The history of the world is a complex system. It is difficult to explain to a layman the nuances of world politics today, but it has to be almost impossible to explain the political system of ancient or medieval countries to someone without any knowledge about
The history of the world is a complex system. It is difficult to explain to a layman the nuances of world politics today, but it has to be almost impossible to explain the political system of ancient or medieval countries to someone without any knowledge about the countries themselves and politics in general. A lot of historical games face that problem, but none more than those that claim to represent some kind of possible or at least alternative history. They have no other choice than to break those delicate, complex systems down to their basics. They have to generalize – to dumb down, if one wants – in order to fit such a system into the tight girdle of a working gameplay mechanic, or just to be more fun. While occasionally, like Europa Universalis, games stay relatively true to their origin in human history, they risk losing a greater target audience in favor of a smaller, highly dedicated crowd. The broad audience is served by other games, those that sacrifice accuracy for accessibility. The ones that have a big name in front and a big name behind them, like Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. That is perfectly fine for building up interest or just for the fun of it. What’s not so fine however is that generalization always leaves people behind; those that aren’t presentable, those that seem negligible or simply those that cannot speak for themselves. With Civilization VI, representation is an issue. An issue that has to be broken down to be fixed in the future.
What do you know about colonialism? If you are white and live in the United States of America, you probably know that you would not be there if not for colonialist English people taking the land from indigenous people. South America and Africa were taken as well, by different European States to different extents. That’s the colonialism we learn about in school. You probably know less about the Japanese colonial expansions into Korea, Taiwan and unto various Asian island states in the early 20th century. You know that the Aztecs were extinct in the course of Spanish colonialism in South America, but did you know that the Aztecs themselves among other native tribes expanded their territory through colonization? Maybe, maybe not. Civilization is, in that regard, like that textbook from school: It shows the European conquest for colonies as we know it as a setting for pirate games and action archaeologist flicks. Nuances and different orientations of similar systems are left out, for the sake of a huge Euro-American target audience.
And yet, colonialism has always been a big thing in the Civilization series. The 1994 spin-off Colonization dealt with the struggle of different factions settling in the newly discovered Americas while the Civ IV add-on of the same name ported the refined mechanics of its base game into much the same scenario. Both at least featured the exploitation of native workers in some ways. Civilization V provides a dedicated scenario about the conquering of the “New World”, complete with customized nations that have to work towards different victory conditions. While the native peoples have to defend their land and accumulate as much faith points as possible, the European intruders win by shipping enough treasure back to their monarch, whether by trade or by sword.
Interestingly, Civilization VI does not feature such a scenario (for now; expansions and additional maps are a staple in the DLC policy of Firaxis). Still, the underlying structure as well as the choice of playable nations feature many strong references to Western colonialism – much to the disadvantage of that movement’s victims. Let me show you why.
I do struggle with the denomination of “country” and “nation” here; that is because Civilization uses them interchangeably, together with “state”, to designate every playable party in the game. Whether ancient Greece, medieval Germany or 16th century Aztec empire, they all function the same way, with centralized governments much like modern-day France and armies