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Revisionist History in Age of Empires
The fact that Microsoft Game Studios picked and chose from the past in order to make Age of Empires fun is understandable. While recognizing that, the Wonderland Blog brings up the (dubiously laudable but) important role Age of Empires has in educating young people. Alice asks if such a game, helpful to the teaching of the young, should futz with the past the way it does. The Guardian Blog follows up on her commentary by discussing the game and the issue in the context of Serious Games. From the article: "With the snowballing of interest in Serious Games and governmental support for the development of games in the classroom, should this be an issue that is seriously debated in development houses?"
The only time they should take these things into consideration is if the title is being developed as an Educational/"Edutainment" program. Otherwise, gameplay should trump fact. Everybody knows that the Great Pyramid didn't actually give the Egyptians a free granary in each of their cities, right?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
yes
While studying for the National Georgraphy Bee, I played a lot of Civ 2. It really teaches you those place names when you have to memorize them in order to figure out quickly what's going on in your empire. I did a lot of serious studying as well, but that game taught me 25 cities in each of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia (I'm from the US).
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Its a game people.
G A M E
Say it with me now. Its for the purpose of having FUN, not learning. If I wanted to learn I'd crack open a book and read or something. If I want to kill off Native Americans the old fashoned way with a musket, then I play a game.
Jesus effing christ on a stick. Get your blue state heads out of your collective asses and HAVE FUN instead of insisting that everyone tries to conform to your concept of "HOW THINGS SHOULD BE."
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
You mean to tell me the Byzantines and the Hittites didn't regularly encounter each other in battle?
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Actually, the smallpox-infected blankets story is now held to be a myth. If it happened at all, it certainly was not a recurring practice.
That doesn't invalidate the larger criticism*, obviously, but it's striking how often the people who hand out lectures on distinguishing between myth and "fact" almost always have some rather glaring problems with their own "facts".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
" important role Age of Empires has in education young people."
Ah yes, AoE has really embiggened our vocabulary hasn't it?
"Derp de derp."
We can all learn a lesson from Slashdot in education young people in how to editing articles. Way to journalism!
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I'm sure someone will provide an analysis of the game comparing it's story to accepted historical theory. Blogging isn't just for geeks, you know.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I mean, didn't Cortez use some tribe to assist them defeat the Azteks? So since the concept of using natives to further your goals existed in reality, why not have it available in a game without restrictions? The economic system in the AoE titles isn't close to realistic either but I see nobody complain that it teaches children gold grows on the surface or something.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Please. As if I believe anything from AOE. Now, Ag e of Mythology -- that was an accurate depiction of history!
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
The reviewer's problem seems that AoE3 doesn't go along with the revisionist history supported by the reviewers.
From TFA
'The crux is that the Native Americans in AoE III "are not so much a peoples to be exploited and killed off with pox-infected blankets as they are partners in your war against the other countries," according to Kotaku.'
So, the reviewer has the racist view that Native Americans are weak social incompetents whose only purpose is to be exploited and killed. To the reviewr's Native Americans are not fully realized human being (capable of both selfishness and charity, both good and evil) but instead the reviers complains that they are not seen only as victims.
When in reality (not the reviewer's politically correct fantasy) the Indians were a number of unallied and often mutually antagonist tribes/countries that frequently allied with the Europeans. For example, the Anti-Aztec Indians that allied with the Spanish in order to topple their Aztec masters. These Indians did this, not solely for the Spaniards benefit (although the Spanish did benefit) but because these Indians hated their Aztec rulers.
Another example, would be the French and English Indian allies during the French-Indian War. Once again various Indian tribes and mercenaries sided with either the French or English in the hopes of increasing their (the Indians) wellbeing and domination over an opposing Indian tribe.
Did the Europeans do bad things to the Indians? Yes, both as individual settlers and as organized acts of imperialism. But they also acted in a way roughly (it is hard to tell without the game being published yet) in accordance with AOE3's portrayal. The Europeans took the Indians on as allies when needed or convenient.
It is revisionist to re-write the history of the Native Americans to exclude their acts of savagery and genocide, leaving them only as objects of pity, too incompetent to fend for themselves or produce noble achievements. This revisionism which denies the Native Americans their true history and their ability & potential to share in the both the horrors and grandeurs of basic human nature is racist.
The review's problem seems to be that AOE3 does not exclude the self-interested actions in favour of the reviewer's political point of view. The reviewer's view of history is more revisionist than AOE3s.
