MAMG22 Proceedings

The Middle Ages in Modern Games: Conference Proceedings Vol. 3

Edited by

Robert Houghton, James Baillie, Lysiane Lasausse, Vinicius Marino Carvalho, Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo, and Tess Waterson The Public Medievalist

Part Five: Creating II: Adaptions and Settings 27

10: A Question of Class? The Three Estates as mechanic in Foundation 28 Philippe Dion

11: Adapting Medieval Indonesia at Sengkala Dev 29 Muhammad Abdul Karim

12: “In hac insula convenierunt reges…”: Situating the Medieval in the Backstory of The Knight & the Maiden 32 Andreas Kjeldsen

Part Six: Religion II: Revisiting Assassin's Creed 34

13: ‘Whose Holy Land?’ The ‘Christian Muslim frontier’ in Assassin’s Creed...................................35

Quinn Bouabsa Marriott

14: Christian and Muslim mentalities during the Third Crusade in Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, represented in Assassin's Creed........................................................................................................37 Ricardo Santana

15: Assassin’s Creed: Disassociating religion from religious war......................................................40 Ryan Stacey

Part Seven: Medievalism, Colonialism and Capitalism 42

16: Teyvat’s Timeline: Exploring Medieval Fantasy Beyond Western Europe in Genshin Impact....43 Johansen Quijano

17: Before 1492: Building Medieval Environments for Immodern Games 46 Sarah Nelle Jackson

18: “There and Back Again”: the Rebooted, High tech Logic of Revivalism in Assassin’s Creed 49 Kevin Moberly

Part Eight: Geographies and Spaces 51

19: Medievalism and Chinese Gamers: A Case Study in a Broadcaster of Crusader Kings 52 Chenlin Shou

20: Hic abundant indigeni: Spatial Constructions of Indigeneity in the Dragon Age games 53 Sven Gins

21: A Geolocation journey into the past with Assassin’s Creed 56

Fern Dunn, Will Humphrey and Jason Veal

Part Nine: Labour and Resources 58

22: Work in Neomedieval RPGs 59

Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone and Daniel Vella 23: ‘Wood please!’ Resources in Digital Games about the Middle Ages 60

Jonas Froehlich and Tobias Schade 24: “The granary is full, milord!”: The Everyday in Stronghold 63 Tyla Thackwray

Part Ten: Bending and Breaking Genres 64 25: Fenlander: Exploring Life in a Medieval Landscape 65

James Baillie 26: Hex and History: Modelling the Middle Ages in Tabletop Wargaming 68 Stuart Ellis Gorman 27: Alternating Activations and Alternating Identities: A study of Medievalism within Modern Tabletop Wargaming 70 James Reah

Part Eleven: Modern Impositions 71 28: Gender and Sexuality between modern expectations and Viking narratives in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla .............................................................................................................................................72 Joana Hansen 29: Medieval Nordic Culture and Mythology in Valheim 74 Jéssica Iolanda Costa Bispo 30: “Dan of the Dead”: Music and MediEvil 76 Karen M. Cook and Andrew S. Powell

Part Twelve: Ludological Theory 79

31: The Girdle and the Bottle: Exploring Ludoludo Harmony in Sir Gawain and Ocarina of Time 80 Andrew S. Latham 32: What Makes Crusader Kings, Skyrim, and Golden Sun Similar? Proposing a Descriptive “Character Creator” Framework for Medievalist Games 81

Adam Bierstedt

Part Thirteen: Religion III: Playing with Religion 83

33: Bradwen the Celt or Bradwen the Paladin? Two Worlds and Two Religions in Arthur's Knights: Tales of Chivalry................................................................................................................................84

Renata Leśniakiewicz Drzymała

34: “You are pure, you shall live!”: Religious fanaticism and the End of the World in the Medievalist world of The Witcher (2007) Video Game ....................................................................86

Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo

Part Fourteen: Post Apocalyptic Medievalism .....................................................................................87

35: Nier Replicant’s perspective on medieval eschatology: Post apocalyptic setting as a critique of medieval tropes in Japanese RPGs 88

Albert de Vanves

36: Fallout 4: Medieval Ages in a post apocalyptic future 89

João Paulo da Silva Roque

37: Neo medievalism, Americana, and the Post Apocalypse: Honest Hearts, Ancestral Puebloans, and the Sorrows 90

Thomas Lecaque

Part Fifteen: Closing Keynote................................................................................................................92

38: Best Practices for Speculative Species Design 93

James Mendez Hodes

Introduction

The Middle Ages in Modern Games, Volume 3

Vinicius Marino Carvalho, @carvalho_marino, Universidade de São Paulo

Robert Houghton, @robehoughton, University of Winchester

History games are an influential and dynamic genre of popular history. They have proven to be incredibly useful tools for education, research, heritage projects, and academic outreach. They can also be focal points for cultural criticism and analysis. This is especially true concerning the long tradition of medievalist games. Analysing how the Middle Ages is co opted by (often problematic) aesthetic, ideological and/or political discourses can be a window to understanding our present and its issues. History games operate in different epistemologies, mobilize distinctive genre conventions, and are often subject to commercial pressures. To understand them, we must consider their role as both historical discourses and cultural products.

These are the proceedings of the third Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter conference. The event comprised papers from 44 scholars and game developers over four days between 7 and 10 June 2022 addressing a broad range of issues surrounding the use of the Middle Ages and medievalism within games of all sorts. This volume is a compilation and expansion of these papers and represents a range of work in progress across a diverse collection of approaches and disciplines. This year we were pleased to welcome a substantial number of new voices from across the world including many graduate students and early career researchers, alongside industry representatives. These collected papers highlight the emergence of many new approaches and ongoing projects which will be of great importance to the field in the coming years.

This year the organisation of the event and proceedings was expanded with the assistance of several new organisers and editors, namely: Vinicius Marino Carvalho, Tess Waterson, Juan Manuel Rubio, James Baille, and Lysiane Lasausse. The event was sponsored by Slitherine Games and Intellect Books and supported by The Public Medievalist and the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research at the University of Winchester.

Fortunately, there is increasing constructive dialogue between industry voices and scholars. This congress is a testament to this welcome development. Our sessions include speakers from both within and outside academia engaging with a wide variety of topics. Our papers include discussions on themes such as medicine, labour, religion, and geography in the context of medievalist games. Some sessions are entirely dedicated to modern impositions and the cross section between medievalism and contemporary discourses We also have sessions looking at the practical implementation of historical concepts in games. Topics include how to design game mechanics, create historical settings, address challenges of quantification, and incorporate ludological theory.

The papers of this volume represent a truly diverse set of topics and fields, but a few common themes may be tentatively identified across them:

1) There is a growing amount of discussion around the construction of games in theory and practice. This is partly a consequence of the very welcome participation of many developers this year including representatives from Slitherine, Polymorph Games, Sengkala Dev, Stark Raving Sane Games, and the Sugar Collective, but we have also seen a growing number of scholars thinking about game design in earnest. This overlap between industry and academia is increasingly important and we hope to foster closer collaboration in future years.

2) There has been a greater breadth of papers this year. New aspects of old favourites like Religion and Colonialism have been explored, but we’ve also seen clusters of papers around less commonly addressed issues like Illness, Labour, and the Apocalypse. This is really important and highlights the growth of the field.

3) These papers have also demonstrated a greater awareness of the state of the field than in previous years and within many publications. These are informal papers, but there have been plenty of references to other scholars throughout the presentations and in the discussion around them. There have been a handful of papers dedicated to theory, but these have been rooted heavily in existing methodologies and illustrated through practical examples.

All of this is a sign of a maturing area of scholarship. The introduction to our proceedings last year (volume two) presented medievalist game studies as an embryonic field, but this is increasingly inaccurate. A growing body of written scholarship and theory exist within this field and in multiple subfields. There are numerous conferences, events and centres focusing on this subject. The field is still varied and shifting, but it is increasingly unconvincing to address it as a brand new area of study.

A key next step is greater integration across disciplines and between the academy and industry. A lot of the papers this year represent a move in this direction, but we would all benefit from moving further out of our silos. Medievalist game studies is conducted by scholars from archaeological, literary, historical and media backgrounds amongst others but we have a tendency to talk past each other and as a result there has been a substantial amount of reinvention of the wheel. Moreover, scholars have often ignored developers to the detriment of their research.

In sum, it’s a really exciting time to be working on the Middle Ages or medievalism in modern games. This volume represents a small cross section of the excellent work being conducted within the field and we can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with next. We hope to see a lot of new and fascinating developments at the fourth Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter conference next year.

Part One: Opening Keynote

Katherine J. Lewis, @profkjlewis, University of Huddersfield

I work on representations of gender in medieval historical narratives. Instead of examining whether they give ‘accurate’ accounts I consider how and why people and events are repackaged and the function of gender within this process. Recently I’ve focused on crusade texts. I take the same approach to modern medieval narratives. Instead of highlighting what games ‘get wrong’ we must acknowledge what they do well: their capacity to go beyond conventional academic formats and enhance our understanding of the past, as discussed in these books.

Medievalism is a well established field but gender hasn’t been substantially discussed (except Joan of Arc!) This is changing with studies focused on women including medieval games in @JLDraycott‘s collection and see also her volume with @KatExe on women in classical games. I must also highlight here my PhD students @CalumLeatham and @TesterPoppy working, respectively, on gender in Japanese dating games with Western European medieval settings and on the depiction of women in medieval video games in relation to design, mechanics and reception.

But masculinity in Medievalism is still lagging behind. It’s crucial to investigate modern depictions of medieval masculinity: some modern conceptions of masculinity (drawing on extremist ideologies) are made to appear ‘natural’ with reference to the Middle Ages. Blackburn and Scharrer state that young adults who favour violent games endorse traditional hypermasculinity, contending ‘game creators have a responsibility to vary the roles and actions… [of] male characters…to better reflect…performances of gender…in the real world.’

Masculinity in games isn’t only embodied by and experienced via male characters, but female too. It’s arguably now compulsory to have warrior women in medieval narratives: part of the wider rise of women action heroes, accomplished fighters equal to/better than men. Some historical settings offer more justification than others for women warriors. Sagas delineate them as a distinctive aspect of the Viking mentalité: both Vikings (tv) and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla draw heavily on sagas ergo the inclusion of shield maidens makes sense.

But were shield maidens real? Were they a regular feature of Viking society? Debate continues to rage, especially focused on the Birka grave. Many argue that Viking warrior women always tell us more about the time when they’re portrayed than about actual Vikings.

Admirable women in historical media are now habitually those who adopt masculine qualities and accomplishments, including violence, often involving denigration of traditionally feminine traits or occupations: for example, Michael Hirst’s rationale for including Lagertha in Vikings. In Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla Eivor can be a woman or a man (although is canonically female) and the choice makes little difference: they dress the same and have the same story. Vikings influenced their appearance: exemplifying media informed/created popular perceptions of the past.

Female Eivor and similar depictions reflect the currency of shield maidens as an idea in Viking society but don’t represent the vast majority of Viking women or the distinctive forms of agency they possessed, resting on other attributes and activities than violence. For more detail see @sagaknitter‘s fantastic book highlighting the association between women and wise council, the value placed on

1: “I feel somewhat trapped. In this room, in this settlement, in this life”: depicting women and the experience of gender in medieval video games

women’s intelligence, also their management of household economies and the significance of their involvement in weaving and textile work.

There is a character in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla who does more nearly embody real women’s occupations and status: Randvi (wife of Eivor’s foster brother Sigurd), the chief advisor in Ravensthorpe, a wise and capable manager and subject of a quest called (tellingly) ‘Taken for Granted’. At the start of this Randvi says ‘I feel somewhat trapped. In this room, in this settlement, in this life.’ She spends so much time overseeing Ravensthorpe’s affairs that she later refers to herself ironically as a ‘Table Maiden’. Eivor takes her outside for adventure!

During the quest (which leads to a potential romance, whether Eivor is male or female) Randvi experiences Eivor’s world, hunting and fighting bandits, having a drinking contest, then climbing a ruined tower. Eivor tells Randvi her adventurer’s heart had been hidden behind the table. Randvi replies revealingly: ‘I was rowdy in my youth: hunting, sailing. I was a wildling of the open air, before I became this staunch and stoic woman. Married off in service between two clans. A noble and worthy role, but not one I had ever imagined for myself.’ Randvi has status and authority, but the game also articulates the limitations of her situation, especially her status as a commodity. Like many medieval women Randvi has no choice in her husband and marriage is unfulfilling; hence she is attracted both to Eivor and adventure. Randvi’s dissatisfaction feels like an authentic expression of the frustration some women must have felt faced with patriarchal constraints. This is where games can shine; depicting inner lives of people, including women, not usually accessible via medieval sources.

