35: The Middle Age as Meme: Medieval Spaces Remixed and Reimagined

35: The Middle Age as Meme: Medieval Spaces Remixed and Reimagined

Johansen Quijano, @QuijanoPhD, Tarrant County College Mainstream discussion about the Middle Ages has been dominated by romantic notions of Knights Errant galivanting through the countryside and feudal lords who rule over peasants. Despite the Middle Ages spanning over 1000 years and evidence that a number of cultures and religions routinely interacted with each other, many conceptualize the period as exclusively Arthurian: knights on grail quests and crusades. Indeed, mainstream discussions go as far as suggesting that the Age of Vikings is separate from the Middle Ages and that there were no Black or African people in Medieval Europe. These assertions, however, are not accurate and are at odds with scholarly understanding of Medievalism.

Differences in the understanding of the Middle Ages as depicted in popular culture versus scholarly research leads to a disconnect between how "Medieval" is processed in the cultural unconscious and the Middle Ages as perceived in academia: a rich tapestry of diverse networked cultures with unique arts and literatures. These clashing views have a curious effect on games. Since pop-culture often imagines the Middle Ages as white-only spaces, attempts at making mimetic virtual spaces often result in games with accurate architecture and anachronistic characters & stories. There are records of Medieval trade routes from Spain to Africa and China, as well as art depicting people of color in the Middle Ages, but games that claim historical accuracy focus on white European knights inspired by Arthurian tradition. Fantasy games, however, don’t constrain themselves to these tropes. As such, it may be possible that contemporary fantasy games informed by Medieval aesthetics recreate a more authentic rendition of the Middle Ages than attempts at creating more mimetic play spaces. This discussion reached game spaces in 2015 with Kingdom Come: Deliverance. While it was promoted as a historical representation of Medieval Bohemia, the game was criticized for its lack of people of color. This led to heated discussions about race in the Middle Ages. Despite the game’s compelling story, accuracy of its spatial design, and detail to characters, much of the conversation around its release was about whether it was racist or not.

Another game that seems to discard the presence of people of color is Innocence: A Plague Tale. A groundbreaking game by all accounts, Innocence: A Plague Tale is set in 14th century France and follows two siblings as they escape rats, the plague, and the Inquisition. There are records of Moors in France dating back to 711 AD, but the game fails to include characters with North African traits. Certainly, an argument can be made that these games were designed with the populations indigenous to those areas in mind and that it would have been unlikely to see a person of African origin in those specific few kilometres in those specific dates. While this could be a sound rebuttal, those familiar with the movements of races and cultures throughout the Middle Ages might find the omission of Middle-Eastern and African characters from these ludic spaces jarring. Medieval-Fantasy games, on the other hand, seem to more faithfully recreate the ethos of the Middle Ages. This is specially true of games in The Elder Scrolls series and MMOs like Black Desert Online. These games depict fictive spaces inspired by Medieval architecture, but because they are not constrained by popular culture notions of Medievalism they break away from the Arthurian-only perspective of the Middle Ages. Skyrim, for example, includes several Redguard characters along with the invading Bretons and the native Nords. This shows that when designers are not constrained by notions of what pop-culture claims is Medieval, they become unshackled from stereotypes of Middle

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Ages as white-only spaces and create games that are, ironically, more faithful to the Medieval zeitgeist than “realistic” simulations.

To be clear, this is not a re-litigation on whether there were PoC in the Middle Ages – there were, from Vikings to the Golden Age and beyond – nor is it a call for designers to change their games: they have the artistic freedom to do as they will. It is, however, a statement on how sometimes what we imagine as "true" due to pop-culture might be counter-factual and how fantastic spaces inspired by these histories might depict networks & spaces closer to historical reality.

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