41: What It Means To Be Swadian: Encoding Ethnic Identity in Medieval Games

41: What It Means To Be Swadian: Encoding Ethnic Identity in Medieval Games

James Baillie, @JubalBarca, University of Vienna Identity. Culture. Social categories and traits are key to us understanding how we relate to our world and one another. Games represent ethnic and cultural identity to navigate created worlds too. Often it's a simple choice, a box into which an actor or group fits. In reality, identities are layered & contextual. I'm European, British, English, East Anglian, from Norfolk, and Viennese in different ways: being British is notable in Vienna, in the UK it's normal - but in Britain, my European-ness is notable & highly politicised. Three considerations when looking at how games handle identity: How layered is it? Can one have multiple identities? How malleable is it? Can identities change over time? How contextual is it? Do different situations lead to emphasising different aspects?

In Mount & Blade’s Calradia, villages and units have intrinsic faction identities: a village always retains one culture and produces that culture's troops, even if the overarching faction changes. This creates a system where culture is inherent to place. What it means to be Swadian in Mount & Blade is twofold: there's a Kingdom of Swadia, but also an autochthonous Swadian culture, bound to land and mutually exclusive with others. Regardless of the game's politics, this perfect proto nation-state lies unchanged. Some strategy games add malleability: see changing province cultures in Crusader Kings for example. But here, too, complexity is avoided. Culture here is a tool of control: characters ultimately have a single cultural identity and cultural change is wholesale or not at all. Such decisions are explicit in Mount & Blade 's game code. Storing identity as a singular marker means there's no option to make it layered or contextual. We can't model all the complexity of identities, but should still recognise the complete flattening of them as a choice. Category simplification is normal in games: when trying to get unfamiliar worlds across to players in limited time, simplifications are necessary. But it's a choice what to simplify, and that choice has knock-on effects in the kinds of stories that games can tell. We have alternative ways to model this: in prosopography, multiple tagging for identities gives a simple but effective basis for allowing multiple IDs in a category. One could have multiple "state level" cultures, or add region or ethnicity based cultural groups. Games could thus speak to history and our present better as characters and places negotiate - like us - different parts of themselves. To utilise this system further, tags could be used interrelated with player location, items/dress, or surrounding characters. Capacity to show cultural exchange, contacts, and differences between local & wider identities, offers much: an alternative framing for how identity works, and the chance for stories that use those tensions & interactions rather than simplistic "clash" narratives. Improving game culture models could powerfully grow storytelling possibility, and build medieval worlds that include histories and experiences too oft untold. Game designers, digital history scholars, and players alike have much to gain & learn. I hope we do so!

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