But why does Randvi have to aspire to be a warrior? Why must that be the epitome of achievement for a female character? Why do women have to be violent and hypermasculine in order to be fulfilled and admirable? Actually, the same questions could be applied to male characters too! The inclusion of women warrior characters has value as a means of combatting sexist and misogynistic attacks which use ‘historical accuracy’ to criticise and deride moves towards equality and diversity of representation. Although such attacks are themselves denounced. Depicting historical women only in domestic roles, supporting male relatives is also problematic: by modern standards this reinforces reactionary stereotypes about the gendering of occupations, lately compounded by the pandemic and its impact on women’s careers. Thus, Eivor can be a woman but is still masculine; Randvi is a leader but resents having had to become a ‘worthy’ woman. So: how can such games include and centre women while avoiding the reiteration of essentialist patriarchal paradigms that prize masculinity over femininity?

Part Two: Illness and Medicine

2: Potion Craft: Between Occult Dark Master and Noble Artisan

Lysiane Lasausse, @nordllys, University of South Eastern Norway

Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator (Potion Craft or PC from here) is an early access simulation game in which one roleplays as the town’s alchemist.1 The principle of the game is simple: make and sell potions. But promising: aspire to create the Philosopher’s Stone!

PC’s “Unique visuals inspired by medieval manuscripts and medical books” are not only aesthetically pleasing, they also contribute to the mediaeval feel and immersion in the game.2 It brings the player into mediaeval times, and mediaeval times into the 21st century. The art style, the parade of customers and the passage of time, all have a Bayeux tapestry feel to it. While there is no direct inspiration or connection between the Bayeux tapestry and alchemy mentioned in the devlogs (developers’ logs), the interrelation with the mediaeval is perspicuous.

The easily recognizable style fits well with the concept of alchemy, another famous trope associated with the mediaeval in a Western, particularly European context. While both the tapestry and alchemy are anchored in reality, they also have spiritual and mystic overtones in common.3 These overtones are presented in the game through the effects of the potions as well as the alchemical ingredients, but also the townspeople you interact with. Mana and necromancy potions, the Philosopher’s Stone and even a familiar face amongst your clients in the presence of a Geralt de Rivia look alike.

Fig. 2.1 Potion Craft

1 Potion Craft, niceplay games, 2021. https://www.potioncraft.com/

2 Ibid.

3 Que raconte la tapisserie de Bayeux ?, musée de la tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux, France. https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/la tapisserie de bayeux/decouvrir la tapisserie de bayeux/que raconte la tapisserie de bayeux/ ; Alexander Roob, Alchemy & Mysticism, Bibliotheca Universalis, 2014.

Word spreads fast and as the town’s only alchemist, you will have to make some (im)moral choices: increase your renown as a purveyor of all potions, for any and all clients, or maintain your standing by shooing away hard working rogues in dire need of various poisons?

Another interesting aspect of the game is that most potions are not inherently good or bad: the moral dilemma relies on the client’s dialogue and their supposed intentions. Relying on text or speech is an interesting parallel to the historically obfuscatory language of mediaeval alchemists, namely decknamen, hermeticism and coded language. Historically, these elements contributed to the association of alchemy to mysticism and the occult and led to the practice of alchemy being forbidden in most of Europe (13 14th centuries CE), gaining a seedy reputation that would categorise it as a pseudo science for centuries.4

Fig 2.2 Potion Craft

Your reputation as an alchemist in the game, then, varies by the requests you accept, not by the potions you tinker with. If you provide for a client whose intentions seem nefarious, it will lower your shop’s reputation. The same potion for seemingly innocuous uses will, on the contrary, increase your standing. The shop’s features do not put your alchemical talents in question: you will still gain a sort of popularity, but with a different crowd. The mechanic (still a work in progress at the time of writing), suggests that there is a balance of good and bad to your craft, and it’s your responsibility to manage it, your shop’s popularity and income. The fourth devlog even suggests selling a high tier potion (which are more expensive to the client) to make your shady deals well worth it…!5

In a historical context, alchemy was both sought after and seen as threatening to the powers in place. Transmuting into gold would have crashed the economy, but having your own personal alchemist make you wealthier & potentially immortal was hard to pass up on. While the mysticism around alchemy lingers and thrives under pop culture, as is apparent in the game, it is also being rediscovered

4 Gabriele Ferrario,Understanding the Language of Alchemy: The Medieval Arabic Alchemical Lexicon in Berlin. Staatsbibliothek, Ms Sprenger, 1908; Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy. Science History Institute, 2013. https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the secrets of alchemy

5 Potion Craft devlog #4. Reputation, April 2021. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1210320/view/4706800454255234870

as an early science (related to chemistry for example).6 And if science hasn’t yet achieved the creation of the Philosopher’s stone, you can try your hand at it in Potion Craft!

6 Megan Piorko, Marieke Hendriksen & Simon Werrett, Alchemical Practice: Looking Towards the Chemical Humanities, 2022. Ambix, 69:1, 1 18, DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2022.2035572: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2022.2035572

3: Medieval epidemics in modern videogames

Vinicius Marino Carvalho, @carvalho_marino, Universidade de São Paulo

Today I will be talking about the plague. Covid 19 spurred a lot of interest in past pandemics. We’ve witnessed great historiographical advances in the last couple of years, as well as the release of many independent games inspired by the Second Plague Pandemic. They may not be as flashy as big budget productions like A Plague’s Tale: Innocence. However, they are important to historian designers and educators because their principles are easy to replicate and our mistakes in creating our own games will probably echo theirs. Let us have a look at them.

A lot of these games (Strange Sickness, Mask of the Plague Doctor, Tales of the Black Death) are mechanically very similar. They tend to be RPGs or interactive fiction experiences offering bottom up perspectives of the plague and its impacts. Protagonists are usually common folk. As Kee et al. (2007) argued, it is a solid foundation for micro historical approaches. Exodus by Priory Games and Plague M.D. are management sims, a genre I have talked about in the past (https://twitter.com/carvalho_marino/status/1397862729843625985 ). Cursed Kingdom is as abstract as an agent based model. While fun, one could almost use it as a virtual laboratory.

Goals are important for a game’s historical validity (cf. Houghton, 2019). At first sight, games about epidemics have an easier time, as historical goals are easier to spot and fun to play with: investigate, contain, and/or survive the disease. But the reality is more complicated. All of the games grapple with the challenge of encouraging roleplay in a world that precedes modern medicine. Players have the benefit of hindsight not to make decisions they know to be useless or counterproductive.

The portrayal of faith is particularly problematic. Many of these games feature a dichotomy between “faith” and “science”. This is understandable given the current anger against Covid 19 denialism, yet also problematic as it ignores how intertwined spiritual and secular institutions were in medieval society. A notable exception is Strange Sickness, in which church and clergy contribute to plague responses. The game, which was made by historians, was featured in the 2021 edition of Middle Ages and Modern Games.

Some games address this roleplay conundrum with “meters” urging players to care for characters’ non physical necessities. Yet, the implementation often feels “tropey”. Jeremiah McCall’s point about the weight of genre conventions in historical game design comes to mind.

A common, well implemented topic in these games is the role of communication networks in spreading the plague. This has been particularly well done in Cursed Kingdom, in which the environment is a literal network. Yet, cost, length, and danger of particular routes is a theme present across many games on the list.

On the other hand, while these games address immediate plague related societal breakdown, they do not pay too much attention to long term consequences, and/or side effects of responses. An exception is Strange Sickness, but even there it is not essential for the gameplay. Indirect consequences are a major area of interest in current plague studies, as we increasingly understand that society shapes epidemics as much as epidemics shape society. Hopefully, future games about epidemics will make use of this new knowledge.

4: Exploring the Intersections of Illness and Otherness in A Plague Tale: Innocence

Blair Apgar, @BlairApgar, University of York

In the 2019 game 'A Plague Tale: Innocence' developed by Asobo Studio, 'otherness' is directly tied to illness. Set in Aquitaine during the 1348 plague outbreak, the game tells a complex tale of illness, isolation, and otherness during the Black Plague.

The story centres on Amicia de Rune and her younger brother, Hugo. Hugo has a hereditary illness connected to a familial trait (‘Prima Macula’) and has lived in quasi isolation while in treatment. Amidst a plague outbreak, Hugo is targeted by a fictionalized Inquisition. The plague’s devastation can be seen in a nearby village: empty streets, doors marked with white Xs to signal infected households, bloodied bodies strewn in the streets, a terrified populace immolating its residents. As outsiders, Amicia and Hugo are targeted as plague bringers.

After the village, the player encounters an ill, alchemic doctor named Laurentius who contracted the disease while helping the ill at a plague hospice. Rather than remain at the hospice, he retired to his farmstead, presumably to die. Such tactics were documented in contemporary sources, including Boccacio’s Decameron 7 Isolation (self and otherwise imposed) was a common tactic during outbreaks of the disease as a protective measure. The pope himself is reported to have fled to Étoile sur Rhône to avoid infection,8 and ordinances were passed in Pistoia to control travel to and from infected areas.9 While the game frames the village’s negative response to the outsider/player as part of an irrational one, any such decision would have been carefully considered and apparently, even legislated.

7 Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron, Book 1. ll. 25 27.

8 Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death. Manchester University Press, 2013, 45.

9 Ibid., 194 201.

Fig. 4.1: A Plague Tale: Innocence

The game employs swarms of infected rats as the primary threat; without light their sole deterrent they quickly engulf and devour the player causing a ‘game over’. According to the game’s director, Kevin Choteau, the rats embody the looming threat of infection and death by the plague.10 By this rule, the player cannot both be infected and finish the game, positioning them as an outsider who traverses the world of the sick and who themselves cannot become ill. The player encounters few living infected people, bolstering the plague = death narrative. Contemporary estimates of fatalities reach as high as 7011 75%12 and characterize the illness’ efficacy as “healthy one day, dead and buried the next.”13 Letters from the papal court reveal the belief that even brief contact with the ill inevitably resulted in death.14 These accounts reveal the overt otherization of the ill and no doubt informed the game’s depiction of plague sufferers.15 By making the plague instantly deadly to Amicia, the game also perpetuates contemporary beliefs of the disease and creates two false groups: sick/alive. As a result, the ‘ill’ and the ‘dead’ are indistinct while the player remains unfazed by the illness that is laying waste to southern France. Though reflective of medieval attitudes, this dichotomy does nothing to reflect bioarchaeological data of the plague and its deadliness.

Though engaging gameplay, it flattens the experience of the plague and uncritically recreates the fearful stigma surrounding the illness and the medieval belief of the plague’s certain death.16

Fig. 4.2: A Plague Tale: Innocence

10 Parijat, Shubhankar. “A Plague Tale: Innocence Interview A Harrowing Journey.” GamingBolt, April 2, 2019. https://gamingbolt.com/a plague tale innocence interview a harrowing journey… .

11 Horrox, 20.

12 Ibid., 59.

13 Ibid., 55

14 Ibid., 42 43.

15 Boccaccio, Book 1. ll. 10 15.

16 DeWitte, Sharon N. “Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death.” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096513… ; DeWitte, Sharon N., and J. W. Wood. “Selectivity of Black Death Mortality with Respect to Preexisting Health.” https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705460105….

Part Three: Religion I: Aesthetics and Mechanics

5: The Witchfinder Aesthetic, from Early Modern Pamphlet to Warhammer

Tess Watterson, @tesswatty, University of Adelaide

The title ‘Witch Hunter’ evokes an immediate image for fantasy players/fans: he has varied assemblages of a long leather coat, belts, and ammunition, and one consistent accessory The Witch Hunter Hat. Sold as LARP gear and re enactment gear alike, the Witch Hunters Hat is a fantasy adaptation of the capotain hat of the 16th and 17th centuries and has its own place in popular imagination. The witch hunter and his hat are a very non medieval archetype that is very normalised in medievalist spaces, especially video games. Fantasy witch hunters are an infusion of many ideas (like wild west, gunslinger, outlaw, puritan, leather, and more), likely springing first from Robert E. Howard’s 1920s pulp fiction character, Solomon Kane, an Elizabethan puritan monster hunter.

The most well known “witch hunter” of the historical record is Matthew Hopkins, Witch Finder General. However, Hopkins was effectively an “amateur detective” in the 17th century, who titled himself ‘general’ with no context, and only lived to age 27. The popular visual image of him is from his own witch hunting pamphlet. The big names in witch persecution that were actually temporally closer to the Middle Ages are figures more like Kramer and Sprenger, Reginald Scot, or even King James VI. They represent far less aesthetically appealing figures for fantasy violence, but these were the authors of (almost medieval) witchcraft treatises. The concepts of a witch hunter ‘class’ in fantasy games is thus misleading, implying men like Hopkins represented an organised profession. Witch finding, particularly at the very end of the Middle Ages and start of the Early Modern period, was conducted more by communities, neighbours, or church groups, than by individual (or institutional) violently trained men. Less cool, more insidious.

