“You Have Died of Dysentery”: History According to Video Games | Hacker News Reader

“You Have Died of Dysentery”: History According to Video Games

notevenpast.org

33 pointsbenbreen27 comments

Though I think it's an interesting idea discussing the role of history education in gaming, this piece makes little headway in assessing whether any of the games mentioned have done it well. I'd like to see a more thoughtful piece which takes a stance on the industry as a whole and whether we should be concerned about whether history is being misrepresented or people are actually learning from these games.

My guess is that, for most mainstream titles, they are doing a poor job educating about history. For example, while I loved Bioshock, including the story, it very much misrepresents Rand's Objectivism. In the same way, I'm sure many developers are calling on only so much as what they remember from high school in order to develop characters and settings which seem familiar to players. As gaming becomes a more dominant medium, we should probably begin calling out games which instill a twisted view of history in the minds of the public.

> My guess is that, for most mainstream titles, they are doing a poor job educating about history. For example, while I loved Bioshock, including the story, it very much misrepresents Rand's Objectivism.

I have neither played Bioshock nor read any of Rand's work, but it can't possibly be more ridiculous than, say, the representation of Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator. Comparatively, and taking into account the need to translate real life elements into abilities and stats, video games haven't done such a bad job compared to Hollywood.

I played Bioshock and never read Rand's work. It never occurred to me that I should learn something about Rands philosophy form Bioshock. Or that I should take Bioshock as accurate representation of Rand's Objectivism or any other philosophical movement for that matter.

I do not think the game is pretending it represents it.

Yeah its like an academic claiming Wizard of Oz is a metaphor for Hollywood in the 50's. The author denied it. Its a game English professors play: lets find a clever parallel between a work of fiction and {whatever}. Pointless but fun.

There's no metaphor or third parties playing the guess-the-inspiration game. Bioshock's creators explicitly refer to Objectivism (or how they interpret it) as one of the primary factors behind the game's story.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/08/20/exclusive-ken-lev...

But using something for inspiration is completely different than representing that something.

Actually they are. The story of the game is intended mostly to be the result of an Objectivist society's downfall because its leaders are fallible.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/48728/ken-levine-on-bioshoc...

Having read some of Rand's work I can say that the idea seems reasonable. It's not really an indictment of Objectivism, but rather an indictment of the absolutism often found in Objectivist works and Objectivists -- the idea that Objectivism is the only philosophy that is worth having and that everything must adhere to Objectivist principles at all times. I think most people would agree that life is a little more complex than Rand would like it to be, which is what Levine was getting at.

Agreed. The strongest statement the author makes is "Yet their work demonstrates the potential for video games to provide consumers with history that is both interactive and instructive."

So, its only 'potential' so far. Not a reach, and not much of an achievement..

A badly researched article. Civilization is hardly the "only history game that offers a global perspective on the past as well as an appreciation of contingency in history". See Europa Universalis for example. The only good content is the explanation of the games, but that shouldn't be extrapolated as being the entire state of historical fiction in video gaming right now, and so even this is irrelevant for the exposition that the article tries to make.

I prefer Paradox Development Studio's games to Civilization as a 'History Simulator', 'Mega Games' involving all of the 'contiguous' periods of history can be done with he following:

Crusader Kings II - 769CE* - 1453

Europa Universallis IV - 1444* * - 1821

Victoria II - 1832 - 1936 * * *

Hearts Of Iron III - 1936 - 1948 * * *

* As of Charlemagne DLC(unreleased)

* * Converted games from CKII are backtracked to this date.

* * * This is where a continuous game stops, but unofficial save game converters can allow a player to bridge their games over.

There are actual save converters that work "upwards" (time-wise) across their range of games? Amazing. Sounds like an awful amount of hours to go from 769 to 1948, though.

Yep, the converters do their best to translate your save at the end of one game's timeline into a new save at the beginning of the next game's timeline. It's really cool. I say 'do their best' because different games sometimes define regions along different borders, stuff like that. Crusader Kings II might split the Iberian Peninsula up into 14 regions (just making up numbers here), while Europa Universalis IV might consolidate them a little, into 12 regions, so the converter has to recognize that. I haven't looked into it much myself, just reading the paradoxplaza subreddit and seeing people discussing it.

And yeah, it's gotta take a long time to go from 769 to 1948, but can you imagine doing that, then being able to look back at your 1100-year history and see how far you came, from a tiny barony to a modern power, fighting tooth-and-nail the entire time for survival?

Yeah, play as the Orkney Islands and take over the world :)

One issue is that as you get better at playing the games it's extremely likely you'll conquer the world at some point while playing EUIV.

Personal restrictions such as preventing yourself from 'gaming' the game helps a more balanced mega campaign.

Not a bad article, but it's weird to see that alternate reality games like Red Alert get more mention than something like Total War, when a mod like Europa Barbarorum does a good job of using historical information. I've never played Mount and Blade, but it probably transcribes some of the realities of the time (mounted combat) that you don't find much about in other games.

No mention of Pirates?

The game was quite good in portraying the life in the Carribean during that time period but the manual was fantastic.

No mention of Mount and Blade either.

Kudos to the grassroots enthusiasts that are the chaos butterfly's wings that produce the waves big publishers try to surf...

The most enthusiastic are still moving around bits of lead and plastic on scaled terrain trying to simulate the past.

It can be exciting to watch, but I'd prefer peaceful times to live in though.

I suppose for modern american race relations we have GTA:SA, and for modern american immigration policy we have GTA:4. I'm not kidding either. Gaming reflects the societal attitudes that produced it...

This piece claims to be an essay? Its very light in contents, its more of a regulat video games article than anything else.　no mention of Europa Universalis, huge mistake.

One of the best strategy games I played growing up was KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms that takes place in China's three kingdom period

Weird it haven't included Europe Universalis and the likes. It uses a much more realistic model than civilizations.

You have died of dissing Terry :)

http://boourns.dynu.net/pics/43dd53d4beb9b22340c88833856889c...

Missing mention: Pharaoh & Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom are two games following the history of Egypt and China (respectively)

There’s also Caesar I-III and possibly Zeus, though the latter is mostly mythological rather than historical.

Zeus was the bomb. I wished they made more of these games.

heh. video game portraits middle easterns and Russians in pseudo historic events since forever. one hand about american revolution and there's people thinking about historic accuracy.

actually, second game. i think day of the tentacle was the first.

fluff piece

Reply on news.ycombinator.com