‘"Promoting our History": Representations of the Past in Kingdom Come: Deliverance’

Jan Kremer, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. @_ubique https://twitter.com/MidAgesModGames/status/1279012306215714817

1 #MAMG20 Being a novice in game studies my paper is a discussion on how to approach study of historical games. My project focuses on KCD, game which provoked debates and controversies before its release. German gaming magazine even contacted medievalists to analyze the game.

2 #MAMG20 In the Czeh rep. the controversy was hardly mentioned. KCD received unprecedented coverage. Mainstream media reporting about a digital game for the first time focused mainly on revenues and presentation of Czech rep. in the world. There was sense of national pride.

3 #MAMG20 In 2018 a medievalist in Brno focused in her lecture on political views of KCD creative director and accused him and the game i.a. of anti-German tendencies and sexism. She also openly declared she didn't play KCD and made factual mistakes about its content.

4 #MAMG20 The developer, who often criticizes universities esp. humanities, made (Czech) YT video where he refused all criticism, accused historian of dilettantism and declared he considers filing a lawsuit. The video has 160.000 views after 2 mo. and 2.600 affirmative comments.

5 #MAMG20 The dispute is too complex to cover here but it polarized both sides and diverted the attention from the game to ad hominem level. Some KCD supporters publicly or via email attacked the historian, often based on her gender, even threatened her with violence and death.

6 #MAMG20 The central problem are concepts of historical accuracy, realism or authenticity, i.e. one of main selling points of KCD. When even a scholarly study can't ever fully record and undestand the past (Čornej), then there's no such thing as historically accurate game.

7 #MAMG20 The authenticity paradox is even more problematic in open-world RPGs, realist historical simulations with reconstructionist approach (Chapman). Moreover, KCD takes place inbetween recorded historical events focusing on "undocumented" but complex everyday realities.

8 #MAMG20 Developers talking about authenticity usually mention visible material representations (architecture, weapons, clothing). But there are game-wise crucial concepts like mental worlds of the common people literally inaccessible even for scholars due to lack of cources.

9 #MAMG20 Authenticity paradox gets more prominent in Czech rep. where KCD developer presents the game as promotion of "our history unknown abroad". But 14th and 15th c. are ones of the most internationally researched eras in Czech history, esp. among contemporary medievalist.

10 #MAMG20 To analyze KCD you need medievalists but they can't be fact checkers. The historical authenticity can't be defined as historical accuracy but as "believability or versimilitude a sense of genuineness of ‚medieval‘" (Clements) for the modern audience living in 2020s.

11 #MAMG20 There are inspiring ways how to analyze KCD and reflect its place in the gaming culture: Memory culture (Halbwachs, Assmann) focused on Czech environment, reserach of historical stereotypes (Rak) or autostereotypes (Holý); or Medievalism with its international context

12 #MAMG20 Reflecting being a medievalist working on a archaeological project focused on Sázava monastery, but also a gamer and one of 35.000 Kickstarter backers of KCD, I can analyze this game by respecting the genre and debating my affection for both my research and games.