valid. All interpretations should be critiqued and discussed.

 

 

Yeah, post-modernism is self-defeating in the end, but that doesn't mean elements of it can't still be used to inform different perspectives on a video game. It's not zero-sum; we can criticize Civilization for having a Western bias, then you can criticize our criticism for having a Western bias, then we can all go home happy and a little more self-aware.

 

 

I wouldn't be so sure. Last history class I helped teach, the most missed question on the final exam was "What nations won World War 2?" These are college freshmen, by the way.

With you as their teacher how could it have gone so wrong?

Just teasing! I think we can all agree to disagree that post-modernism is a sad reflection of their times and happily move on. Yay!

[Dewar]

 

I wouldn't be so sure. Last history class I helped teach, the most missed question on the final exam was "What nations won World War 2?" These are college freshmen, by the way.

 

I hope this is a trick question.

 

Oddly enough, I spent a lot of time on wikipedia trying to figure out what countries were least involved in the war as I figured that "winning" was not fighting in the first place. I settled on Cuba as the winner due to best k/d ratio. One German submarine sank, no losses. Also acceptable are Turkey, Afghanistan, and Tibet which, as far as I can tell, stayed completely out of the fight and didn't lend troops to either side.

[Gormongous]

I hope this is a trick question.

 

Oddly enough, I spent a lot of time on wikipedia trying to figure out what countries were least involved in the war as I figured that "winning" was not fighting in the first place. I settled on Cuba as the winner due to best k/d ratio. One German submarine sank, no losses. Also acceptable are Turkey, Afghanistan, and Tibet which, as far as I can tell, stayed completely out of the fight and didn't lend troops to either side.

 

Well, it wasn't my exam. I just proctored and graded it, and then drank heavily when only about two thirds of the hundred and fifty students managed to list countries that had been involved in World War 2 as primary combatants.

 

It's really the professor's fault for spending two weeks spouting Holocaust denial (yes, yes) and only one day about the war itself.

[clyde]

I just spent the whole day playing Civilization 5 and I gotta tell you, it certainly affects how I view imperialism in the real world. I have maintained peace and happiness, accumulated a massive treasury and large quantities of cultural successes up to 2013, but I did it in a largely isolationist way, rigging the elections of every city-state on my meager borders and funneling troops to them to defend themselves. Now that I've revealed more of the map, I'm kinda freaked out. Greece and Russia are covered in fallout. Greece has no intention of stopping with Russia, and Vienna is just enabling this imbalance of power. If I don't ally with Vienna and nerf the shit out of Greece with nuclear weapons and take quite a few cities, Greece won't be satisfied until it is the only world power. It doesn't give a shit about my religion, culture, or technologies except when it sees them as military threats. Dog-eat-dog til there is one angry dog left; that's how I view the world at this moment.

[Dewar]

I don't know if I've ever played a Civilization game with nukes since the first time way back in Civ 2. Somehow, I usually manage to avoid the Manhattan project being built until it's too late to be worth building a bunch of them.

[Fhnuzoag]

I've only built nukes in SMAC, since it seemed narratively apropos there.

[clyde]

As I try to work out a way to deal with a militaristic superpower who seems bent on controlling every tile on the map in order to feed its war-machine, there is a part of me that says "If I can't figure out a way to bring balance of power in this game, then I'm just a naive idealist." And some of that self-identity will come with me as I re-enter the natural world. That may be a good thing. Could be bad, definitely there (for me).

The paranoid argument that this particular match of Civilization 5 makes does a better job of convincing me why military strength is a national priority than my U.S. Navy-indoctrinated father.

[clyde]

I was explaining this game to family this morning which led to a political debate. The result was that I've been reading about U.S. influence in coups d'état on Wikipedia for the last hour and a half. I encourage you to try reading this while deep in a match of Civ 5. It is strongly influencing how I interpret the information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions