How is history used in games?
One of the simplest and most obvious ways is the use of historical settings and historical personalities. There are a wide variety of games to take this approach, ranging from strategy games to role-playing games and so on. The popular Dynasty Warriors series is just one of many to use the Three Kingdoms period as backdrop, and many of the standout personalities from this era - Cao Cao or Zhuge Liang - serve as characters in the game. It should be no shock that these games’ take on these characters has more to do with the historical novel Romance of Three Kingdoms than with a more cold-blooded approach to historical events. Any historical change that occurs is to be limited and is hardwired into the gameplay. The novel and the games use the setting in similar ways – they reference characters and events that open up storytelling possibilities due to their very familiarity. Civil War era strategy games are fundamentally similar. Once again the setting and characters provide a familiar backdrop that allows the player to concentrate on other aspects of the game: action, or strategy, or fantastical or humorous riffs on well-known events. In either case, historical dynamics do not play a major role in the gameplay itself; history is a motif or a backdrop to the action. The fact that these are “historical” games has little bearing on anything. I had initially been dismissive of this approach to history games as superficial. “History,” to my mind, was fundamentally about plumbing the roots of temporal change, and therefore approaches that fail to handle dynamics dynamically were uninteresting. I have since come around somewhat on this position; I will return to it in a bit.
A more complex and involved way of approaching history through games is to attempt to portray historical dynamics through game dynamics. Rather than the player acting out a drama or planning strategy on a static background, the game dynamics shift in response to temporal change - including changes wrought by the player, by non-player actors, and in the background. This approach has generally been limited to strategy games, although these nonetheless encompass a relatively wide range of variations. An example par excellence of a dynamic approach is the Civilization series. These attempt to portray large-scale historical change – in fact the main point of interest of the games is the ability to play through all long timescales and experience and affect dynamic change. There are a wide range of imitators and variations on this approach, from Age of Empires to Total War to the many Paradox games. I grew up on these games, and can probably to them some of my interest in history. Nonetheless, I have grown dissatisfied with both the in-game experience and the broader portrayal of historical dynamics. I have been trying to figure out why.