The witch hunters of fantasy films are aesthetically in line with the filmic grimdark medievalism trend, such as Vin Diesel in the Last Witch Hunter or Nicolas Cage in Season of the Witch. Films seem to have kept puritan hats to era appropriate historical texts (usually not fantasy), like the 1968 Witchfinder General. Though, inversely, James Purefoy’s 2009 version of Elizabethan Solomon Kane has a bit of the grungy/gritty medievalism flavour.

In the world of roleplay games, however, the fantasy witch hunter thrives. CRPG Warhammer’s witch hunters are a playable class: state sanctioned, usually “Templars”, lone mercenary types that are proficient with violence (especially a pistol and rapier). The game lore frames them as grim, zealous, and disliked, but their violence is edgy and cool (and very cosplay able). In TTRPG Warhammer lore, there is even a “Hammer of the Witches” text written by a witch hunter character named Wilhelm Hasburg. Hammer of the Witches is the common translation of the title of the real Malleus Maleficarum, a treatise written by German Heinrich Kramer in the 1480s.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt ’s witch hunters are NPCs: soldier inquisitors sanctioned by the Church (and some rulers). They are framed as thugs and fanatics who are largely disliked, but with whom the PC works when needed that is, their violence becomes acceptable if the common enemy is uglier (The Crones). The Witcher 3’s journal entry on witch hunters describes them as “bloody butchers” who are capitalising on chaos. This depiction both frames witch hunters as real commanders of a force, and implies that only evil opportunists engaged in such practices.

The flattening of later ideas back into the medieval is often reflective of a desire to relegate anything uncomfortable to a pre modern past. With witch trials, it seems we also prefer to think of cloaked

cardinals and pistol wielding hunters as persecuting the innocent, as opposed to grappling with stories of everyday people, often betraying neighbours due to beliefs that modern audiences disparage as superstition. But fantasy witch hunters are also made into cool, dark, anti heroes to play. What image does this create of the witches they hunt? If magic is a real threat, the witch hunter's meaning is changed. This narrative obscures the complexity of community contexts in a historical period of widespread sociocultural instability and change, and has the potential to subtly reshape ideas about the real history of the witch trials.

6: Piety +2.5/Month: Quantifying Faith and Morality in Crusader Kings III

Robert Houghton, @robehoughton, University of Winchester

Crusader Kings III uses complex mechanics and roleplay elements to create a different experience from many strategy games. The game represents a deeper dive into the medieval world through its detailed consideration of economic and political issues alongside warfare while also providing gameplay which focuses on the strengths (and weaknesses) of individual characters and their position within complex relationship networks. In combination, these elements allow the game to portray many aspects including Faith and Morality more deeply than most medievalist strategy games.

Religion sits in a weird place in medievalist games (and medievalist media more generally). It's absolutely central to the modern perception of the period and shows up everywhere in the architecture, material culture, rituals, acoustics, story etc. of games across genres. Cathedrals for example appear across games such as Assassin’s Creed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance as key indicators of the period, and are adopted within fantasy works from Dark Souls to Skyrim with no link to Christianity.

But these uses of religion are typically shallow. We get churches and mosques without context, ritual without faith, and ominous Latin chanting for the sake of atmosphere. A few games go deeper as Lobitz has highlighted, the backstory of Dragon Age provides a surprisingly detailed parallel to the 1054 Great Schism for example. But mostly it's aesthetics without substance, often as studios are reluctant to engage with potentially controversial religious subjects and the accompanying possibly ruinous backlash.

Morality is one of the few themes with links to religion which is addressed in any depth by medievalist games. Roleplaying games in particular frequently make use of ethical choices, ‘karma meters’ and other mechanics to allow players to engage with moral issues, weigh difficult decisions, and live with the consequences through changes to abilities (in Baldur’s Gate for example) or story (as in The Witcher). But these systems are often blunt and arbitrary: Mass Effect was particularly notorious in this regard for neatly colour coding the ‘good’ and ‘less good’ dialogue choices within conversations, removing any requirement for thought or contemplation a factor compounded by the fact that the ‘good’ choice almost invariably led to better narrative and mechanical outcomes. Morality is likewise almost always stripped of any link to religion despite its very visible presence within many games Good is good because the devs say so.

Within strategy games like Civilization and the Total War series, these trends run into a set of mechanical needs and assumptions. These games need a model of society reduced to a series of values which works for any culture within the game. Food production, population growth, and the creation of armies are all abstracted and quantified indeed, must be abstracted and quantified in order for the game to function and to be remotely accessible to players.

This abstraction and numeration leads to the quantification of religion as a resource within strategy games often as a central element of these games In Civilization VI 'Faith' is produced by religious structures, citizens and a number of other sources to be spent on the construction of buildings or armies. Religious buildings within the game provide particular benefits: often boosts to happiness or access to new units. In this manner, ‘Faith’ acts in a similar manner to ‘Food’, ‘Production’ and ‘Gold’

and the less tangible ‘Science’ and ‘Culture: it is accrued and spent to gain advantages for the player’s civilization.

Morality is less visible, but still plays a role. Medieval II: Total War allows generals and rulers to acquire Dread and Chivalry for ‘evil’ and ‘good’ actions respectively. Hence, releasing captives after a battle will increase a character’s Chivalry, while executing them will boost their Dread. These can have an impact on their combat abilities: Chivalry boosts the morale of troops under the character’s command, while Dread lowers the morale of opposing forces.

But these systems are pretty shallow. Every faith and every culture has access to the same religious and moral mechanics. Civilization VI allows the creation and customisation of religions, granting the player the ability to attach beliefs to any given religion, gaining mechanical benefits which may be wildly divorced from doctrine. Hence it is perfectly possible for Confucianism to emerge as a religion with and emphasis on choral music, worship conducted in mosques, a system of tithes, and practicing crusades. Representations of morality are likewise typically basic and lacking in nuance. Beyond facilitating a clash of civilizations narrative, Christianity and Islam are functionally similar within Medieval II: Total War: Chivalry and Dread and the morality they represent are identical for every character regardless of faith.

Crusader Kings III is bound by similar core mechanical restrictions as Civilization and Total War, but still manages to create a more nuanced representation of religion and morality. Characters still accrue and spend Piety like any other resource, gaining Piety through their traits and Learning skill, alongside constructing religious buildings and taking pious actions, and can use this Piety to justify wars or sway religious characters. However, each religion has a different ideology with each faith viewing different attributes as virtuous or sinful. Hence Christianity values chastity while Norse praises vengeance and Yoruba focuses on patience. Morality is more complex and different religions can play differently.

More importantly though, the character driven play of Crusader Kings III centres these moral issues. Players do not simply collect ‘Faith’ for mechanical gain as is the case within Civilization. Instead, characters’ actions and traits build emergent personal stories and interactions. These are fairly rudimentary and can often be repetitive, but ultimately dictate that character with pious traits can play very differently from those with sinful ones. Morality and religion are complex and varied.

There are certainly problems and limitations with this system. The game is still abstract and limited in the variation and depth of issues it discusses Further, beyond some mechanical checks, there is nothing to stop players from ignoring the morality of their characters and its interaction with their faith’s doctrine. But the blurring of genre boundaries between Strategy and RPG within Crusader Kings III allows a deeper exploration of faith and morality and neatly dodges many of the pitfalls present in other games.

Part Four: Creating I: Mechanics and Roleplay

7: King of the Hill: Swiss Pikemen in Field of Glory II

Marco

Minoli, @piuemme, Slitherine Games.

Field of Glory II: Medieval is a wargame at heart. Wargames are a perfect way of depicting historical events in an entertainment product while delivering perfectly accurate historical information. They are less prone to compromise in favour of pure fun elements. In the Rise of the Swiss DLC, the game covers a period of military evolution that’s often disregarded: the heyday of the mounted knights, confronted with the increase in the use of long pikes introduced by the Swiss Army.

From the late 1300s, some Swiss started to carry the long pike, and by the end of the fifteenth century, it had become the dominant weapon. The halberd was only retained by a small number of experienced soldiers to defend the banners. Soon, pike formations were adopted in many western European countries, notably in Germany by the famous Landsknecht, who were often supported by foot soldiers. Swiss pikemen quickly became a powerful contingent (around 8000 men in total) hired as mercenaries in Italy and France during the 14th and 15th centuries. The involvement of Swiss mercenaries guaranteed many victories, including the conquest of Milan by the French.

In the FoG II Medieval Rise of the Swiss module, the pikemen are represented with extremely accurate fidelity: pikemen formations are nearly invulnerable to front charges and can withstand any front charge from mounted knights and infantry units in open terrain. In the game, like in reality, pikemen formations need to protect their vulnerable flanks, which poses a number of tactical issues. These units usually also needed to push forward very heavily, which caused them to be exposed to encirclements and disruption. Field of Glory players are presented with a number of options to counter the pikemen's effectiveness: longbow and artillery firing from long ranges, mounted charges on the flanks, and the use of special sword and buckler formations.

Fig. 7.1: Field of Glory II: Medieval

Depicting pikemen tactics in a turn based battle game like Field of Glory II: Medieval allows a better understanding of its use and its efficacy against a specific type of formation. It’s also a perfect way to visualize how these units were used.

Fig. 7.2: Field of Glory II: Medieval

8: Exultet: playing liturgy, its context and their changes. A proposal

Arturo Mariano Iannace, @ArturoIannace, School of Advanced Studies, Lucca

The Exultet scrolls are a unique form of medieval liturgical manuscript originating in southern Italy. Containing the homonymous prayer to be chanted during Easter Vigil, what makes them such unique objects is the combination of text, images, and musical notation. The visual commemorations of authorities are wildly different between each other, ranging from symbolically charged representations of rulership, to simpler ‘vignettes’ showing rulers in the exercise of justice or some other of their governmental prerogatives.

Fig. 8.1: Image from the Exultet Scrolls

The proposal to be forwarded here concerns the attempt to translate into a tabletop game mechanic the intersection of political, liturgical, and cultural landscapes at which such unique liturgical and artistic objects emerged. The goal would be three pronged: to make this intersection understandable to the players; to look at emerging mechanics between players that may help shed some light on the history of the scrolls; and to raise awareness towards such objects. Each player would take the role of an ‘abstract’ actor: the ecclesiastical authorities, the secular rulers, the urban aristocracy. Each of them would receive a starting number of two resources: Legitimacy (L, to be summed as Total Legitimacy or TL), and Power (P)

Cards would represent iconographical elements or scenes: ‘The Ruler Enthroned’; ‘The Bishop with Saints Peter and Paul’; etc… Each iconographical element or scene would be taken from existing cycles. Cards will have L and P values, and a Symbolic Meaning/Ritual Efficacy (SM/RE) value, indicating, when

combined, if and how much the cycle being created by the players is still liturgically viable and effective. Too low a score, and the game would be lost.

Fig. 8.1: Proposed Gameplay

While still in need of proper design, this proposal shows how the three goals set at the beginning may be achieved by a tabletop boardgame design. However, some issues immediately rise to attention, and are in need of being addressed. First, how exactly to represent the iconographical elements or scenes on the cards is an issue that cannot be underestimated. Iconography is a matter of nuances, subtle meanings, where also minor modifications can have correspondingly higher impacts. Second, to represent liturgy and liturgical objects solely as tools for increasing/decreasing legitimacy, and for political statements, would mean opting for a reductionist approach, unable to render the true value of liturgy and ritual in pre modern societies.

It may be necessary for the case under analysis here, as the point is to show how a liturgical object was influenced in its history by competing interests and needs, and evolving contexts and circumstances for a given community. SM/RE attempts at addressing this issue. However, this last issue also opens the way for one consideration: could boardgames (instead of, for example, RPGs) be used to model and replicate rituals and liturgies, with their nuances, competing interpretations, varying performative role in pre modern societies?

9: Gender, (Un)freedom and Theft in the Gamification of the Lombard Laws

Thom Gobbitt, @booksoflaw, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften

The Edictus Rothari, the first written phase of the early medieval Lombard laws, was issued in the name of the Lombard King Rothari (~606 52) from the palace in Pavia, on 22 November 643.17 Over the last few years, I have been slowly developing a table top “pen & paper” role play game (RPG), Langobard, adapted from this law code, for what might be considered “edutainment” purposes. The RPG brings together a group of interested players to explore the social, historical and legal implications of a selection of the Lombard laws through the medium of storytelling and semi improvisational communal theatre while, hopefully, having fun!

What I term the character Identity in the Langobard RPG are the core of predominantly qualitative traits, the ‘concept’, which are then further fleshed out through specialist traits such as skills, inventory, etc. In the Langobard RPG, the core traits of the Identity comprise a character’s Name, Gens (ethnicity), social Class (“free”, “half free” or “unfree/enslaved”) Gender, and Age. Here, I shall delve into the inspiration for the gamification of the laws, and the development of character Identity traits (or concept) from legal categories, focusing mainly on Class and Gender as revealed through a closer look at the Lombard laws on theft.

