11–20 of 325 posts
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.
> Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway. I agree with the article's main points, but I think the author gives the game's creators too much credit here. You could tell from the first trailer that this game was going to engage in historical revisionism of the "the Vikings w…
I'm more frustrated by the lack of diverse body types... there is no way malnutrition, lack of modern-day medicine and violence can produce as many healthy bodies as what we see in Ubisoft titles.
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
(Massive moggy BTW)
[0] although vikings being predatory bastards I pretty much knew already, but there's plenty more I don't.
(edit to remove innuendo)
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.“
One mistake might be that we try to patronize people too much and that enlightenment might favor a relaxed approach. I am sure if historic depictions nurture interest in an era, people would search for additional information.
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.
In the end, it really is about healthy skepticism, especially of long-held beliefs and "knowledge".
> Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway. I agree with the article's main points, but I think the author gives the game's creators too much credit here. You could tell from the first trailer that this game was going to engage in historical revisionism of the "the Vikings w…
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.“
I disagree with this conclusion because it disregards agency of players. I see more similarities to warnings about the dangers of books in contrast to how it might display historic events too critically or too uncritically. One mistake might be that we try to patronize people too much and that enlightenment might favor a relaxed approach. I am sure if historic depictions nurture interest in an era, people would searc…
You have to play a Aryan colonial invader who disdains the local culture and religion because your own culture is so much superior, and you have to do that wearing the historically inaccurate trappings of of what people a century ago imagined vikings looked like -- trappings that have been appropriated by neo-nazis.
There's no agency at all for players in this regard.
> Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway. I agree with the article's main points, but I think the author gives the game's creators too much credit here. You could tell from the first trailer that this game was going to engage in historical revisionism of the "the Vikings w…
I don't think it's Ubisoft's fault, really - in 2020, you just can't produce a game where migrating people are presented as the bad guys who kill, rape and loot the locals indiscriminately. I'm more frustrated by the lack of diverse body types... there is no way malnutrition, lack of modern-day medicine and violence can produce as many healthy bodies as what we see in Ubisoft titles.
Is anyone seriously believing that the lack of Africans limiting the market of, say, Samurai games? Why would it limit the market of Viking games?