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Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

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Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#21

Lovely article. The conflict between making a videogame (or any bit of popculture really) enjoyable and inclusive vs. historically accurate often comes up and both sides have a fair point. My personal solution is to both enjoy the content and then try to educate myself through articles like this one.

Why do they need to be inclusive? Do samurai games need to include red-haired Celts and curly-haired Bantus, you know, for diversity?

What's the point of this? Lying about history to make some people feel better?

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#22

Lovely article. The conflict between making a videogame (or any bit of popculture really) enjoyable and inclusive vs. historically accurate often comes up and both sides have a fair point. My personal solution is to both enjoy the content and then try to educate myself through articles like this one.

Why do they need to be inclusive? Do samurai games need to include red-haired Celts and curly-haired Bantus, you know, for diversity? What's the point of this? Lying about history to make some people feel better?

Because games are supposed to be fun and it’s more fun if the player feels included.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#23

There’s lots of evidence of trade with African and MiddleEastern merchants in Viking-age Scandinavia; it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there

There was trade, there is however not "a lot", not even some evidence of African or Middle-Eastern merchants settling in any kind of notable numbers. When confronted, the people who claim otherwise simply point out that it was possible to make the trip (well, duh), which is not at all the same thing as having a lot of people actually doing it.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need to be inclusive? Do samurai games need to include red-haired Celts and curly-haired Bantus, you know, for diversity? What's the point of this? Lying about history to make some people feel better?

Because games are supposed to be fun and it’s more fun if the player feels included.

I never once played a violent game and felt the need to have my own character included.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need to be inclusive? Do samurai games need to include red-haired Celts and curly-haired Bantus, you know, for diversity? What's the point of this? Lying about history to make some people feel better?

Because games are supposed to be fun and it’s more fun if the player feels included.

Do you feel excluded by samurai games?

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because games are supposed to be fun and it’s more fun if the player feels included.

Do you feel excluded by samurai games?

No because I’m white and I can play a million games with white protagonists. I don’t need to be included in every game.

If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#27
post #3

This is the problem with historic games. Either you acknowledge the bad and good things, or you white wash the past. As the author notes at the end: „As I have argued here many times, fiction is often how the public conceptualizes the past and that concept of the past shapes the decisions we make in the present.“

His complain is waaay more nuanced then that. It is that that while the game acknowledges bad in England Christianity and even adds some more ahistorical bad, the Vikings are treated as basically saviors.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#28

Lovely article. The conflict between making a videogame (or any bit of popculture really) enjoyable and inclusive vs. historically accurate often comes up and both sides have a fair point. My personal solution is to both enjoy the content and then try to educate myself through articles like this one.

Why do they need to be inclusive? Do samurai games need to include red-haired Celts and curly-haired Bantus, you know, for diversity? What's the point of this? Lying about history to make some people feel better?

>Lying about history to make some people feel better?

Yup. The point is that almost no one cares about history, so even a few people whining about "inclusion" is enough make a nonsense historical game.

Forget about ancient norse and greeks, they can't even make a halfway accurate WW1 game.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#29

Lovely article. The conflict between making a videogame (or any bit of popculture really) enjoyable and inclusive vs. historically accurate often comes up and both sides have a fair point. My personal solution is to both enjoy the content and then try to educate myself through articles like this one.

It's also one in which the side Ubisoft picked is pretty clear.

We're talking about a game series whose central conceit is that an obscure Islamist sect noted mainly for murdering religious figures they disagreed with is actually a secret society acting to preserve an Enlightenment-style libertarian ethos for centuries before the Enlightenment (yet staying curiously neutral during the French Revolution!) Every design decision made in other periods shoehorns in the assumption whichever faction these ahistorically-inserted Assassins are allied to are 'good guys' who believe in freedom fighting an evil conspiracy very loosely associated with a historical Christian order, as well as assumptions like the opportunity to roleplay Vikings will sell more games than protecting Saxon homesteads (commercial pressures the author is well aware of when discussing other design decisions). I'm more surprised by the historically inaccurate weapon choices tbh.

It's clearly an article written by someone with plenty of knowledge about the actual history to share, but still reminds me of an old flatmate criticising the physics of the Simpson's Movie!

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel excluded by samurai games?

No because I’m white and I can play a million games with white protagonists. I don’t need to be included in every game. If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.

Are nonwhites incapable of making games to represent themselves?
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