It is surely not a startling observation to note that, with the exception of a person’s name, these Identity traits as used in the RPG correspond closely to the types of legal categories used in the laws to specify individual legal actors, such as the perpetrator or victim of a crime, or a participant within some legal process or civil framework. In practice, these various legal categories overlap with each other, so separating them into distinct categories is somewhat artificial, and in both law and RPG the individual’s socio legal and interpersonal relationships are informed by the intersection of all such categorical traits, although of course in any given circumstance one or another may take more or less prominence. A fundamental point to recall, is that these categories are not universal, but instead are socially constructed and continually being developed and perpetuated.18

The typical legal actor imagined by the law givers who composed and issued the Edictus Rothari is the adult, free man: the homo liber/liberus [free man] or arrimannus [army man].19 The regular approach taken in the law code when addressing a given subject is to first outline the legal framework for the

17 Friedrich Bluhme, ed., ‘Edictus Langobardorum’, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. 4, Leges (Hannover: Hahn, 1868), 1 90.

18 The scholarship on ethnicity and gender in Lombard Italy is extensive, and I mention here only a few key studies that have informed my thinking: Ross Balzaretti, ‘“These Are Things That Men Do, Not Women”: The Social Regulation of Female Violence in Langobard Italy’, in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 175 92; Ross Balzaretti, ‘Masculine Authority and State Identity in Liutprandic Italy’, in Die Langobarden: Herrschaft Und Identität, ed. Walter Pohl and Peter Erhart, Forschungen Zur Geschicte Des Mittelalters 9 (Vienna: OEAW, 2005), 361 82; Ross Balzaretti, ‘Lombard Fathers’, Archaeologia Medievale 38 (2011): 45 57; Thom Gobbitt, ‘Poisoning, Killing and Murder in the Edictus Rothari’, in Medieval and Early Modern Murder: Legal, Literary and Historical Contexts, ed. Larissa Tracy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018), 333 49; Patricia Skinner, Women in Medieval Italian Society 500 1200 (Pearson, 2001); Walter Pohl, ‘Gender and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages’, in Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300 900, ed. Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 23 43.

19 Balzaretti, ‘Masculine Authority’, 365, 368.

homo liber, and then detail the specific ways in which the legal and social circumstances changed according to the specific legal categories to which the individual belonged, that is perhaps if the person in question is unfree, a woman or both. A good example of this can be found in the laws on theft, and a comparative assessment of the changes they introduce illuminates a facet of what the Lombard law givers imagined it meant to be a man or woman, free or unfree, adult or child or what they thought those categories ought to entail.

The basic restitution for theft in the Lombard laws is that nine times the value of what was taken should be returned. In the case of the liberus this is augmented with a composition of eighty solidi, 20 or if he unable to pay this amount then a death penalty is set instead.21 In the case of the servus [enslaved man], the composition for the crime is half, forty solidi, or else death.22 For the aldia and/or ancilla [half free and enslaved woman, respectively], the penalty for the crime is, again forty solidi, however, here if the composition cannot be paid there is no death penalty.23 These laws, then, appear to establish an absolute difference between free and unfree in the composition due: the same crime by the free (man) is set at double that for the enslaved man or woman.

In the case of the mulier libera, like with and ancilla and aldia there is no death penalty, and there the laws establish a structural binary of male | female. Lombards, in the case of theft, at least, restrict the death penalty on gendered grounds.24 Moreover, the law on theft when committed by a fulcfrea [folk free] women also states that no other composition should be exacted by the victim beyond the nine fold return of the goods that were stolen,25 so the eighty solidi composition does not indicate being free, but rather being a free man.

However, theft when committed by a mulier libera includes a further element, that reveals the expected gendered identities and behaviour for free women. The act of stealing is referred to as an opera indecentem [unseemly deed], a judgemental statement on the activity that is not paralleled in the cases where the perpetrator is male and/or unfree. Moreover, the law also states that vitium [shame] should be imputed to the free woman who has committed theft.26 A somewhat comparable use of affective language can also be seen when a free man compels his puer [boy] or a servus to commit theft.27 As well as bringing age as a binary category of (male) child | adult into focus, the severe

20 A solidus was originally a coin weighing approximately 4.5 grams of gold. By the Lombard period it is a unit of account rather than an actual coin: Alessia Rovelli, ‘From the Fall of Rome to Charlemagne (c. 400 800)’, in Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages, ed. Rory Naismith, vol. 1, Reading Medieval Sources (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018), 65 66; Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 18 19.

21 Edictus Rothari, No. 253: Bluhme, ‘Edictus Langobardorum’, 62.

22

Edictus Rothari, No. 254: Bluhme, 62.

23

Edictus Rothari, No. 258: Bluhme, 63.

24 The three grounds given in the Edictus Rothari where the death penalty can be legally applied to a (free) woman, are if she conspires against her husband’s life, commits bigamy, or is caught committing adultery. Respectively, Edictus Rothari, Nos 202, 211 & 212: Bluhme, 50 52.

25 Edictus Rothari, No. 257: Bluhme, 63.

26 The law does not elaborate on how vitium was imputed, and whether this shaming was simply a statement or if it comprised public acts In the Lombard laws of Aistulf, issued in 750 CE, punishment for a free man who conducted business with Romans without royal permission includes an act of humiliation in which his head is shaved and he must go about decrying his mis deeds. So a public act to shame a free woman theif is not beyond the imagination. Aistulf, No. 4: Bluhme, 196 97.

27 Edictus Rothari, No. 259: Bluhme, 63.

immorality of the circumstances is also stressed. The deed is described as inhonestum [dishonesty] and the compelling of the theft as being contra rationem [against reason]. In addition to offering the RPG setting copious materials for plot hooks and characters, these phrasings also offer insight into how Langobards understood the differences between male and female, free and unfree, child and adult.

In summary, for the unfree (and children), crimes are simply committed either of their own volition or under compulsion. Restitution must be made, but the moral implications for individual identity and/or society need not be elaborated on. For the free, however, the opportunity is taken to moralise, and this in turn reveals the normative gendered behaviours that Lombards (or law givers), expected of people in the upper echelons of society in the mid seventh century: (free) men should not act dishonestly and they should not act against reason, while (free) women conversely should not do things that are unseemly, and if they do they should then be subjected to shame. These affective terms provide a fertile ground for creating the underlying identities of characters in the RPG not by necessarily limiting what a character should be and can do through a static, dogmatic reading of the law, but rather by exploring Identity in the dialogue of character agency against the restrictions and expectations framed in the socio legal norms.

Bibliography

Balzaretti, Ross. ‘Lombard Fathers’. Archaeologia Medievale 38 (2011): 45 57.

. ‘Masculine Authority and State Identity in Liutprandic Italy’. In Die Langobarden: Herrschaft Und Identität, edited by Walter Pohl and Peter Erhart, 361 82. Forschungen Zur Geschicte Des Mittelalters 9. Vienna: OEAW, 2005.

. ‘“These Are Things That Men Do, Not Women”: The Social Regulation of Female Violence in Langobard Italy’. In Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, edited by Guy Halsall, 175 92. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998.

Bluhme, Friedrich, ed. ‘Edictus Langobardorum’. In Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 4:1 205. Leges. Hannover: Hahn, 1868.

Gobbitt, Thom. ‘Poisoning, Killing and Murder in the Edictus Rothari’. In Medieval and Early Modern Murder: Legal, Literary and Historical Contexts, edited by Larissa Tracy, 333 49. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018.

Pohl, Walter. ‘Gender and Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages’. In Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300 900, edited by Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith, 23 43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Rovelli, Alessia. ‘From the Fall of Rome to Charlemagne (c. 400 800)’. In Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages, edited by Rory Naismith, 1:63 92. Reading Medieval Sources. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018.

Skinner, Patricia. Women in Medieval Italian Society 500 1200. Pearson, 2001. Spufford, Peter. Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Part Five: Creating II: Adaptions and Settings

10: A Question of Class? The Three Estates as mechanic in Foundation

Philippe Dion, @foundationgame, Polymorph Games

Today we'll talk about the thought process of having an immersive mechanic in a sandbox game that responds to player actions rather than getting in the way. Our vision of Foundation is of an asymmetrical experience that encourages players to create villages full of unique monuments. We spent a lot of time finding the backbone that would justify player actions toward that goal while ensuring a high level of immersion.

Inspired by medieval France’s Ancien Régime, players get to please either the Labor, Kingdom or Clergy estates by raising the splendor of their village toward one, or many of them. This is achieved by constructing monuments like castles, markets and monasteries. Each Estate focuses on specific gameplay mechanics and unique strategies. The Labor path values villagers’ promotions and taxation; the Kingdom path focuses on helping the realm with soldiers; the Clergy path excels at trading luxurious resources like wine and herbs In the end, players are presented with various victory conditions, which are optional. A village can focus on a prosperous economy with just a small priory trading wine. Or it could develop a major outpost that will allow the Kingdom to shine on the military front. It’s a constant challenge to keep our game grounded. We are trying to find the right balance between being factual and fun. Sometimes, it’s facts that inspire us game mechanics. Other times, we’ll work to justify a game mechanic that we believe should be in the game

As for our narrative take on the Ancien Régime, we lay emphasis on equal representation of all three estates from the players' perspective. Another concern we have in mind is the approachability of storytelling in a city builder facing complex historical elements. In the popular history of High Middle Ages, the third estate is often poorly personified. Not much is told about their own story, but rather their rulers or other people of interest. Who is dedicated to the well being of the laborers? History tells of sympathizing dignitaries, leagues, communes, city states, and more people resisting the “upper estates” through extraordinary events. However, it is preferable to have relatively harmonious estates for players to be systematically independent. A certain degree of conflict between the estates is necessary to create interesting storytelling, as long as players start with a blank slate. Free from external pressure, they can then decide which aspect of the old regime will influence their city building most.

Foundation’s optimistic aesthetic helped in simplifying historical elements that would have gotten in the Player’s way. This includes difficult notions such as serfdom, extreme social inequality and dogmatism, which would have led to stark perceptions of the estates Our desire to streamline the Ancien Régime into a city building game is a careful balancing act between meaningful gameplay, engaging storytelling and historical immersion. We aim to use this harmony as the keystone upon which we build Foundation's future.

11: Adapting Medieval Indonesia at Sengkala Dev

Muhammad Abdul Karim, @Pedalahusa, Sengkala Dev

Nowadays video games are very popular throughout modern society and we can’t separate the two easily. From 1972, Pong, become very popular28 and pushed video games to evolved not only in the sport genre, but across many genre and platform to fulfil the market demand: including the historical genre. Historical games are very interesting as the players can enjoy and learn about the past. Many historical games use the Medieval era as their background, but games set in this period are mostly set in Europe. But now with emerging indie game developers, players can find non Eurocentric medieval games including historical games from Indonesia.

The history of Indonesian game developers can tracked with Matahari studio founded in 1998 and dissolved in 2010.29 Several local developers were founded in the 2000’s and several of these developers made Indonesian historical games like Nusantara Online published in 25 Febuary 2010 by Nusantara Wahana and developed by Sangkuriang Studio and Telegraph Studio. This game set in Indonesia’s anicent era at Srivijaya, Majapahit, and Pajajaran era is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG).

From the early 2010’s, more Indonesian developers founded either small or big studios including Sengkala Dev. Sengkala Dev was founded in November 2015 under name “Pedalahusa Project Developer” and later change to Sengkala Dev. We focus on historical strategy games set in Indonesia since there are not many historical strategy games set in Indonesia, and especially few from Indonesian developers. Our first project was Fall of Bali from November 2015 January 2017. We started the project called Perang Laut Maritime Warfare from May 2017 to June 2019. On 27 October 2021 this project was released on Steam. This game focuses on the history of Indonesia’s maritime world from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth Century. Dato of Srivijaya released on 16 December 2020 focuses on the rise of the Srivijaya empire from the seventh century to the tenth century.

According to the National History of Indonesia series, the official history of Indonesia, Indonesian historians call Indonesia’s medieval an ancient era/“masa kuno”.30 Another historian calls this period the “Hindu Budha” era since in this time, there were many Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms. So in general, there are no medieval era in Indonesia. But if we are looking for a period contemporary to the European Middle Ages, Indonesia’s ancient era is the answer. The ancient era start from the fourth century when inscription about the Kutai Kingdom founded . This era ended in middle fifteenth

28 Carl Therien (2012) Video Games Caught Up in History. Before the Crash: Early Video Game History. Detriot: Wayne State University Press.hlm 19 29 https://tekno.tempo.co/read/228418/game nusantara online sudah bisa dimainkan#:~:text=Nusantara%20Online%20adalah%20game%20yang,%2C%20arsitektur%2C%20sampai%20t ata%20busananya. (Accessed in 9 August 2022)

30 Sejarah Nasional Indonesia or National History of Indonesia is offical book published by Balai Pustaka and compiled by many notable Indonesia’s historian and archeologist. There are 6 books from pre history (first volume), ancient era(second volume), rise of sultanates(third volume), rise of colonialism(fourth volume), rise of nationalism and Dutch East Indies(fifth volume), Japanese occupation and Republic of Indonesia era(sixth volume).

century when the Majapahit empire collapsed while many Islam states rose across the archipelago like Aceh, Ternate, and Demak.

