I enjoy games with a narrative. By that, I mean that there are games that I play where winning isn’t my only objective.

Understand me rightly; I always play to win. But there are some kinds of games where the key to my enjoyment lies in playing to the utmost of my ability and (preferably) winning. In board game terms, games like Puerto Rico, Taj Mahal and Power Grid are all in that category for me. On the other extreme, there are games where the key to my enjoyment is not so much the end result, but rather the journey to that result that provides the enjoyment. It is the narrative; the stories that we take away and are able to tell after the game, that make for the most fun. “War of the Ring” is an excellent example of such a game; the game mechanics are nothing special (in my opinion of course – YMMV) but the total package is great because it literally allows the players to narrate their own version of the Lord of the Rings saga. RoboRally is another example; it doesn’t really matter so much who wins, but rather that I managed to push your Spinbot onto the rotating conveyor belt right when you thought you were going to reach safety.

Of course, there is no hard and fast divide between objective-oriented games and narrative-oriented games; most games provide a little bit of both flavors. And personal experiences will naturally differ widely; for instance, to me Civilization IV is very much an objective-oriented game, where I end up min-maxing every aspect of my civilization. The older games, in my opinion, provided more material on which one could create a narrative. Others, no doubt, create elaborate histories of their civilizations in their imagination. Games like Spore and the Sims are, of course, quintessential games of narrative (the former in the sense that narrative is all about letting your imagination run wild).

Strategy games are usually objective-oriented, but the more “epic” a strategy game becomes, the more narrative-oriented it tends to be. I find the classic Empires in Arms boardgame to be pretty poor as a game (unless one is playing France or England), but as a narrative experience it’s pretty much unparalleled. Did I ever tell you about this time when 6000 French cavalry captured London and held it for six months? No? Well, here’s the story…

The Europa Universalis (EU) games are perhaps the best example of this phenomenon in computer strategy games. I find this interesting because I do not generally feel that the EU games have  contained a lot of useful features for creating narratives (though recent games have improved upon this). In addition, the “personality” of the factions in the various games has been quite uneven. Despite this, however, the wonderful AAR community at Paradox create the most amazing stories based on their plays of the game.

In terms of imagination, though, it may very well be true that less is more. In much the same way that a good book is superior to moving pictures (simply because the book leaves more to human imagination than a film), it may be that an open-ended sandbox with few limitations provide more basis for a narrative than a super-detailed simulation. How else can one explain that text-only interactive fiction continued to enjoy a following long after the graphical adventure game had appeared.

I see Imperium as being very much a narrative game, in that it is heavily character-based. Characters live their banal (or not so banal) lives in the game and a hundred small stories go on in the background while the player is pursuing his dreams of world conquest, or whatever rocks your boat. I hope to build in support for game narratives and AARs; e.g., by making it possible to print out “game stories” from the messages collected about the player’s dynasty, etc. Each family in the game is driven by its own little AI in its pursuit of happiness and they will act for that independently of the player’s designs (this is one of the key elements in the design; you need “minions” to assist your own dynasty in achieving their goal, but these people will only help you for as long as their own goals align with yours).I wonder sometimes, though, whether adding too many details may not in fact be counter-productive though, limiting the imagination of the players with the game mechanics. No doubt, this is as much a matter of personal preference as many others, but it is one of the places my thoughts turn to as I spend time on putting in place the information feedback mechanisms for Imperium.

I really dislike historical computer games.

Well, let me qualify that: I really dislike the dodgy history that so easily gets propagated by these games. I realize that this is not a completely PC view to have, but I can’t help getting slightly irritated whenever I read yet another post by someone who seems to have picked up their historical facts from a game – at least when (as is usually the case) – those facts are wrong.

It is often argued, in the scope of movies particularly, that representing history poorly is not a problem; i.e., historic movies – even if just a veneer of history – encourage people to read up on the facts and learn. I remain unconvinced; I don’t know a single person who picked up a book on Roman history after watching Gladiator, but I know a lot who are now convinced that Rome conquered the world thanks to the awesome power of its catapults.

The problem, it seems to me, is even more acute with games. I’m not sure why; but I suspect it may be because – in historical games – we often try to justify the game mechanics based on history. That is always a slippery slope. For instance, in the recently released Rome game, the absence of political marriages is justified with the argument historically it was not a factor. Correct, perhaps, if viewed from the early Republic, but highly incorrect from any other perspective. Of course, political marriages were as frequent (and as useful) in this period as in any other period of history; c.f. Cleopatra, Sophonisba, Laodike and Berenice – or the Ptolemaic marriage policies (a direct counter-move against external dynastic claims on the Egyptian throne). Frequently, such “historical” justifications get carried to silly extremes; for instance, a fan countered the criticism surrounding the lack of women in the game by attributing it to wide-spread homosexualism in Rome. I think that would have surprised the (comparatively) homophobic Romans.