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"With the snowballing of interest in Serious Games and governmental support for the development of games in the classroom, should this be an issue that is seriously debated in development houses?"
NO.
Not with a game that is CLEARLY designed and marketed as ENTERTAINMENT.
If a child's primary source of learning history and historical content if a freakin' computer game, that child is already hopelessly borked.
Who ARE these IDIOTS who demand or even suggest that the entertainment industry shoulder the burden for rearing everyone's children?
I *was* a little disconcerted to learn that William Wallace *won* the battle of Falkirk...
Chris Mattern
I suggest we bring Doom to task for their abuse of the known laws of physics in building a game around an interdimensional portal on Mars. Also, Madden 2004 allowed me to trade Randy Moss to the Cincinatti Bengals and win the Super Bowl, yet we know this didn't happen. This is a friggin' outrage!
When are we going to wake up and realize that everyone else must do a better job of raising my children?
"Alice asks if such a game, helpful to the teaching of the young, should futz with the past the way it does."
How about kids learn history from History Books. It's a game. Let it be a game. If you are so worried about your kids learning incorrect historical facts, maybe should explain that games like that aren't meant to be realistic.
I'm very responsible, when ever something goes wrong they always say I'm responsible.
I'm all for learning history from a video game, but really, that's not the point of AOE. I mean, the only realistic part of AOE is that you have to keep giving people orders or they'll laze around doing nothing.
I would have loved, in high school history class, to have been able to play a realistic campaign game of whatever period of history I was learning. If those games exist now, I would buy them. But just because game has a historical theme doesn't mean that it's going to be accurate.
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I just want to know which history is being revised? Was it correct it the first place? Why is it being revised?
Let's get serious for a second, using a rts game to teach history is silly. That is what the History Channel is for.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Any historian will tell you the Chinese were victims of a 2v1 rush by the Franks and Britons, and that they received absolutely no help from their neighboring allies, the Mongols. Thusly, the Chinese resigned only 10:23 into the Post-Imperial Age.
This is basic stuff, people.
Though it would be quite nice to see an Age of Empires campaign that accurately represented some period in history, no army in history has ever been as successful as the play is required to be in these games.
I don't think the user would be as appreciative if you were required to lose an average third of the scenarios to keep things historically accurate.
"Objective: Hold off the Spanish assault for three grudging hours until you run out or resources and are ownzed."
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
When I was a kid I would occaisionally play paper box games based on real wars or conflicts. I remember one based on German tribes versus Romans, based on the historical sacking of Rome. Now, I guess if teachers were using this as an educational game, and the Roman player was outplaying the German player, teacher would say, "ok, you are doing to well, you have to let the German's win."
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
somewhat different game, but...
the "romance of the three kingdoms" series has taught me a lot about the decline of the han dynasty in 2nd-3rd century AD china.
the games are based on a novel that itself is based on a rather mystical understanding of history and nature. is it similar to real life? hardly. is it good entertainment? totally.
whoever i play in romance of the three kingdoms, wins. in reality, of course, most of the people i play ended up dead long before China settled down again. i've learned that because the instruction manual and biographies of the characters say what ACTUALLY happened to them.
provided AoE III doesn't say, "This is how history happened!" i think most kids will be smart enough to recognize that it's just a RTS with loose historical connections.
after devoting large chunks of my childhood to playing Rot3K, i remembered it fondly. when i began college, i gained access to libraries with monographs on what ACTUALLY went on during that timeperiod. i think some AoEIII kids will find the historical period facinating enough to do the same, in their own time.
We should educate the young that all history education is subjective and to search for multiple points of refence on any event in history and weigh them against the credibility of the source before believing everything their told as the single truth.
Did the Europeans do bad things to the Indians? Yes, both as individual settlers and as organized acts of imperialism.
Let's not forget that the Indians did do some nasty things to settlers. They may have been provoked, even justified, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
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I remember reading something about the Indians that lived in the Grand Canyon during the time the Eurpoeans came over.
It was something like the Indians "displaced" a other Indian tribe in the 1400s, and then the Europeans "murdered" them in the 1800s or something like that.
They never defined displaced but I think it was the same thing the europeans did.
I learned most of what I know about how the American government works from Tom Clancy and Martin Sheen.
:)
Sad, but true.
