Historical Games?

All of the locations in The Race are places I have travelled to. Even down to the monastery in the dream path (male only path). Actually going to Peru and Bolivia made it easier to write about.

Writing books in historical locations is difficult without actually being there and involves a lot more research.

@cottage14 I can’t wait to read more!

The main problem I have with writing anything historical is NOT that I’m not interested in it, but that I don’t know enough about it.

I love vikings, for example, and I think they have a really cool culture. But I know I wouldn’t be able to get their religion right without studying it a whole lot. It’s a small detail that I feel is very important to historical context. Religion, for example, doesn’t play a huge role in modern times or in science fiction/fantasy (unless you want it to) so it makes it easier.

What’s annoying to me is that I’m also agnostic, so I don’t care about religion, but if I were to do a Viking, Roman, or other themed game, I would HAVE to include that as a major part of the story.

“Religion, for example, doesn’t play a huge role in modern times”

Depends on the country. For most of the world, it’s still true that if you wanted to write an accurate game you’d need to understand the dynamics of the local religion(s).

Well what is history really. We’d like to believe it’s based on facts, but more often than not, such “facts” tend to change, either forgotten, re-imagined, re-written or blantantly changed to fit the victor of the hour. So history is also fiction in that regard. Elementary schools still portray Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America, not because he was, but because his family was rich and lobbied for it. History is abound with such examples.

That being said, being “historically accurate” isn’t much to strive for, the way I see it. Not that I would oppose such a game, just don’t lose any sleep over having to be accurate. :slight_smile:

@MutonElite
The problem with that argument is that it conflates historical events with history, which isn’t true in the least. Our view of past events in isolation are certainly only the result of multiple, or even single biased viewpoints, but the study and reproduction of singular events isn’t history: it’s the study of the context which surrounds those events, the examination of the biases, and societal norms of our sources, the factors that made those events possible, or significant, or even insignificant, which is the study of history.

“Historical Accuracy” isn’t an objective retelling of events (in fact, it can’t be, especially not in a CoG where you’re playing through a character’s biased perspective), it’s demonstrating an understanding of the dynamics, ideas and the people who lived through those events, which are far easier to quantify and confirm, if only because we can form a picture of them through the many, many sources from multiple perspectives which give us a more complete image of those things.

I would say that it heavily depends on what time period you are talking about. For the 20th century we can be pretty certain about things due to a) mass literacy, so many people on all sides wrote things down b) state/government records which by 20th century are incredibly extensive and for the most part still survive today

On the other hand, the period from about 400-600 AD in Britain we know extremely little about. There is only 1 written source from a contemporary living there at the time and he doesn’t give any dates or places and only a couple of names. There is of course archaeology but this can only give us a very limited picture. Therefore, professional historians of this period can argue legitimately that Britain was highly Romanised, Latin speaking and Christian at this time or that Christianity, Latin and a Roman lifestyle were already gone by c. 400.

Contrast this to say events of the 20th century and although historians can argue about intricacies regarding the causes of events or the motivation of individuals, the events themselves are indisputable. So “historical accuracy” and “fact” are not totally unobtainable, if perhaps, at times, a little hard to get hold of…

@AlexClifford1994
Just to play devil’s advocate on your theory about events/understanding in contemporary times, I’m reminded immediately of the MH17 flight just shot down over eastern Ukraine. Yes, we “know” that a commercial flight crashed and killed almost 300 people. But the real knowledge comes from knowing why it crashed and how that cause fits into the larger scheme of things, and for that there are several competing, utterly inconsistent theories flying about. You get different theories about the crash *depending upon whom you ask*. (Never mind the theories about what happened to the earlier Malaysian Airlines flight that simply up and disappeared.) Even if more central facts come to light, such as whether it was a SAM and, if so, who fired it, you still wouldn’t get consensus about the underlying cause.

Modern history derives just as much from the particular historian’s point of view as it ever has. I once had a long discussion about WWII with a well-educated Russian and she and I saw the war utterly differently. It was like we were talking about completely separate events.

I can see your point, there is certainly still vastly contrasting views about 20th century history. For instance, the causes of the Spanish civil war. Depending on whether you’re reading a right wing or a left wing historian’s book you will find left or right blamed for the outbreak of the conflict. Yet by reading both sides you can balance up the evidence given by each.

Being a historian is for a large part about making judgements. So just because 2 or more interpretations of an event exist, doesn’t mean you have to believe them both equally or that they are equally valid. You’ve got to judge it on the body of evidence. Going back to the same example, although the left undoubtedly must shoulder some of the blame for the outbreak of the SCW, the evidence, for me, clearly weighs heavier against the right for a variety of reasons I won’t go in to.

And of course, at least we actually “know” about the events in great detail, unlike for certain medieval and ancient events where we know very little at all about what actually took place, which is the point I was trying to make earlier.

To use your example of MH17, we don’t know for definite what happened yet it only happened a few days ago so that’s hardly surprising. When the history is first written, perhaps in 10-20 years time, I am sure we’ll have a much clearer picture of what actually occurred and why. Even if by that time Russia still denies that particular chain of events and puts forward their own version, doesn’t mean we should believe it or say we don’t know the truth. In the case of the disappeared MH370, we might find it, we might not. Either way, I’m not sure it’ll have a big impact on the history of the 21st century, with all due respect, its not the sort of thing historians will be debating in years to come. Conspiracy theorists maybe, but not historians.