In the ancient era, there were many kingdoms in Indonesia archipelago but the most important in Indonesian history are the Srivijaya empire (7th to 13th centuries) and Majapahit empire (14th to 15th centuries). Srivijaya and Majapahit were geographically large and covered most of Indonesia. This has made Srivijaya and Majapahit important to Indonesian nationalism. In making Perang Laut Maritime Warfare, we initially randomized many maritime states through history but later, we decide the era of this game is late medieval into early modern.

As we did with our previous project, Pedalahusa Fall of Bali, we used many books and journals for reference since the scope of this era is very big. The key medieval kingdoms in this game are Majapahit and Srivijaya. We focused research on junk ships of that era. In the main campaign, Majapahit is in a strong position similar to the middle of the fourteenth century. In same time Srivijaya position is weak since that era is the last time this kingdom exists.

At the time of the game, Majapahit has become a late Hindu Kingdom which has substantial influence throughout the archipelago and Southeast Asia. The empire made use of a policy of “mitreka satata” with kingdoms in mainland like Khmer, Ayuthaya and Champa, supporting these kingdoms with their military power and prestige. In Perang Laut Maritime Warfare, Majapahit has knowledge of gunpowder allowing the use of cannons “cetbang”. This knowledge came from the failure of the Mongol invasion in 1293 and remained through Chinese cannons used by Majapahit in expending their influence through the archipelago.

While in producing Dato of Srivijaya, supported by funding from the Direcorate General of Culture Ministry of Education and Culture through the Facilitation of Culture Project/“Fasilitasi Bidang

Fig. 11.1: Six volume of National History of Indonesia. Collection of Al Hasanah Primary School library, Ciledug Distirct, Tangerang City, Banten Province, Indonesia. Photo taken in 8 June 2022.

Kebudayaan”, Sengkala Dev conducted diverse research about Srivijaya and the surrounding areas. This was very critical as we have sources about this ancient period, but we only have ancient Javanese and Sundanese materials and a complete lack of information about ancient Malay. The greatest challenge in this development was lack of information about Srivijaya before their expansion in 670. Sengkala Dev looked at the condition of East Sumatra which have lot of marshes and jungle for making buildings in this game. In the middle December 2020, we released this game but as we made it too fast, lot of problems emerged. We had big update for this game and released the latest version with better quality in March 2022 after 4 months development of new version.

Fig. 11.2: Screenshot of Dato of Srivijaya. Taken in 30 November 2021

After Perang Laut Maritime Warfare and Dato of Srivijaya, what next? Well, there are probably update for both projects in improving quality of the game and historical information as we continue reseatch into the ancient era. From late June 2022, Sengkala Dev is preparing a new project Fall of Bali in order remake this game with better quality than before.

12: “

In hac insula

convenierunt reges…”: Situating the Medieval in the Backstory of The Knight & the Maiden Andreas Kjeldsen

Hello all! I am the solodev of The Knight & the Maiden: A Modern Medieval Folk Tale, an upcoming narrative adventure game exploring themes of subaltern agency and subversion in a patriarchal society, inspired by the late Middle Ages. Although set in a secondary world, my ambition is to invoke a sense of the late medieval period (15th/early 16th C), and the game's backstory is a very important tool for establishing that appropriate mental and cultural space.

Part of this is of course reflected in the story as it happens in the game, which focuses on the ongoing political and personal consequences of “the Battle of Lethelsberg Pass”, a major event that is inspired by the real world battle of Agincourt and the Hundred Years' War.

However, the backstory in The Knight & the Maiden does not exist only to set up the events of the story, it also works “behind the scenes” in a more indirect way that adds colour and coherence to its mental environment, while not directly impacting the story itself.

Throughout the game, as the story progresses, the player will discover a large number of small “fragments” of information, often in the form of inscriptions, documents, passages from books, building remains, and various other found sources. Although some of these fragments are presented to the player in the course of various questlines, they are generally not otherwise connected to or relevant for the events of the game's plotline, which is intentional. Their purpose is to create a kind of ongoing “thick immersion” that continually hints at the presence of a larger game world, complete with its own “deep history”, existing just outside of the main character’s (and by extension the player's) immediate frame of reference.

Fig. 12.1: The Knight & the Maiden Stark Raving Sane Games

Combined with supporting dialogue, the effect is intended to emulate a kind of “Ubi sunt” sensibility similar to that found in both early and late medieval poetry a sense of being surrounded by remains of a distant past, the original meaning of which is now lost.

Finally, no discussion of the medieval sense of the past would be complete without including everyone’s favourite topic: The prevalence of forgeries among medieval documents, which are also going to play an important part in the story's plotline. Several puzzles will require the player to evaluate information derived from (potentially) forged manuscripts and yes, the main character also get to engage in a bit of creative forgery for her own subversive purposes as well.

Fig. 12.2: The Knight & the Maiden – Stark Raving Sane Games

In summary, the backstory works on three levels: 1) A recent past, which both drives the plot and is contextualised by it; 2) a fragmentary deep past, which builds the game’s medieval mental and cultural environment; and 3) the forged or manipulated past, which supports the themes of subversiveness. Using these methods, rather than being just “lore”, the game’s internal history becomes a crucial tool for establishing the late medieval character and atmosphere of its setting.

Part Six: Religion II: Revisiting Assassin's Creed

Assassin’s Creed

Quinn Bouabsa Marriott, @Quinn5566, University of Leeds

Existing on cultural and religious boundaries, studies of ‘frontier societies’ have served as useful insights for historians, particularly for those looking at the cross cultural contact between Christians and Muslims, a ‘Christian Muslim frontier’. One of the earliest games to portray such societies is Assassin’s Creed. Set during the Third Crusade (1187 92), Assassin’s Creed presents the player with the rich, historical environment of the Holy Land. Exploring the cities of Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem, the player becomes acquainted with the depictions of both Christian and Islamic spaces.

Starting with Damascus, the city is framed as a centre for Islam, filled with mosques and minarets as well as inhabited by an exclusively Muslim population. Additionally, the city is illuminated with bright and clear colours, combining to evoke a nostalgic connection to the era of the Islamic Golden Age. Because the city is not the focus of this crusade and not subjected to any conflict in the game, a wider theme from popular culture can be inferred: that a lack of any European intervention allows Islam to preserve its scientific and prosperous nature.

Evidence of the opposite is apparent in Acre where, following its conquest by crusaders in 1191, the city experiences an immediate ‘de Islamification’. We are shown a clear lack of a Muslim presence, the population completely replaced by European Christians and the mosques and minarets left in ruin. Simultaneously, Acre is also ‘Europeanized’ with churches, mosques turned into churches, and the stereotypical use of gothic for the city’s cathedral of the Holy Cross. Furthermore, the area’s dark blue tones, combined with the scene of a war torn city, brings forth the popular image of a ‘Dark Age’ Europe. This leaves us with a simplistic, segregationist model of the frontier. This is influenced by the game’s use of a ‘clash of civilization’ narrative, where the romanticized conflict between King Richard and Salah ad Din has left Christianity and Islam in direct opposition.

Jerusalem, however, manages to break this simplistic picture of separated Christian and Muslim spaces, as it contains a mix of both. Although the population is entirely Muslim, and the city is under the control of the Ayyubids, we find the presence of both churches and mosques, and even a Jewish synagogue. On top of it's green ish tones a mix of the colours from Damascus and Acre the overall presentation of Jerusalem can lead to the suggestion that the developers intentionally presented the player with an initially black and white model through Damascus and Acre, only to introduce further nuance upon reaching Jerusalem.

Such portrayals of cultural exchange are surprisingly consistent with the scholarship. It was only a few years before the game’s release that historians like Christopher MacEvitt were increasingly questioning the segregationist model in favour of a much more multicultural approach in the relationships between Christians and Muslims.31 In more recent times, although the ‘multicultural model’ appears to be a lot more promising, scholars have also been careful not to fully accept it either,

13: ‘Whose Holy Land?’ The ‘Christian Muslim frontier’ in

31 Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), pp.13 4.

concluding that the truth of the matter must lay somewhere between the two models.32 Regardless, the game should be credited for attempting to engage with the contemporary historiography.

Looking back at some of the developer interviews as well, this presentation of nuance can be further hinted at, the producer Jade Raymond stating that “we needed to capture the experience of living during this tumultuous time: the fusion of European and Middle East art and architecture, the hustle and bustle of medieval city life”.33 This point is reinforced in a YouTube video released by Ubisoft, titled ‘Assassin’s Creed: The Real History of the Third Crusade’, which affirmed their historical focus as on the cities themselves.34 This implementation of historical complexity serves as a great gateway into thinking about how the historiography can be implemented and engaged with in games.

This complexity, however, was a potential that was left unexploited, overshadowed by the prior mentioned use of the ‘clash of civilisations’ narrative. Enforcing the Third Crusade as a binary conflict, we find several preachers who lead the cities' people to either support the ongoing crusade or a jihad, Richard or Salah ad Din. By comparison, the cities' designs are superficial, and their significance is left unnoticed by the average player. Conclusively, this attempt to breathe life into the historical environment would have merited from much greater levels of engagement, requiring features that not only connected it to the game’s wider narratives, but incentivised meaningful interaction from the player.

32 Alan V. Murray, ‘Franks and Indigenous Communities in Palestine and Syria (1099 1187): A Hierarchical Model of Social Interaction in the Principalities of Outremer’, in East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp.291 310 (pp.296 7).

33 Magy Seif El Nasr, Maha Al Saati, Simon Niedenthal and David Milam, ‘Assassin’s Creed: A Multi Cultural Read’, Reflection and Review, 2 (2008), 1 32 (p.12).

34 Ubisoft North America, ‘Assassin’s Creed: The Real History of the Third Crusade’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er6z afGceQ&ab_channel=UbisoftNorthAmerica

14: Christian

and

Muslim

mentalities during the Third Crusade

in Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, represented in Assassin's Creed

Ricardo Santana, @RafsRicardo, University of Lisbon Introduction

Assassin's Creed games have always been partially intended to represent a fictionalized version of various religious, political, and multicultural beliefs. The first title in the franchise, 2007's Assassin's Creed, is no different.

In this article, we will briefly analyze the possible perspectives that the Levantine populations had on the Third Crusade through the rhetoric used by some heralds represented in this game, and how their interpretations can mirror or contradict specific historical facts.

Damascus

In every district of the city, generic heralds can be found criticizing the crusade activity of King Richard I of England in the Holy Land and praising the efforts of Saladin and his armies to drive Christian forces away from Jerusalem through the idea of Jihad.

Although the concept of Holy Har was indeed present among the Syrians in this period, as it was instilled by the former emir Nur ad Din, the Damascenes did not really like Saladin's war efforts: he was often criticized by his people after the occupation of this city in 1174, accusing him of being a mere usurper of his predecessor. The Syrians also likely did not appreciate the sultan's military incursions, mostly due to being known as a weak general. (Graino 2022, 76 84).

In the Middle District, during Memory Block 5, we see a herald spreading the ideology of Jubair al Hakim, the fictitious chief scholar of Damascus, who argued that the sharing of written knowledge in Levantine territory was the main cause of the ongoing war between Christians and Saracens. Because of this, he advocated that all local scriptures should be destroyed (see Figure 14.1).

Fig. 14.1: Assassin’s Creed on PS3 (Ubisoft, 2007): Herald found in the Middle District of Damascus during Memory Block 5

This hatred towards local writings can be interpreted as a method of Eastern extremism (Komel 2014, 72 90). It may also be linked to a theory that Saladin ordered the burning of Fatimid scriptures, something that has not been historically confirmed.

Acre

During Altaïr's history, Acre is portrayed several times as a place in constant conflict (Dewi S 2018, 277). However, as the city's general preachers show, there may be a mentality of brief religious hope among the Christian population with the conquest of Acre by Richard I's army in 1191 (Corral 2022, 66 71).

On the other hand, it is equally possible that the Acreans did not trust the local presence of the different Crusader orders. For example, in the Poor District, we observe local distrust regarding the power that the Hospitallers had in this city during this period (Corral 2022, 69), evidenced by the sayings of a herald located during Memory Block 3. This street preacher appears to defend the antithetical experiments performed on some patients by the Order's leader, Garnier de Naplouse/Nablus. However, this attitude would not be historically correct due to this knight's aim to help the sick.

Continuing in the Middle District, there is a strong influence by another Crusader Grand Master, now of the Teutonic Knights, in the port area, as revealed by the messenger present during Memory Block 5, decreeing that Master Sibrand would control all ships. Bearing in mind that the Crusaders established at this location would control most activities between this port and the kingdom of Cyprus (Corral 2022, 68 69). So, some traders may have been frustrated with the Teutonic rule in this space.