This attempt to justify game mechanics (no matter how prosaic) from history, seems often to lead to another phenomena: people justifying history from game mechanics. I don’t think violent games caused the Columbine massacre, but games do shape opinions. It happens in all genres: visit any football forum, and you will find people arguing football from “facts” they have picked up in football manager. Historical games seem particularly susceptible to this; even when people should know better.

Now, I’m not arguing that historical games should not depart from history; games, after all, are supposed to entertain. But I do believe that a reasonably accurate view of history is important for most people. And I think that, no matter how accurate a game tries to be, it risks creating these kind of misconceptions.I’ve heard/read as many dubious (if perhaps less outrageous) facts claimed by players of D.B.M, as I’ve heard /read from Total War players.

But since I can’t help seeing games as somewhat educational, I do wonder how one can minimize this kind of problem. In his discussion of Great Battles of History, Troy discusses one of the better examples of a game trying to make a point. I suspect this is a legacy of its board gaming roots; it’s a poor historical boardgame that does not try to provide some of the historical background for the events its portraying. I doubt enough people read game manuals to make this be much of a point in a computer game, though.

I suppose some of what has been done with the Civilopedia in the Civilization series, is one of the best (if not the only) example I can think of integrating some historical/educational knowledge into a historical game. At an earlier stage, I considered doing something similar (but rather more comprehensive) with Imperium; having each unit, state, and historical personality have a some brief text to provide the historical background. I doubt I’ll have the time/resources to do so, however, but I think that is at least one way of improving this aspect of games.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. What games have you played that inspired you to learn more? And how did they make it so?

Continuing my thoughts on things barbarian in games, it’s been extremely interesting to see the way the concept of “culture”( usually = civilization) is increasingly present in the games we play. What I find less interesting, is the idea of the civilized cultures conquoring the uncivilized. And I don’t mean that from the “politically correct” point of view; it’s quite simply just a poor simulation of what history tells us occurs when one civilization is conquored by another.

When Gaul was romanized, the result was not tribes of copy-cat Romans. The result was a Gallo-Roman culture, mixing elements of both civilizations, until the invasion of the Franks melded that culture into the Merovingian period. The same happened in every region of the Roman empire: elements of Punic culture survived the fall of Carthage for more than 600 years in the thoroughly Romanized province of Africa and the Greeks remained very distinctly Greek even when they became the capital of the Roman Empire. When cultures and civilizations clash, change is inevitable. It may happen so slowly that it is not noticeable (except to the old people who inevitably talk about how things were better back when they were kids), but the change occurs.

When a culture stops changing, it is usually because it’s about to die (a thought for the cultural nationalists of Europe today).

In game terms, however, culture (or civilization) is inevitably represented as an unchanging entity. And while the addition of Culture to the Civilization games was a nice touch, the treatment of culture really leans toward the primordial “Clash of Civilization” theory. This seems almost a natural trend in game design, given the focus on conflict in historical games – and it can be seen in pretty much every strategy game that includes elements of culture/civilization/religion.

I can think of only one game design that really attempted to treat culture in a plausible way, and that was the “Ethos” system of Master of Orion 3 (dropped from the final game). An Ethos in that design had a world view (essentially “religious system”), a bunch of ideals (militaristic, peaceful, etc), and a tradition. As usual, of course, ethoi could and would compete across cultural boundaries, but the interesting aspect was that the more established a culture became, the weaker its ability to proselytize would tend to become. It was also intended that fringe groups (same culture with a small change) would break of from the main ethoi, which given the mechanisms described (small fringe group = high proselytize ability, mainstream ethos = low proselytization), would probably have resulted in fringe groups breaking off and quickly replacing the mainstream ethos.

Adding a few more elements (which may or may not have been included in the design; it’s hard to tell); the resistance of an ethos to proselytization being dependent on its similarity to the proselytizer, the ability of ethoi to merge, and the influence of outside events on an ethos (long wars, for instance, leading to pacificism) and the cultural simulation would have been complete.

Would this have been the ultimate cultural modelling in a strategy game? No doubt. Would it have been an unplayable mess? Perhaps, though I can’t help feeling that there is a core of interesting gameplay in this aspect of civilization modelling that could make a fascinating and perhaps even instructive game.