@Cataphrak @AlexClifford1994 None of that really changes the fact that whoever it is compiling and researching these events is bound to influence and color it with their subjective views. You can’t really escape that as long as there’s humans doing it, and so far there is no viable alternative. Even if you have a large group keeping tabs of eachother, the material is still going to be edited in some way, shape or form. And who’s to say what falls by the wayside then.

I am inherently suspicious of anyone who believes they know the truth of anything in general. The more sure someone is of something, the more wrong they tend to be. Unless they agree with me that is, then they tend to be right. :wink:

Oh and I agree that historical accuracy in a COG game should be secondary, otherwise you can’t really have choices, at least not meaningful ones. Unless your story runs parallel with it.

I agree that some explanations and interpretations are more likely right and others are more likely wrong. Just because there are competing narratives doesn’t mean they’re all equally valid or deserving of consideration.

But I used MH17 just to illustrate a larger point. People will interpret events differently as they happen, making the record necessarily subjective even today. And people will interpret historical events differently depending on their school of thought, meaning even the same consensus event will be seen differently over time.

Imagine a Spanish conquistador, a Catholic priest, and an Aztec general all present at the fall of the Aztec empire. They’re eyewitnesses. If you asked them to write a report of what happened they would write extremely different things. You can pick and choose what they say to get a “right” explanation, sure, but then the next step happens. Who are you and who’s your audience? If you’re a marxist historian writing in the 1960s you’re going to write a radically different history of these events than if you were an official historian of Court writing for the Spanish in, say, the 1700s. The “right” explanation is again going to differ dramatically from one perspective to the next. It might even change due to newly-discovered evidence, like say about environmental issues that earlier generations didn’t care about.

For the purpose of writing a game in a historical setting, I think it is sufficient to aim at being coherent and not distracting the player with anachronisms of detail (Caesar looks at his wristwatch) or cultural possibility (Annabelle the milkmaid decides to stand for Parliament in 1704). Unless you are writing some sort of historical reconstruction (“Replay the Battle of Antietam!”), you have a lot of latitude in inventing battles, encounters, inventions, and adventures that never “really” happened.

As to the “truth” of the history for the purposes of the game, it’s probably sufficient that the truth is what the MC could conceivably think it is (so, you could write a game set among the Puritans of New England where the power of witchcraft, and not just the threat of being denounced as a witch, is a “true” thing) and makes enough sense to the player that he or she can play the game without holding his or her nose.

There’s a bunch of books with titles like “Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt” (what an arrogant title, since “ancient Egypt” covers a huge range of time and customs). I think someone intending to write a game set in a certain period could get a lot out of material like that that would help make the atmosphere of the game believable and the encounters and adventures not too unlikely; more useful stuff than you might get from a survey of political affairs in the XXIII dynasty.

@distracteddad your examples both show the imprance of perspective. WW2 was too huge for an average person to know everything about it, and it’s obvious that people tend to know those things that affected their nation, or even their direct ancestors, better then those what happenend further away. Unless said Russian’s accounts directly contradicted your, I’d say it gave both of you a better understanding of the war.

And in your Aztec example, assuming all three wrote accurate reports, it wouldn’t be difficult t find out what events happenend, e.g. if the Aztec writes that he lost a battle and the spanish write about a victory on the same date and place, we can be sure that a battle hapened and was won by the spanish. The accounts might give us addional details.

But I’d say this is true for all other areas as well. For example, if you ask a racer, a trucker and an average car-driver about driving, you’ll have three differnt accounts too.

The interpretation of historical events is another thing, I agree with you that it hugely depends on who’s writing. I think you and @AlexClifford1994 are both right on this.

@cottage14 I second this!

@MutonElite
Obviously true: a human being cannot put a word on paper without at least some of his or her cultural biases spilling out. That being said, much of the job of a historian is to piece a coherent picture out of many, often conflicting accounts. Sometimes, as @AlexClifford94 has already mentioned, the multiple accounts from multiple perspectives needed just aren’t *there*, so we can’t say if certain events, trends or causal relations in the far past are true or not. However, for the periods of history that were well documented, we could certainly create a very wide-ranging and detailed view of what couldn’t have *possibly* happened.

Historical accuracy isn’t so much an attempt to be objective, as it is the ability to portray what was *possible*, or even probable at a certain place and a certain time through (as I mentioned before), an understanding of social dynamics, ideas and people. It could mean, at its most basic sense, of avoiding obvious anachronism, like the ones @cottage14 mentioned. When attempting to deal with events still in living memory, and especially with people who actually existed and are still remembered, and especially with extremely well-documented events like say, The Second World War, or the 1968 US Democratic Party Convention, the “resolution” of the image of what is possible and what isn’t becomes a lot sharper, and it becomes harder and harder to avoid the pitfall of getting something *wrong* (Drastically overestimating the logistical capability of the Wehrmacht (a *very* common mistake), having the wrong model of M4 Sherman appear in a battle in the Italian Campaign, or having Sirhan Sirhan shoot RFK with the wrong kind of gun).

I guess it could be said that a lot of historical accuracy in writing isn’t about what happened, but using the context of the time period to figure out what *couldn’t* have happened. In the case of interactive fiction, that plays into making believable, immersive choices and settings which fit with the spirit and the mood of the times.

@Cataphrak I agree, when it comes to applying this to fiction writing, what’s most important is trying to minimise historical mistakes which will ruin immersion. What “couldn’t have happened” as you very nicely put it.
Ideally, an attempt to portray characters accurate to that particular time rather than just modern personalities put in an historical setting, but that is a very hard task given the author is inevitably modern.
On top of that, there has to be a certain degree of artistic license, both for the sake of the story and to work in the context of a COG game. So overall, a difficult task but one I find to be very rewarding!