PLAYING (WITH) HISTORY: ACCURACY, AGENCY, & ACCESS IN HISTORICAL VIDEO GAMES

 Heritage Moments | Madison Carmichael

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A few recent articles here at Musings got me thinking about heritage, pop culture, and video games. I’m always interested to see how the past is portrayed in pop culture, whether that be historical fiction or a period drama, but video games are a relatively new media form on this particular scene. As gaming becomes a more culturally pervasive business, heritage scholars and historians have begun to dig into how games – in any form – present the past to players. 

Historical video games can be considered a form of public history, as they communicate the past to the public outside of traditional academia. Historical games take many forms – shooters (think Call of Duty), strategy, adventure, civilization-builders, etc. Some operate similarly to historical fiction novels. They feature fictitious protagonists operating within a historical setting, and they don’t change too much vis-à-vis historical narratives. Larger franchises such as Assassin’s Creed market itself on how it interacts and presents historical settings. In recent years, they’ve hit upon Victorian London, revolutionary France, Ancient Greece, etc. The 2017 installment, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, has a “Discovery Tour”, a gameplay mode that specifically allows players to go on interactive tours curated by historians and Egyptologists.

Other games are more conceptual, and this is largely where you find your strategy games and civilization-builders. Rather than showing a player the past, they tell you how the past might’ve functioned through systems and mechanisms. For example, snatching valuable resources in Sid Meier’s Civilization can make all the difference in whether your fledgling civilization becomes a world power or not. This very result tells you something about the role that resources may have played throughout history. 

As someone who sunk far too many hours into Civilization V and grew up backseat gaming my brother through various installments of the Assassin's Creed franchise, I find it endlessly fascinating to consider how video games do history. (Source)

But are they accurate? Does accuracy matter in these games? And just what constitutes accuracy in a historical video game?

Tara Jane Copplestone conducted 156 interviews of video game players, developers, and cultural heritage practitioners on the topic of accuracy. She found that players, creators, and even heritage practitioners often considered accuracy to be how closely the visual elements of a game resembled source material. Developers specifically defined accuracy as related to physical components and their ability to render them to a known standard – “reconstructing things correctly,” or in other words, constructing them as closely as possible to how they would have looked in the past. While there is certainly value in this approach, it does resemble the authoritarian approach to history that museums have had for much of their own history. The idea that there is one story to tell in history seems antithetical to the medium of video games, which inherently present multiple experiences as a result of the player’s agency to make choices and steer the narrative.

In fact, the interactivity of historical games has been known to produce counterfactual narratives. Many seem to think that this is a strength, making games an interesting medium for exploring the past. Jeremiah McCall insists that video games present an opportunity for exploration, control, and possibility, as well as serious consideration. To his mind, they can help to move history and heritage education beyond the philosophy of straight facts.

For some indication of what kind of games tend to be developed for this genre, and their breadth, Steam has categorizes them specifically as "Historical." (Source)

The definition of accuracy being how closely one might reconstruct something “correctly” certainly creates some stunning graphics. It’s the use of “correctly” that puts me ill at-ease. What does correct mean? Who defines correct?

Copplestone found, through her interviews, that several casual gamers thought that accuracy was contingent, based on the nature of heritage and history itself. One gamer argued that it was possible, and even necessary, for a game to have inaccuracies, because “isn’t history all just from different perspectives, so will always be somewhat inaccurate?” I’m not sure if I agree entirely, but I see their point. Some perspectives are, and have been historically, privileged over others, meaning that there are entire histories obscured or else plain silenced. This is especially critical when ideas of “accuracy” are weaponized in discourse surrounding historical media to sustain racist and sexist arguments for a lack of diversity and representation.

A player’s familiarity with the video game media form, and their awareness of their own agency within that form, lends itself to exploration. So, perhaps video games could provide a space to explore the past differently and to depart from the dominant narratives of history.

I could stare at this replica for hours. (Source)

As a final note on the interplay between video games, accuracy, and heritage, let’s take it back to 2019. After the fire at Notre Dame that year, many people turned to Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014), which was set in revolutionary France and possessed a virtual replica of the cathedral. It was created from scratch by artist Caroline Miousse at Ubisoft – a process which took around 5,000 hours.

In the wake of the fire, the ability to explore Notre Dame within the game apparently brought a great deal of comfort to those upset by the destruction. Sales of the game skyrocketed, and Ubisoft even made the game free for a time. In this CBC article, Ubisoft historian Maxime Durand admits that while the in-game cathedral is a one-to-one replica, it’s not totally accurate. Liberties had to be taken in order to optimize gameplay. Regardless, it’s clear that this replica mattered to people in that moment, and beyond that, it’s also a means for those who’ve never been to Paris – and who may not be able to visit – to access Notre Dame.

Much like period dramas, which tend to reach wide audiences, historical games reach many, many people, and whether they intend to or not, they teach their players something about history. The players' perception of that history – and the game’s overall portrayal of it – and whatever “accuracy” it may put forth is worth a think. How might these portrayals of heritage shape public history?