Before you ask; no – Imperium won’t contain such a detailed modeling of culture. Religion wasn’t really that important back then, and cultural change occurred at a very slow pace (the “Romanization” of Spain, for example, took centuries). So while culture will be modeled and have an effect (primarily in terms of military capability and government structures), it does not have the priority I would devote to it, for instance, if this was a game about the renaissance.

What is a barbarian? Etymologically, it supposedly comes from the Greek word barbaros; bar-bar being the Greek variant of the modern english blah-blah-blah. In essence, then, one might say that barbarian simply means “people who speak funny”. This is why, to the ancient Greeks, anyone who was not a Greek was a barbarian – whether they be Roman, Carthaginian, Indian, Persian or Celt.

In modern pejorative use, the word Barbarian has more often tended to adhere to people considered more uncivilized and nomadic. Modern usage usually follows the Roman-Hellenistic roots of our civilization (ignoring that most of our ancestors were considered barbarians by those same people). In game terms, as Douglas comments, this usually leads to the idea of the more “civilized” states (clearly modeled on the Romans/Greeks) having to “civilize” the unfortunate barbarians; a victory that is always more or less inevitable.

I have a problem with this on several counts.

One is the whole idea of one Civilization being inherently superior to the other. Consider Gallic civilization: tribes were governed by elected magistrates, with the popular assembly (consisting of the free men of the tribe) responsible for most decision-making (at least in theory – in practice, of course, the leading noble men had most of the power). Men of religion (the druids) and arts (bards, artisans) consisted of a separate class, outside of the regular hierarchy. Like the Romans, the Celts had an elaborate system of patron and client relationships, with the lower classes depending on the upper class.

Viewed objectively, one would be hard pressed to claim much of a cultural superiority of Roman-Hellenistic civilization. In any comparison, Celtic arts and crafts would have to be considered highly advanced (consider, for instance, the immaculate Gundestrup cauldron). Celtic warfare – though tribal in nature internally – was not just a mad rush of warriors as Roman and Hellenistic sources would like us to think. Celtic arms and armor was among the finest in the world, and was widely copied; the mail armor adopted by the Romans appears to have been a Celtic invention, and the ubiquitous thureos adopted in all Hellenistic armies during the third century BC was a Celtic shield. Pretty much every charge that can be leveled against Celtic society, can equally be leveled against the cultures we consider “civilized”. Much is made by Roman sources of the existence of human sacrifice by the Celts, but most of our evidence indicates this as being mostly ancient tradition (of about the same dating when Romans and Greeks themselves performed human sacrifice); and it conveniently ignores the Roman’s own use of ritual sacrifice by strangulation (the fate suffered by Vercingetorix ) and the ritual significance of gladiatorial games.

Yet, in modern sensibility, the Celts are barbarians, and the Romans, the civilized. Just once, I’d like to see an “uncivilized” culture reflected in a game, without pandering to our modern cultural belief that just because “our culture” is the “winner”, it was somehow superior. One aspect I really loved about Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri was the way in which it made widely different Social Engineering paths viable for different factions. In contrast, pretty much every other game that includes culture as an in-game factor, makes specific alternatives (usually culminating in the free-market, monotheistic, democratic ideal of our times) out as the best.

I don’t intend to make Imperium a “Civilization” game in the traditional sense, so I need not be too occupied with trying to evaluate various social engineering methods against each other. What I would like to reflect in Imperium, is the way many different cultures ruled their countries in a way that does not make out one to be the obvious superior of the other. This is the idea of political systems that I have discussed on the forums somewhat; having several different political models to reflect the various ways in which states are governed and trying to model their essence with as little modern prejudice as possible.

The ancient civilization for our setting definitely provides a great number of fascinating systems; the militaristic Republic of Rome, where martial glory was a great (if not the only) source of personal prestige, the mercantile Republic of Carthage, the direct Democracies of the Greeks, the various forms of Monarchies (balancing the “spear-won” Monarchies of Hellenism with the religion-based monarchies of the East), Despotism, and Oligarchy. And this is without even delving into the various forms of tribal structures that mixed Kingship, elected magistrates, and tribal assemblies.

The limits on my time will make it impossible to implement modules for all of these; as I’ve stated in the past, the game will probably contain the Roman Republic (obviously) and a Monarchy. If I get the opportunity, though, I would be looking to introduce the Carthaginian Republic and a Celtic-style Tribal assembly.