Now in the Rich District, as part of Altaïr's mission during Memory Block 4, the Crusaders' role in the Holy Land once again seems to be questioned by local Christians, despite this town being the main Christian Levantine stronghold during this conflict. As the game suggests via a crier, this may be because Richard I's forces failed to recapture the city of Jerusalem until 1192 (Corral 2022, 66 71).

Jerusalem

Is known that this city was historically always a religious melting pot, especially since it was conquered by Christian forces in their first two campaigns. As such, between 1189 and 1192, Crusaders and Saracens saw it as the focal place of their faiths and desired to endure the spirit of the Holy War to protect it from the opposite force (Graiño 2022, 78 81).

But it is noteworthy that Saladin starts to rule this kingdom from 1187 onwards due to a political maneuver to underline his authority in the Holy Land, ceasing to be a Christian State (Graiño 2022, 78 81). Therefore, as the local generic preachers represent it, it is natural to deduce that this territory would be under great Islamic influence and power.

On the other hand, as mentioned in the Middle District by a herald preaching during Memory Block 6, both sides tried also to live peacefully between themselves (see Figure 14.2), since some Crusaders used/hired Muslims to cultivate their lands. This mindset also foreshadows the end of the Third Crusade in 1192, with Saladin emerging victorious (Graiño 2022, 78 85).

Conclusion

Levantine Christians and Muslims shared some views in this period. Crusaders and Saracen armies defended the ongoing spirit of the Holy War, while local citizens wanted peace in this region. But all of them hoped to find a higher purpose in the Holy Land.

Bibliography

• Corral, José Luis. 2022. “Os templários na Terra Santa.” Edição Especial História National Geographic Portugal: Os Templários, 2022. https://pt.scribd.com/document/576758354/Edicao Especial National Geographic Portugal N%C2%BA 38 2022 2%C2%AA Edicao Os Templarios

• Graiño, Cristina Segura. 2022. “Saladino, o grande inimigo.” Edição Especial História National Geographic Portugal: Os Templários, 2022. https://pt.scribd.com/document/576758354/Edicao Especial National Geographic Portugal N%C2%BA 38 2022 2%C2%AA Edicao Os Templarios

• Komel, Mirt. 2014. “Orientalism in Assassin’s Creed: self orientalizing the assassins from forerunners of modern terrorism into occidentalized heroes.” Teorija in Praska 51 (1): 72 90. https://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:doc M9GMUICP

• S, Nenden Rikma Dewi. 2018. “Third Crusade and “Assassins Creed: Bloodlines” Video Games Universe.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 225, no. 30 (November): 276 279. https://doi.org/10.2991/icobest 18.2018.60

Figure 14.2: Assassin’s Creed on PS3 (Ubisoft, 2007): Herald found in the Middle District of Jerusalem during Memory Block 6

15: Assassin’s Creed: Disassociating religion from religious war

Ryan Stacey, @ryansta76963187, Royal Holloway, University of London

Assassin’s Creed, a gaming franchise that has been sensational with the gaming community since its 2007 debut, excitingly explores a vast array of historical eras, from the Peloponnesian War to Victorian London. The first instalment, Assassin’s Creed, was centred around the controversial, turbulent Third Crusade, set in the Holy Land in 1191. The game was developed by a Canadian branch of the French gaming company Ubisoft, called Ubisoft Montreal, and was spearheaded by lead developer Jade Raymond. The geo political locale of being developed on the American continent however brought the game to a crossroads with the aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror. Academics have argued the resulting Islamophobia from this was still prevalent in 2007 around the game’s release.35 This led Ubisoft Montreal to be very cautious in its presentation of religion, particularly with their protagonist, Altair ibn La’Ahad an assassin based upon the real life Shia Muslim sect, the Ismaili Nizaris. Alongside the geo political atmosphere, other games at the time were increasingly aligning themselves with a Western driven narrative linked to current events. One example of this is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), where the player is an American soldier killing Islamic terrorists. Consequently, Ubisoft Montreal decided to disassociate the game from religion. This was revealed as their objective when Raymond participated in an interview at a 2007 gaming conference in Paris where she stated, “There are no political statements… We don’t have a political agenda”.36 Additionally, all Assassin’s Creed games have an opening disclaimer “Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities”.

So, did Ubisoft disassociate from religion in Assassin’s Creed and how?

For the most part, the answer is yes, Ubisoft was successful in disassociating religion from the protagonist Altair. They did this through presenting Altair as a blank canvas.37 They achieved this through mystifying the character’s identity the theme of mystery and secrecy Raymond revealed was a major component to the franchise and Altair.38 In the game, they achieve this as Altair wears a hood obscuring most of his face,39 and there is next to no information on his background (as far as the first game is concerned). Instead, Raymond stated they chose to focus the little information surrounding his identity on that of an eagle.40 Such indicators to this include: his hood being shaped like a beak, perching on walls and buildings, and Raymond stated they chose his name because of its Arabic meaning ‘Flying One’ or ‘Flying Eagle’.41

35 Oana Alexandra Chirila, ‘Freedom and Oppression in Assassin’s Creed’, in, Playing the Crusades, (ed.) Robert E. Houghton, Engaging the Crusades 5, (London: Routledge, 2011), 65

36 Gamereactor, Assassin’s Creed Interview with Jade Raymond in Paris, YouTube, uploaded 12/06/2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aaMPXDXrK4 , accessed 04/01/2022

37 Gamereactor, Jade Raymond on Altair and Assassin’s Creed Interview Part 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h5dNE2mwGs , uploaded 6/11/2007

38 Gamereactor, Assassin’sCreed

39 Though Ubisoft does not go to the same extent as CAPCOM does with Ethan Winters in the most recent instalments of Resident Evil.

40 Gamereactor, Jade Raymond 41 Ibid

Furthermore, Ubisoft continues to disassociate with Altair through how they characterise his actions. They do this in several ways. Firstly, they designed the villains to be genuinely bad people: slave traders, arms dealers etc. This shows Altair to be acting out of moral good and justice, not hatred for the character’s religious beliefs. Secondly, after each kill, Altair shows a degree of respect for his targets, demonstrating his actions are not out of malice.42 Therefore, Raymond’s team achieved what they consider the “modern mentality” through the Assassins the idea that they transcend religious boundaries and act on behalf of the people for the greater good.43 The Assassins acting on behalf of the people is also explicitly demonstrated should the player decide to kill any non combatant NPCs (Non Playable Character). This is because killing innocents in the game results in desynchronisation, the game’s equivalence of death. Therefore, there are repercussions in game if the player decides to go against Ubisoft’s objectives.

However, there are two further things to consider. Firstly, disassociating religion from the Muslim protagonist is not purely apolitical as Raymond’s statement suggests. Instead, occupying the neutral middle ground is a political agenda itself. A reason for Raymond’s choice of words may be that she was suggesting the game agrees with neither extreme of the political spectrum, that the game is neither pro Christian or pro Muslim.

Secondly is that Ubisoft’s policy of disassociating from religion is only applicable to the two main groups in the game, the Assassins and Templars. Though the remaining NPCs ultimately play lesser roles, they are characterised by their attachment to their respective faiths. This is shown in the case of Richard the Lionheart. In his first onscreen appearance, Richard rebukes William de Montserrat stating, “You swore an oath to uphold the work of God William! But that is not what I see here! No, I see a man who has trampled it!”44 This is because William had executed 3000 Saracen prisoners which Richard saw as impeding his ultimate goal of recapturing Jerusalem from Saladin as those prisoners were intended as bargaining chips. Therefore, Richard is portrayed as both an actual Medieval crusader and a religiously orientated character.

In conclusion, Ubisoft is successful at disassociating religion from the main characters by modernising and mystifying them. Simultaneously, they do not disassociate religion from the lesser NPCs. This may be because said characters have limited screen time and are portrayed as the legitimate Medieval characters that they are. Furthermore, Richard is a less controversial historical figure to have stayed true to. Had Ubisoft included Saladin in their game, they may have needed to tread more cautiously in how they portrayed him. Overall, Ubisoft managed to steer their game through the political minefield through an adoption of relative neutrality and high consistency of religious disassociation with the main characters.

Gamereactor, Assassin’sCreed 44 RJ Gaming, Assassin’sCreedWalkthroughpart18 Assassinating William, YouTube, uploaded 20/10/2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ms5Q68QZE&list=PL3q8dpaxzT3vzDT3fbOcydn7t1 2xiLRO&index=18 , accessed 11/01/2022

Part

Seven:

Medievalism, Colonialism and Capitalism

16: Teyvat’s Timeline: Exploring Medieval Fantasy Beyond Western Europe in Genshin

Impact

Johansen Quijano, @QuijanoPhD, Tarrant County College

Discourse and popular media about the Middle Ages often focuses on Europe (500 CE 1500 CE) while ignoring non European influences. The almost obsessive focus on the Middle Ages exclusively as a time where only Arthurian knights roamed the land saving peasants from brigands creates a model of medievalism in the cultural unconscious that erases the contributions, and at times the existence, of diverse groups and nationalities from history. These Eurocentric perspectives filter into game design and leads to the creation of formulaic Medievalist games, which further entrench the assumptions of the Middle Ages as an isolated bubble, with the Viking Age, the Islamic Golden Age, and the Chinese Middle Ages not to mention other nodes of the global Medieval network imagined as isolated bubbles existing in alternate spaces and points in time. The result is a self reinforcing loop where misconceptions about historicity inform historically inaccurate games that claim historicity, which furthers misconceptions.

Games that claim historical accuracy, games that are at times difficult to distinguish from each other (see: Mordhau, Chivalry, and Kingdom Come), while often mimetic in architectural design, fail to encapsulate both the diverse populations and cultures of the Middle Ages. These games’ assumptions that the Middle Ages were an exclusively Western European affair does a disservice both to the popular understanding of the period as well as to the games’ design.

The reality is that not only were the Middle Ages, even in Europe, full of diverse peoples due to trade via both seabound routes and through the Silk Road, but also that the Middle Ages were not an exclusively Western European period. In other words, we had Medievalism beyond Europe.

Even if Europe were to be seen as the central hub of the nexus of medieval trade routes, these trade routes still extended far into Eastern Europe, went through the Middle East and India into China and Japan, and stretched south through Morocco and Egypt as far as Mali and Sudan (Mills 2018, Heng 2021, Rosa 2021).

Regions throughout the world had their own, often overlapping, Medieval / Middle Ages periods, including the Islamic Golden Age (900 CE 1300 CE) Medieval China (220 CE 1368 CE), and Medieval Japan (1185 CE 1603 CE); as such, it's likely that fantasy games that take a broader global approach to design do a better job at encapsulating the zeitgeist of the historical Middle Ages than hyper specific games focusing on narrow strips of land. One game that has so far demonstrated this brilliantly is Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact is a fantasy action role playing game in which players take control of one of two characters explore fictional spaces inspired by Medieval Germany, China, and Japan. The game’s architecture, lore, and characters are inspired by the histories of these countries during the late Middle Ages, and reflects the spirit of the Global Middle Ages better than most games claiming historical accuracy. This is not to say that Genshin Impact is historically accurate it's clearly fantasy or even exclusively inspired exclusively by a Medieval ethos as the existence of cameras and Rock & Roll in the game shows a somewhat broader range of inspiration. However, Genshin Impact’s design and approach to gameplay, which creates a living world with recurring and timed events, shows a vision of Medievalism beyond Europe that, while fanciful, is respectful to the architectures and histories it draws inspiration from.

Mondstat, the first area of the game, is inspired by Switzerland and Germany, with the city layout mirroring Switzerland's capital city of Bern, (est. 1191) and its houses the design of German cities like Rothensburg (est. 1274) and Miltenberg (est. 1200). The way characters dress is reminiscent of garbs traditionally worn in Germany during the Middle Ages, and the Mondstat hierarchies of noble families enjoying a life of leisure while scholars and officials run the city, the Knights of Favonius keep the peace, and citizens work farming, fishing, hunting, and commerce is reminiscent of the social structures that existed in Medieval Germany. However, Genshin Impact's influences from the Global Middle Ages doesn't stop there.

Liyue’s, environments are inspired by the Chuan Shaan Si Lu (Sichuan) province and its architecture reminiscent of buildings erected during the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279). Furthermore, Liyue character models and hierarchies as explored through lore somewhat mirror those of Medieval China. Liyue’s government, for example, is structured in a way where Morax, the Archon of Liyue, hands down his edicts to the Quixing a group of seven influential business leaders who then implement Morax’s policies and manage the day to day affairs. This is a similar structure to that implemented in Medieval China with the Three Departments and Six Ministries system.

Players can also explore the land of Inozuma, an archipelago controlled by a military Bakufu in a way similar to how Japan was governed from 1192 to 1867. The similarities in architecture, art, and fashion between Inozuma and Medieval Japan are stunning; from the cherry blossoms that line the landscape and the paintings and statues that decorate the city to the distinctly unique Japanese architecture of the buildings and the kimonos used by the characters, every aspect of Inozuma shows a deep knowledge of, and reverence for, the culture that inspired it.