(come on, cut me some slack. I never claimed that I knew much
All we need to do is put AoE in all classrooms(at least ones that have history teachers in them) so we can play it durring class. Now THAT would have made me want to go to school. :)
On a side note... I actually had a CAD class like that. The class started at 6:45 am and every Friday we were able to do what we wished on the computers. I played AoE a few times. But I mainly was playin scorched earth(2D/3D) a few times. Let it be known I got nothing done on those days
The accuracy of the gameplay itself is primafacia non-accurate as buildings do not manufacture soldiers IRL.
I'd be surprised if anyone here of a certain age didn't learn more about pirates and 15th century politics from Sid Meier's Pirates than any other source.
I never played that, but I can say I learned a metric sh*tload of vocabulary terms from playing D&D back in the day.
I'm not saying games ~can't~ educate, but for the blogger in the original post to imply that game makers have some sort of responsibility to be historically or factually accurate in works designed strictly for entertainment is just stupid goofy.
Maybe Microsoft and AoE3 are better, juicier journalistic targets, but Rome: Total War attempts to make a larger overture toward historical correctness.
It did fall a bit short, though. Most notable was the inclusion of three separate Roman factions which fight alongside each other until a civil war erupts among them. While giving the Romans three factions, versus every other nation's one, allows the Empire to spread swiftly across the map, the historical accuracy of having three factions came under harsh scrutiny.
This (and other issues) led to the formation of an independent mod group which released Rome: Total Realism, which alters the normal R:TW game in order to enhance the historical accuracy of the game. It's a very popular mod, and most people who use the mod like it so well that they don't play the unmodded game afterwards.
Does R:TW/RTR educate? Yes, some. It does teach you about how war was waged around 200 BC, including the use of mixed forces, the devastating power and the horrid weakness of the phalanx, city siege, and the importance of soldier morale on the battlefield. You also learn (some) geography since the entire game is spent poring over a map of Europe and the ancient Near East. As for the grander history lesson, it's difficult for a game to include a textbook historical message that really sticks with the player. While R:TW does make occasional references to important historical events, and it does provide several scenarios which recreate major battles of the day, there's no contiguous historical lesson present.
...in the form of my Aztec strategic bombers pummeling your cities in Rise of Nations.
Instead, think about how the British allied with the Sikhs against the French. Or the French with the Hurons against the British Colonists (French and Indian War). Or Nelson attacking the French with help from local native Central Americans. Or Cortes taking advantage of the cruelty of the Aztecs to create a series of alliances with the local natives. Or the British allying with the Egyptians and using Indian troops against Muslim holymen in the Sudan. Or T.E. Lawrence with the Bedouin fighting the Turks.
No, that has been the pattern of history. Despite what modern day opponents of Colonial History may say, the West has historically used ambitious natives in their money making schemes. Africans enslaved Africans, not Europeans. Chinese sold Opium to Chinese, not the British. Indians fought against the Afghans under British leadership.
Quite frankly, this sort of history as being presented in the article is erroneous to the point of being deliberate. Is there an agenda here, or is this just some deluded fool?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
*yawn*
Right, so in the same context I suppose fictional books should be altered to match fact right? If someone takes a game NOT labelled Educational and presumes it to speak the truth then that person has issues and needs the difference of fact and fiction explained. No where does the game (tht I remember) say "this is fact, this is how it was" I suppose Civilization should only be played on a real world map, and cities should only be placed where they were actually built right? Oh no, I might think New York exists in the swiss Alps.
Hollywood does get it right on occasion, see Tora! Tora! Tora! vs. Pearl Harbor.
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To gamewriters: historically accurate campaign games, with educational sound-bites everytime the player (Julius Ceasar, or some other pivotal historical figure) deviates from what was actually (verifiably, commonly accepted as accurate) done.
A BIG set of what-ifs would hone the players problem-solving abilities played against a probability engine...
'scuse me, I've got a copyright to prep.
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Most of Hollywood's "historical" movies are anywhere from mildly misleading to completely wrong as well. Yet, the views of even educated people seem to be strongly influenced by it. And it's really no different in books either.
There isn't much one can do about it: it's hard to have an unbiased view of history, and anything even close to the truth often makes for a bad story, or worse, makes people feel bad about themselves.
Ok, so that last one didn't happen. *shrug* But I still wager that a similar technique could be used to familiarize someone with a building. People learn by experience and sometimes these games can be an appropriately real virtual reality to get one ready for actual reality.
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One good example of a game that did bring in Historical Accuracy was Europa Universalis. You can play as a large number of nations, each pretty realistically modelled. Admittedly, this means that gameplay is not "balanced." Conquering the world with Spain may be a bit easier than doing the same thing with Latvia. Then again, is balance really something needed in a historical game?
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