Historical game studies scholarship has emphasised the importance of understanding the ways images of the past are created, shaped, and interacted with in the video ludic medium (De Groot, 2009 Kapell & Elliott, 2013 Kerschbaumer & Winnerling, 2014 Lorber & Zimmermann, 2020 Venegas Ramos, 2020). Although this nascent field features an array of approaches and aims, it tends to combine the insights from historical research, Game Studies, and a variety of other disciplines in order to gain a better understanding of ‘games that in some way represent the past or relate to discourses about it’ (Chapman et al., 2017, p. Their works could be subsumed within what has been called Historical Game Studies. Several historians and media scholars have recognised the video ludic medium's potency for representing the past, which has led to a wealth of analysis of historical representation in video games. Civilization V therefore represents a trend within the sector when it comes to its setting, rules, and messages. Sid Meier, the franchise's creator, is the most critically awarded developer in the history of video games. Civilization V is a significant case for investigation: It is the best-selling instalment of a franchise that has come to define the historical strategy genre as well as the videogame industry in general. Video games have become an immensely popular medium, making the study of how they represent History and nationalism pressingly relevant. Despite this, there are probably many more people who learn about History through games like Civilization V-which has sold 8 million copies worldwide-than through academic publications. It constitutes a form of nationalist essentialism that few historians would characterise as an ‘accurate’ depiction of History. If the people in question were Moroccan, they would have a God-given capacity to make optimal use of their environment if they were Russian, 6000 years of staying in the same place would have taught them absolutely nothing about living in the desert.įor a game that-like most other titles in the historical strategy genre-uses historical authenticity as a key selling pitch, this depiction is quite odd. In this rather unlikely scenario, what capacity would this community have of making use of the surrounding environment for roughly 6000 years? If someone decided to play out this thought experiment in the historical videogame Sid Meier's Civilization V, that person would be faced with an additional question: what is the nationality of these people? In this game, the outcome wildly varies depending on if the group of people is Moroccan or Russian. What if, at the dawn of the Neolithic, a group of people were to settle down in a place surrounded by deserts and-from then on-its descendants would remain settled in that very same place until the present day. Although a product of globalization, Civilization V strengthens rather than erodes national boundaries. This paper will combine insights of Game Studies and Nationalism Studies to illustrate how the elements that conform Civilization V incentivise and enable players to re-enact a narrative that portrays essentialised nation-states as the only relevant actors in the past, present, and future of humankind. Although globalization and nationalism are often framed as opposing forces, this is hardly the case here. This video game was marketed globally by an American company, but it evokes Spanish, Japanese, and English nationalist narratives and imagery. This article fills part of this gap by analysing the way in which the historical strategy game Civilization V represents the Past and what role it gives nations within historical processes. It crashes once in a while, nothing too dramatic.Although the last two decades have seen a vast increase in studies that analyse banal nationalism in media, there is one medium that has largely been ignored in these discussions: video games. We would just let it do all its computation during the AI’s turns) and then play/click when it was out turn, it was working great, but if you clicked like mad all the time, it gets a bit overworked. We played a 2 players multiplayer game, Large Map (10 civs + 20 City-States and Pangea) up to turn 200, then my MacBook crashed and we couldn’t go further.īut we played many, many, and I mean many hours on a standard map setting (8/16) and it went fine, although some turns take a while to process, especially in the later game (turn 300+) you just have to be patient and let the computer work. takes forever, but I don’t care for that map setting, in fact I find it confusing, for me the hexagon map works well. Works fine when I play on the hexagonal map setting, but very slow when I play on the graphic/sprites map setting, the time to render the map, terrain, units, etc.
0 kommentar(er)
