i've been playing a lot of civilization V and VI lately. they're the sort of games i need when i need to not be thinking about anything else: they're pretty damn in-depth, with enough mechanics to occupy every part of my brain so that i can't think about much else while doing them. the thing is, though, when you're so thoroughly immersed in the mechanics, and when you're someone with a brain like mine, eventually (or, in my case, rapidly) you start asking why they made the choices they did. and, well, civilization is a game series that, well, sure does make a lot of Choices. so, now that i've done all my thinking about those choices, i'm going to write about them.
something i should say before going any further: this is an essay about the way games depict history, and so is going to include a lot of discussion of the worst of what history has to offer. i'm not going to dive particularly deep into the actual, real impacts of things like imperialism, colonialism, or slavery, both because i expect the reader to have a solid understanding of why those things are bad, and also because i really don't think i'm qualified to thoroughly explore those topics. however, i'm definitely going to talk about how violence and imperialism are used mechanically in games, so y'know, there's your content warning. essay continues (begins, really) under the cut.
okay, what's wrong with civ?
for the unacquainted: sid meyer's civilization, or just "civ" if you're short on time or breath, is a series of turn-based games in which you play as one of many world leaders on a procedurally generated map and try to "win" in the fields of science, culture, diplomacy, or military might. each game has its own set of mechanics, usually with "progression trees," which are unlocked by various kinds of points you get every turn. notably, one of new trees introduced in civ VI is the "civics" tree, which includes various cultural phenomena such as opera, organized sports, and recorded history, as well as some more abstract ones like "craftmanship." it's a neat way to portray human cultural history!
except, well. it also includes concepts such as colonialism, nationalism, authoritarianism, etc. in fact, if you want to get to the end of the tree, you must select colonialism and nationalism at some point. there's no way around it--in fact, because you must always be "researching" a civic, you'll find yourself railroaded into it should you play the game long enough. this sucks! it should be incredibly obvious that this sucks. i mean, the implication that colonialism is in any way necessary to concepts such as conservation or environmentalism is absurd and offensive! sure, these concepts came after and were influenced by colonialism in western society, but this is a game where most of the available leaders are, in fact, not from what we today consider to be the west! what gives?
well, stuff like this is littered throughout civ VI, at varying levels of intensity. colonialism (the act, not the civic) is actively encouraged by in-game buffs, and AI players will in fact often praise you for engaging in the practice. the game's advisor system often encourages you to start the manhattan project, enabling nuclear weapons--while the game also has a mechanic that makes nuclear reactors inexplicably more likely to break down than any other source of power. it's all ahistorical stuff that can be chalked up to balance and game design, but it pushes a particular political agenda nonetheless.
so, civilization VI (and the series as a whole, really) constructs a false and unrealistic narrative about the advancement of society. i'm sure i could spend another three paragraphs going into detail about it. i mean, hell, the very premise of the game is that you settle open, empty land--there's so much to go into there. given the average political leanings of this website, though, i'm going to assume that you get the picture. civ kind of sucks politically! the thing is, though, civilization-style games are far from the only style of historical empire-building game--in fact, these days they might not even be the most common.
oh, it's not just civilization, is it?
enter paradox interactive. you've probably heard of paradox-- they make a variety of grand strategy historical simulators, such as the crusader kings series, as well as europa universalis, victoria, hearts of iron, and a couple other one-off titles. getting into how you play paradox games and how they work would take far too long, so i'll just say this: paradox's style of game is very different from civilization, having you play a real country in a real (though variably accurate) historical context. each of the titles listed above begins at a certain point in human history, with accurate1 empires and borders and systems and government and all of that stuff. each of the games has a different focus-- crusader kings, for example, is focused on the dynasties of the middle ages, while hearts of iron is a game about world war two. paradox is pretty devoted to historical accuracy in its settings, and so there are lots of detailed mechanics that seek to accurately emulate the economies and militaries of various historical time periods. they're very deep, intricate games that seek to accurately represent history-- good or bad.
i think the best introduction to paradox's design philosophy is this dev update for victoria III, which is a game focusing on, you guessed it, the victorian era. the topic of this update is the game's inclusion of slavery. i'll let the devs speak for themselves here:
Slavery is, obviously, a horrific crime against humanity and precisely for this reason, many games that have a slavery-related setting or mechanics will either leave it out of the game or abstract it into something that’s less ‘on the nose’ (for example by simply applying some form of economic bonus at the expense of decreased stability). For Victoria 3, we don’t think these options work for us for two main reasons.
The first reason is that as I mentioned before, it was an important political issue of the day and was a major catalyst for several significant conflicts, most notably the American Civil War which would be bizarrely contextless if slavery did not play a significant role in the game. The other, and most important reason, is that through our Pop system we are trying to represent every individual human on the planet from 1836, so what statement would we be making if we simply wrote all enslaved individuals out of history, or reduced them into an abstract set of modifiers?