Still, it's timed local events that make the world feel alive. Events like the Windblume Festival can only be accessed in Mondstat, while the Lantern Rite inspired by the Chinese Lantern Festival which takes place during the Lunar New Year can only be accessed from Liyue. These events flesh out the lore and world of Mondstat and Liyue respectively while being respectful to the traditions that inspired them. Still, characters from Mondstat will often comment on events from Liyue and Inozuma and vice versa. This gives each area a uniquely distinct feel as largely independent regions that still exists within a broader interconnected world that engages in exchanges with other cultures. This global approach to design makes the world feel interconnected as the real world was during the Middle Ages.

Bibliography

Heng, G. (2021). The global middle ages: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Mills, T. (2018, June 29). An incredibly detailed, handmade map of medieval trade routes. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://www.openculture.com/2018/06/behold incredibly detailed handmade map medieval trade routes.html

Rosa, L. (2021, July 23). Important medieval trade routes. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://www.studentsofhistory.com/important medieval trade routes

Ludography

Mordhau [Computer Software]. (2019). Ljubljana, Slovenia: Triternion.

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare [Computer Software]. (2012). Toronto, Canada: Torn Banner Studios.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance [Computer Software]. (2018). Prague, Czech Republic: Warhorse Studios.

Genshin Impact [Computer Software]. (2020). Shanghai, China: miHoYo.

17: Before 1492: Building Medieval Environments for Immodern Games

Sarah Nelle Jackson, @queerdievalist, University of British Columbia

Whether inspired by the European Middle Ages or another intersection of time and place, videogames reflect the worldviews of those who make them. Even when we honour the unfamiliar or distant, we translate it to “make sense” within the world and medium of the game. As a result, many games reflect what Jodi Byrd (Chickasaw) calls “late colonial” values: gamers “seize and control territory” by “leveling up, conquering enemies, opening new levels, and … acquiring more power, more skills, and more wealth” (430). A new game, a New World.

Such gameplay conveys, among other things, a logic of environment. Through exploration, discovery, and combat, new areas transform from active and hostile to “flattened … mapped and claimed by players” (LaPensée 20). Levels, rendered known, become unresponsive, safe, and often skippable.

Pursuing other methods of play, critical Indigenous gamers like Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishnaabe and Métis) are exploring how Indigenous worldviews can resist such logics and inform new approaches to gameplay and game design (see Miner). Their work inspires me, a settler medievalist, to wonder whether precolonial European worldviews might challenge colonial logics, even as they point toward them. By allowing medieval pasts to inspire the form as well as the content of contemporary games, can we make some calls from inside the house?

Medieval England’s capacity to disrupt colonial logics may seem vanishing. Besides inspiring countless mainstream franchises, the often Euro or even exclusively Anglo derived idea of “the medieval” serves as an imagined origin point not only for a given game’s world, lore, or aesthetics, but also for settler legal regimes and New World chivalry. And doubtless medieval English rulers to say nothing of many authors would have loved to be able to presuppose the modern, Eurowestern view of environment as real estate, a depersonalized commodity, or an ever retreating frontier. Periodization wise, the era arguably culminates in and around 1492.

Evidence suggests, however, that medieval Europeans couldn’t count on such a worldview. Even when ostensibly navigated, conquered, and managed, medieval environments represented, both creatively and politically, a site of ongoing and begrudging relation. More curiously still, the sources themselves help us answer the question of how we might incorporate these elements into modern games. In literary, historical, and even legal writing, the way the environment interacts with humans evokes classical RPGs.

Take Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Malory completed his extensive account of King Arthur’s reign in 1485, just years before Columbus would sail apocalyptically across the ocean blue. Yet even in this canonical, influential, and relatively late text, the environment cannot be taken for granted. Instead, it proves a site of informative resistance.

Some of that informativeness is diegetic. Among the Morte’s many RPG like features, the frequent, gold lettered flavour text stands out. In videogames, flavour text refers to the brief, lore imbued snippets the player encounters when, for example, you read about an item you’ve just picked up, such as a new weapon or health potion. Here, for example, is the item description for an Estus Flask, the iconic healing item in From Software’s 2011 action RPG, Dark Souls:

The Undead treasure these dull green flasks. Fill with Estus at bonfire. Fills HP.

The Estus Flasks are linked to the Fire Keepers. The Dark Tales also make reference:

An emerald flask, from the Keeper’s soul She lives to protect the flame, And dies to protect it further

The first part is practical: Estus Flasks restore the player’s hit points, or health, when used as directed. The flavour text that follows, however, raises questions. Who are the Fire Keepers? How do their souls effect these flasks?

The environment of the Morte generates similar informative, elusive text. When the precipitating sword in the stone appears, for example, onlookers notice letters wryten in gold aboute the swerd that saiden thus: “Whoso pulleth oute this swerd of this stone and anvyld is rightwys kynge borne of all Englond.” (Malory 7)

The gold lettering is clear and accurate, but it also introduces wonder and ambiguity. After withdrawing the sword, Arthur himself asks: “Wherfore I and for what cause?” All Sir Ector can reply is “God wille have hit soo” (9).

Such lettering appears frequently in the environment of Arthur’s realm. Sometimes the not quite human wizard Merlin scrawls it. More often, it appears without account of age or cause, as in these examples from the tale of Sir Balin: And there the ermyte and Balyne buryed the knyght undir a ryche stone and a tombe royall. And on the morne they founde letters of golde wrteyn how that “Sir Gawayne shall revenge his fadirs dethe Kynge Lot on Kynge Pellynore.” (65)

Balen … rode forth. And within thre dayes he cam by a crosse, and thereon were letters of gold wryten that said: “it is not for no knyght alone to ryde toward this castel.” (70)

The Morte’s flavour text tends to convey information either foregone, as in the first Balin example above, or blithely ignored, as in the second.

In gaming terms, Arthur has often already “completed” the regions where the text appears, not least when the gold letters pop up on the seats of the Round Table itself. But they render his completion temporary and contingent. Without the colonial logics of the frontier, there is no presumptively safe boundary of control. The Morte’s environment is almost roguelike, to borrow another gaming term: punishing, fatal, and from the players’ perspectives, at least arbitrary. As distinct from roguelikes, the environment generates events, features, and text in a way arguably unconnected to or unconcerned with a given Arthurian’s progress or presence, even as it intervenes in, brings about, or complicates chivalric aventure. Each golden tidbit signals new content, difficulty, and ambiguity. Ultimately, the entire Arthurian project fails.

As far as game design, Malory’s Morte offers a new take on the RPG tenet that decisions do, should, or must matter. Medieval sources more broadly may help us move from predictable, pseudo colonial encounters on unfamiliar territory to unpredictable, immodern encounters on familiar but unknown terrain.

Bibliography

Byrd, Jodi. “‘Do they not have rational souls?’: Consolidation and Sovereignty in Digital new Worlds.” Settler Colonial Studies 6.4 (2016): 423 437.

Dark Souls: Remastered. Windows PC version, From Software, 2018.

LaPensée, Elizabeth. “Indigenously Determined Games of the Future.” kimiwan / takwákin (2014): 20 21.

Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur Edited by P. J. C. Field, vol. 1, D. S. Brewer, 2013.

Miner, Joshua D. “Critical Protocols in Indigenous Gamespace.” Games and Culture 17.1: 3 25.

18: “There and Back Again”: the Rebooted, High tech Logic of Revivalism in Assassin’s Creed

Kevin Moberly, @kevin_moberly, Old Dominion University

I’d like to dedicate this paper to Alicia McKenzie @merovingianist, who passed away earlier this year. Alicia presented at this conference and one I hosted on medievalism and games way back when. I’m so sorry you can’t be with us, Alicia

As with C.S. Lewis’s Wardrobe, Ubisoft’s 2017 Assassin’s Creed interpellates players as protagonists into the spectacular antagonisms that define its ludic space via the narrative expedient of a technology that is at once real and unreal, magical and mundane.

This is the “Animus,” a lounge like bit of high technology that “renders genetic memories in three dimensions,” producing a high resolution, immersive simulation of the 12th century Holy land from Altaïr Ibn LaʼAhad genetic memories.

To borrow J.R.R. Tolkien’s phrase, the Animus takes players “there and back again” not only between the past and the present, but to what, in the game, counts as the pre and postlapsarian: the period of time immediately preceding the crisis and that following its aftermath.

The Animus thus transports players from the outside to the inside from a position of relative obscurity, anonymity, and ignorance to one of knowledge, expertise, and prestige. In doing so, it transforms them from a somewhat paunchy, milquetoast New York bartender to kick ass medieval assassin (and back again).

As a means of delivering players to the moment before the fall to the trauma that is imagined as connecting past and present in an unbroken continuum the Animus enables and reifies what Michael Bright identifies as one of the central fantasies of medieval revivalism:

we should reassess the usual attitude toward the Gothic Revival, common from its beginning to its present, that it is essentially retrogressive…. One might claim, to the contrary, that many exponents of the Revival, believed as fully in the new idea of progress, especially of evolutionary progress, as those who accused them of being perverse and musty antiquarians; for although it is true that they went backward, they did so only that they might move architecture off its dead center and propel it forward once more. (35)

This is, of course, the fantasy that it is possible for the modern to not only master the past but harness it: to leverage its potentials to address the trauma of the present and thereby start over to stage what, in popular parlance, has become known as reboot.

Yet unlike Lewis’s Wardrobe, the Animus immerses players in a hyperreal version of the past: a simulation that, “more real than the real” (Baudrillard 108) allows participants to access and relive specific moments of their ancestors’ lives as if reading data from a hard drive.

As Frederic Jameson writes about high technology, the Animus appears as a “machine[] of reproduction rather than production” (37). It offers players a version of the present as past constructed in the image of what he characterizes as the “high tech paranoia” genre:

Rather, I want to suggest that our faulty representations of some immense communicational and computer network are themselves but a distorted figuration of something even deeper, namely the whole world system of present day multinational capitalism. The technology of contemporary society

is therefore mesmerizing and fascinating, not so much in its own right, but because it seems to offer some privileged representational shorthand for grasping a network of power and control even more difficult for our minds and imaginations to grasp namely the whole new decentred global network of the third stage of capital itself. This is a figural process presently best observed in a whole mode of contemporary entertainment literature, which one is tempted to characterize as ‘high tech paranoia’, in which the circuits and networks of some putative global computer hook up are narratively mobilized by labyrinthine conspiracies of autonomous but deadly interlocking and competing information agencies in a complexity often beyond the capacity of the normal reading mind. (37 38)

Working through the expedient of the Animus, Assassin’s Creed thus foregrounds (and inverts) an aspect of medievalism that is often left unsaid, if not deliberately effaced in more traditional works and in revivalism more generally.

It presents high technology not as an afterthought or (necessary) evil, but integral to one of the central concerns of revival: the fraught question of how to produce something like value or, better yet, progress in the present from the ruins of a lost or inaccessible past.

To borrow Jameson’s term, Assassin’s Creed constructs the high technology of the Animus as a kind of “ultimately determining instance in its own right.” Which is to say, as the product of a long and ostensibly evolutionary trajectory of historical and cultural development.

As both answer and origin for what Jameson’s describes as the “postmodern or technological sublime” (37), this trajectory originates in the doubled trauma of the Middle Ages and Middle East at the moment during the third crusade when the aptly named “Apple of Eden” was lost to history and culminates in the spectacle of the Western video gamer as privileged consumer of the past.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2006.

Bright, Michael. Cities Built to Music: Aesthetic Theories of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Columbus, Ohio UP, 1984.

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 2003.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit: or There and Back Again. Boston: Mariner Books, 2014.

Part Eight: Geographies and Spaces

19: Medievalism and Chinese Gamers: A Case Study in a Broadcaster

of Crusader Kings

Chenlin Shou, @ShouChenlin, Fudan University

Medieval culture used to have relatively little influence on Chinese online subcultures, but recently users of Bilibili, the largest ACG related video streaming site in China, would often see medieval themed memes in the form of floating messages in various contexts. One game broadcaster played a pivotal role in the change. The broadcaster whose alias is “Fledging Magician” started his career in 2014, when he uploaded his first playthrough video of Crusader Kings II, which has been viewed 1.4 million times.

The audience’s unfamiliarity with the game’s cultural background was expected. Medieval history is not taught in high school, apart from stereotypical statements about the “darkness” of the period, from which the radiant Renaissance emerged. To bridge this cultural gap, Fledging Magician utilized an effective strategy. He would start his game with a custom character, often named after a famous figure in Chinese culture (for example, a character from The Water Margin), and then he would weave a narrative that combined in game medieval settings with the character’s background story in the original context. Thus, the audience tended to view the gameplay as yet another adventure of a familiar character, and the names of genuine medieval locations and characters became much less daunting.