Carthage is obvious; you get the political complexity and dealings similar to Rome, but with a slightly different slant (aimed at making money, rather than engineering military glory, if we follow the stereotypes). There is obvious scope for some excellent gameplay here, similar to the setting of Merchant Prince in Venice or Merchants of Amsterdam.

The Celts, however, could be even more fun. The Chief Magistracy would be elective, based on military reputation and stature, but the structure would include considerable freedom of action for minor nobles (thus resulting in the appearance of instability to more regimented Roman and Hellenistic societies). It would also be interesting to model the low-scale internal feuding and cattle raiding that was such a feature of Celtic society. So, whereas a Roman noble would be working to progress through the Cursus Honorum (Aedile, Praetor, Consul), your Celtic Noble would first work up respect in cattle raiding, perhaps taking a stint abroad as a mercenary, before becoming a respected war leader (and perhaps chief magistrate) of the tribe.

It would also, quite nicely, reflect the “problems” that Celtic society had from a diplomatic perspective. Without a strong tribal leader, the minor nobles would be able to raid with impunity into neighbouring lands, leading to the kind of inconvenient wars that a player would otherwise not permit. It would also open up those states using this government to the historical strategy of supporting one chief against the other.

The intent of this, of course, would be to provide the player with a “feel” for the culture (let’s not argue historical reality). Though obviously, one could also argue that Imperium is simply preaching an alternative creed: that Corruption, Greed and Hypocrisy is a feature of any societal rule – regardless of how civilized it claims to be. Even – as Mahatma Gandhi recognized – of our modern democracies.

I recently read a discussion about barbarians and their representation in games which reminded me of the classical article “You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!”: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines by Christopher Douglas, published in Postmodern Culture in 2002.

In the article, Douglas argues how games are not only formed by our culture, but also shape our expectations of the real, our view of history, nationality, race, and economic justice. This should come as no surprise to anyone who, for instance, has followed historical discussions on any forum for a historical game. For instance, we now have a generation of people who believe that ancient battles occured like in the Total War games, that War dogs were a key component in Roman armies, and that Britons ran around hurling heads at their enemies. The tendency to confuse games and reality is not limited to history; e.g., one will often find people discussing real life (european) football transfers based on experiences from Football Manager. Games shape what people believe is real; whether it is people arguing world history based on a world view they have gotten from Europa Universalis or justifying their interpretation of a historical battle based on Total War or DBM.

Douglas’s article goes a layer deeper and examines how mainstream strategy games (Civilization II & III) reflect the preconceptions of culture.One is in the dealing with Barbarians; the “native indians” of Civilization (as distinct from the “Native Indian” factions):

Civilization III and its predecessors … posit the land as inhabited and yet not inhabited: populations which seem to be on the land but which, paradoxically, don’t occupy it.

Briefly put, Douglas suggests that the game reinforces our (American/Western) cultural viewpoint of a world where:

In these games, the fact that the Indians are understood not to truly occupy the land is linked to the Native inability to develop technology. That is, they propose that indigenous populations improperly take up space in the empty land precisely because they don’t develop technology, and therefore aren’t nascent civilizations.

…

Among other ideological effects, Civilization III makes inevitable, natural and universal several Western-centered ideas of technological progress, the use of the land, and the opposition between “civilization” and “savagery.” In this way, historical specificity is forgotten, and the game reinforces the sense that those who have been displaced were only ever natural obstacles erupting randomly from the wilderness to block (American) civilization’s advance. Because these ideas are coded into the game rules they appear as an inevitable historical rules.

Douglas recognizes the altenative history potential in a game where the Aztecs or Zulus can conquor Madrid or London. But as he notes:

… a second kind of ideological work this performs is produced precisely because of the possible alternative histories. Things might have turned out differently because the game constructs history as a level playing field. So why didn’t the Iroquois conquer the Americans? Why weren’t the Indians able to colonize London and its outlying areas? Because those colonized peoples didn’t work as hard as or didn’t have the noble spirit of we Europeans. The game has abstract radical potential, but it is circumscribed by how things really turned out. That radical potential thus works ideologically to reinforce the notion of cultural and maybe racial supremacy.

In summarizing the article using these few quotes, I am of course simplifying the argument radically; I recommend reading the article yourself, it it tickles your interest (the wayback machine is useful, if you don’t have university access to Muse). I certainly found (re)reading the article interesting. Over the next couple of posts, I intend to write a little bit about some of the historical ideology/cultural preconceptions that exist in our games, and my thoughts on their implementation in Imperium.