Instead, our aim is to try and represent the institution, systems and causes of slavery, as well as the people who lived under and fought against it, as close to history as we can get it. We simply believe this to be the most respectful way for us to handle this topic, as well as the way that’s most true to the game Victoria 3 aspires to be. With that said, let’s get into the actual mechanics of how slavery and slave pops function in Victoria 3.
sorry, i know that's a lot of text, but i didn't want to misrepresent the devs here. to summarize: their perspective is that, in abstracting or minimizing slavery, they would be engaging in a sort of historical revisionism, and so they chose to integrate slavery into their game's mechanics. i don't think it's my place to say whether or not this is a good idea-- i just thought it important to include their reasoning before continuing. anyway.
as you can see, paradox's approach is the opposite of that of the civ series'. whereas the civ series removes slavery entirely, victoria III seeks to accurately represent it. where civ abstracts "colonialism" into a set of bonuses for settling on other continents, victoria (and its sister series, europa universalis) have complex systems that depict it, the nuances of which we don't quite have time to get into. there is certainly quite a lot of care taken not to brush over the dirtier parts of history. (for the most part. looking at you, hearts of iron.2) the question is, though, what are the consequences of this?
well, one of the problems of abstracting things like colonialism is that it becomes very easy to be distanced from what they actually are in reality, instead thinking of these complex and terrible concepts as things that boost your stats. does paradox avoid this? well, i'll just let that same dev update illustrate that:
However, there is one economic advantage to slavery that goes a little beyond just enriching aristocrats: Slave pops have a higher ratio of workforce to dependents than other pops, meaning that a population of 100k slaves can supply the labor needs of a greater number of buildings than a population of 100k laborers. The key thing here is of course that not all buildings can utilize slaves, so this isn’t going to be doing any good for an industrialized manufacturing economy, but a country that aims to keep its economy agriculture/plantation-focused and suffers from a labor shortage may find the brutal economics of slavery to work in its favor, if they’re willing to stomach the human cost and stamp down on any resistance.
this is a very matter of fact excerpt talking about the economic benefits of slavery, featured just below an in-game depiction of a black man and woman in chains. while there's certainly some acknowledgement of the horror of slavery at this point, this is a post that is primarily focused on explaining the pros and cons of doing slavery in the video game.
what i'm trying to argue by posting these excerpts is that, if anything, the accurate depictions of cruelty in these games serve only to desensitize further-- take a quick look at the forums or subreddits (or, god forbid, the discord servers) for paradox games3 and you'll see tons of complaining over real-world ideologies' representation in the game, shitposting about various historical atrocities, as well as discussions over what the right meta is for keeping your colonies in line. if paradox's goal in being detailed in their depiction of historical violence was to take it seriously, well, they seemingly failed.
well, now what?
i... don't know! several months ago, when i wrote the bulk of this post, i'd planned to conclude this post with a few directions devs have taken the genre that might lead to a benign game in the grand strategy genre: stellaris, for example, is a paradox game that takes place in space, but it still replicates and encourages all-too-familiar patterns of imperialism and historical atrocities. there are a wide number of games that focus entirely on single conflicts, many of which are pre-colonial european wars, and i suppose those don't have many of the same issues, but they're also not the same kind of game, you know? it's impossible to make a grand strategy game either about or replicating large swaths of real world history without it being politically loaded--and anyone making these games is going to have to make the choice between whitewashing history and mechanically incorporating and encouraging atrocities.4 it feels like an impossible decision, and it's one i'm not quite sure how to circumvent.
...and, that's it! sorry, it's not much of a conclusion. i deliberated for months on how to end this post, and this is the best i could do--or, at least, i guess i just wanted to let this 2000+ word post finally fly free. maybe there's a game out there that solves this problem while still being a Grand Strategy Game, but i've yet to discover it! if you have, let me know.
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again, "accurate" in quotes here. a lot is simplified for gameplay's sake, which is fine, and details are often glossed over when it comes to places that aren't europe, which is less fine. it's the sort of thing you'd expect from this sort of title.
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god, hearts of iron could get its own post. not only does it kind of pretend all of the horrible atrocities committed by various authoritarian powers in world war 2 didn't happen, it compresses what atrocities it DOES acknowledge into single buttons you can click to give yourself extra boosts in the game. the "focus tree" system presents an extremely short-sighted and honestly kind of disgusting view of history that betrays the political and ideological leanings of its creators. however, i think it'd be in bad faith to assume that all games of this genre are quite as bad as the hearts of iron series, so i've mostly ignored it in this post. believe me, it took some restraint.
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a particularly pungent example is the r/kaiserreich subreddit, a subreddit for a fan-created alternate history mod for hearts of iron 4. the slight remove from actual reality encourages people to be even more toxic. it's bad.
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i suppose you could just make doing atrocities always a bad idea in your game, but then the player isn't ever going to do them, and then the mechanics functionally don't exist anyway. plus, the idea of enabling a sort of moral grandstanding via not doing atrocities in a video game feels kind of icky all the same