In addition, Fledging Magician has a master’s degree in world history from a prestigious university in China. His expertise allows him to provide his viewers with authentic knowledge about the period, reminding them that the medieval world presented in the game is only a tiny fraction of the reality. If they are truly interested, they should read scholarly books, and he would offer suggestions. One might be surprised to find that there are now keen academic (albeit amateurish) discussions in the comments section of the videos. Perhaps Fledging Magician’s approach could give educators who wish to use computer games to aid historical education some inspiration.

Perhaps a sign of human weakness, one of the intriguing effects of becoming familiar with medieval Europe by watching a skilful player playing a game in which plotting is indispensable or by playing the game themselves, is that while it’s quite unlikely that the audience do not know that the reality is much more complicated and sometimes not as grim as the game, they still tend to view the Middle Ages in a predominantly Machiavellian way, especially when they interact with each other: in the struggle for power, anything is permissible. Pragmatism is often then seen as the driving force behind real people’s actions, just as in the game. While events like Canossa might show that there is some truth in these statements, such a view of history and its logic (if there should be one) is definitely biased. In addition, it is the nastier aspects of medieval life that often come to the fore in players’ interactions and responses. While one should not overstate the danger in such attitudes, should one individual turn out to confuse gaming with reality, such a view of history is not the healthiest. Educators, when using games as study aids, might wish to be cautious about this possible side effect before they proceed.

20: Hic abundant indigeni: Spatial Constructions of Indigeneity in the Dragon Age games

Sven Gins, @SvenGins, University of Groningen

The Dragon Age (DA) games allow players to explore the fantastic world of Thedas and shape its fate. Like other medievalesque games, the games provide players with a world map. DA 1 3 respectively cover the land of Ferelden (DA: Origins, 2009), the city of Kirkwall (DA II, 2011), and Ferelden and Orlais (DA: Inquisition, 2014). DA maps follow cartographic conventions, providing an abstract visual representation of Thedas. The lands are inspired by our own world. For instance, Ferelden is modelled after popular notions of medieval England; Orlais resembles eighteenth century France, and so on. The game developers also used Jewish and First Nation history for the subaltern elves. I cannot speak to the adequacy of these analogies.45 My paper qualifies DA’s use of cartography and how that informs its construction of indigeneity. Where in Thedas can players encounter indigenous humans?

Long before the events of the first game, Ferelden was populated by the Alamarri, a coalition of human tribes. Over time, several tribes split off, while most of the others were united by the medievalesque Calenhad dynasty. Two Indigenous coded tribal cultures remain: the Chasind & the Avvars.46 Players briefly meet several Chasind in the village of Lothering (DA1). One Chasind, called ‘Doomsayer’, generates panic as he senses the player’s corrupted blood. This is unusual as Doomsayer is not a mage; he has no capacity for magic. Two other unnamed Chasind refugees are immediately accused of crime when players approach them: “You marsh folk are all thieves and liars!” a Fereldan villager shouts.47 According to the game codices, the Chasind “Wilders” indeed reside in the Korcari Wilds marshlands, “forgotten corners of Thedas,” depicted on the game map in southernmost Ferelden.48

The Avvars are also introduced as hostile swamp people.49 In DA3, players first encounter them in a gloomy region known as the ‘Fallow Mire’ (within the Korcari Wilds). Players can learn more about Avvar tribes via DA3’s downloadable content pack, Jaws of Hakkon, which takes place in the Frostback Basin again a dangerous swampy place on the southern fringes of the map. Like the Korcari Wilds, it is a place where no humans but the local “barbarians” can abide.50 These regions are all marginal inhospitable areas, wilderness infested with monsters like darkspawn, zombies, even dragons. The tribes’ capacity to “eke out an existence even there,” in proximity to danger and chaos, evokes the ‘Noble Savage’ & ‘Magical Native American’ tropes.51

45 I recommend reading the following, thorough examination: Lydia Brake, “Indigenous Coding in Dragon Age,” Medium, 20.11.2020, consulted 20.05.2022.

46 “Codex Entry: The Chasind,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 27.04.2022; “Codex Entry: The Avvars,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 01.06.2022.

47 “Dragon Age: Origins Episode 10: Lothering,” YouTube video, 42:56, uploaded by “MrRhexx” 06.12.2014, 28:00; 33:00, consulted 20.05.2022.

48 “Codex Entry: Ostagar,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 01.06.2022; “Specialization: Shapeshifter,” Bioware Social Network, consulted 27.05.2022.

49 “Hand of Korth,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 21.05.2022; “Movran the Under,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 21.05.2022.

50 “Codex Entry: The Frostback Basin,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 01.06.2022; “Codex Entry: The Korcari Wilds,” Dragon Age Wiki, consulted 01.06.2022.

51 “Codex Entry: The Chasind”. Also see: Jim Wilson, “Hidalgo (2004),” in LeAnne Howe, Harvey Markowitz and Denise K. Cummings (eds.), Seeing Red Hollywood’s Pixeled Skins: American Indians and Film (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 70.

Significantly, no map is truly neutral; they always reflect power relations. DA inevitably draws from a cultural and historical unconscious about human identity and its borders. Medieval mappaemundi such as the English Psalter map and the Hereford Mappa Mundi also locate barbarism and so called monstrous races (e.g., Troglodytes, Sciapods, Anth ropophages, Cynocephali, etc.) in their margins, far from the allegedly civilised centre.52 In emulating this centre/periphery distinction, DA effectively ‘others’ and exoticizes its indigenous tribes. It also utilises place as metaphor for time: the peripheral areas populated by tribespeople are framed as primitive, pagan and un(der)developed areas.53 Players’ invasive ‘Inquisition’ sanctioned by the Chantry, a religious institution resembling the Catholic Church in DA3 thus has unsettling colonial connotations.54 Indeed, to discover landmarks and gain experience and power, players must ‘claim’ these sites by planting their Inquisition banner there.

52 For more on cartography, paradoxography, and the politics of marginalisation, see: Paul Zumthor, La Mesure du monde: Répresentation de l’espace au Moyen Âge (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1993); Lorraine Daston and Catherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150 1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 21 48.

53 On this trope, see: Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 69 78; 140; K. Patrick Fazioli, The Mirror of the Medieval: An Anthropology of the Western Historical Imagination (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017), 46; 59 64.

54 Also see: Michael Fuchs , Vanessa Erat, and Stefan Rabitsch, “Playing Serial Imperialists: The Failed Promises of BioWare’s Video Game Adventures,” The Journal of Popular Culture 51, No. 6 (2018): 1476 1499.

54

Fig. 20.1: English Psalter map, courtesy of British Library Board (MS add. 28681, f. 9r)

Medievalisms oscillate between historical accuracy (fidelity to historical evidence) and authenticity (plausibility for modern audiences).55 To this I would add a third category: historical adequacy (due consideration of representational implications). Using this as a conceptual lens, historians can respond to representations of the past and make tacit preconceptions seem less natural or authoritative encouraging us to rethink the stories we tell about the past, mindful of the meanings they (re)produce in today’s world. A more ‘adequate’ approach in this case might be to recentre future maps with attention to who ends up in the margins and to ensure through timely involvement of cultural consultants during game development that characters are depicted with care for the cultures that inspired them.

55

Andrew B.R. Elliott, Remaking the Middle Ages. The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World (Jefferson: McFarland, 2011), 111.

21: A Geolocation journey into the past with Assassin’s Creed

Fern Dunn, Will Humphrey and Jason Veal, @sugarcreative, Sugar Collective

We are Sugar, an immersive design studio based in the UK, and we are currently working with Hampshire Cultural Trust on a geolocated historical experience based in the world of Assassin's Creed, exploring the amazing city of Winchester. We wanted to make sure that through this experience, we not only brought the accurate history of this fascinating city to life, but also kept the integrity of the Assassin’s Creed brand through styling, language and atmosphere to immerse users.

This has been done in a number of different ways. Guided by a narrator, you will be taken to key areas across the city and prompted to place objects and buildings into the world that will unlock stories, puzzles and wonder. In the experience we are encouraging the act of play and discovery, which we feel is at the heart of learning. By giving each act a distinct subject and action, we provide the user with a complete immersive dive into the past from all angles.

Fig. 21.1: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Through the power of AR technology we can bring a long lost city of the past to life, and resurrect crumbling buildings to their former glory. Imagine seeing a once lost cathedral spring up in front of you, to scale. In this, we are showcasing the inspiring craftsmanship of the age.

The systems that we are using not only place the object or building into the world but allow you to walk around it and explore it in detail. Through prompts, users will hear stories of the past from those that lived and worked there. By working closely with a team of historians we were able to uncover the stories that would weave through our experience. We chose King Alfred as our main pillar, and we looked at the amazing legacy of his reign, pulling these stories together.

Fig. 21.2: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

As we tell our story of Winchester through GPS & mapping tools, we can accurately track user location and provide content in response, meaning users can engage at their own pace and in any order, as well as in real world locations adding multiple layers to the immersive experience. These tools not only have the power to understand space in real time but also have the ability to react to changes in weather and light. This is more than an app experience now, but a piece of digital theatre with all elements coming together.

We have an audience that can move and explore any space, but they will also have varying prior knowledge of the history and varying familiarity with immersive experiences, so it is our job to guide them onboarding and clear instructions are key!

Vital to the enjoyment of the app is the togetherness that it brings. You are sharing this experience with many others at the same time, exploring a city together, finding clues & unlocking the past; a true partnership between technology and history.

Part Nine: Labour and Resources

22: Work in Neomedieval RPGs

Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, @RgKrista, University of Malta Daniel Vella, @d_nielv, University of Malta

While many RPG protagonists begin their journey running minor errands for a local community, such tasks are generally presented as being tied to an interest in self progression. Work as a regular activity is rarely a defining feature.

We take our cue from Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero (Sierra On line 1989), to consider the place of labour in games with a [neo]medieval setting. In Quest for Glory, our aspiring wandering hero can gain some coins and levels in strength by raking out the stable. This is presented as tediously laborious and literally ‘unskilled,’ but with a neat reward at the end. Such work is optional and framed as something of a joke, mocking the hero’s aspirations in line with the game’s humour and affectionate parody of genre conventions.

Employment is a temporary situation. The protagonist soon extricates himself from the need to do regular work questing and killing monsters quickly make employment redundant. Work becomes only one of the choices the player can take, and not the most rewarding one. The main characteristic of work is its contribution to progress in self fashioning and character development. The strength attribute granted by stable raking is most relevant for the fighter class, so may be missed with little consequence by the rogue and mage.

Similarly, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse Studios 2018), which prides itself on authenticity, the hero’s labour in the forge garners a strength stat boost. Again, work is presented as optional and functionally gainful, contributing to character building.

Most such games don’t present the feudal labour relations one would expect at least not for the hero. Non player characters (NPCs) are bound to their place and labour, but the hero is an itinerant protagonist already a traveller in Quest for Glory; soon thrust into the wider world in Kingdom Come Outside the towns and villages, the wilds function as a kind of de localised commons, unconnected to a particular community. However, the right to the commons seems hardly customary or common the hero alone can venture where NPCs do not and access increases with progress. The hero seems to lay claim to a right to take and use the fruits of the land.

This roaming may reflect rather the commodification and mobility of labour the uprooting of the labourer, as property claims supplanted the commons.

However, the way the hero rises through the ranks suggests a more [neo]liberal subjectivity of work as commodified identity. This also implies a certain privilege as it frames the provision of one’s labour on the ‘free’ job market as a mechanism of self fashioning.

The way neomedieval RPGs present work aligns them with open world games in a present day setting, like Shenmue (Sega 1999), No More Heroes (Grasshopper Manufacture 2007) or the Grand Theft Auto games, which show a neoliberal gig economy the player is ostensibly free to pick and choose from. Their idea of work is a contemporary one. As with other aspects of these games’ neomedieval representations such as their constructions of city space, which we’ve discussed in our previous work (2018; 2021) we have a crosshatch of contemporary ideological constructions superimposed upon a pseudohistorical imaginary.

23: ‘Wood please!’ Resources in Digital Games about the Middle Ages

Jonas Froehlich and Tobias Schade, @tales_things, Tübingen University

Resources are key elements in many digital games set in the Middle Ages, whether they are strategy games, survival games or even roleplaying games.

In the worlds of Age of Empires, for instance, these resources are raw materials food, wood, stone, and gold which are finite, and are exploited and invested by players to train units, build structures, and make (linear) progress through time and in technology. Contrary, in Civilization VI the sources that provide raw materials, food or animals, are infinite by default, but players can exhaust some of them and remove them permanently.

In other digital games, however, raw materials can be processed or transformed into things of 'higher' quality which also become more valuable: In Foundation, wool is produced in the sheep farm and is turned into cloth and subsequently to common clothes in different buildings. Common clothes provide coins and increase the happiness of villagers. While common clothes can be considered tangible valuable resources, we consider happiness to be an even more valuable but intangible resource which is directly linked to the use of material resources such as (but not limited to) common clothes (fig. 23.1).

Fig. 23.1: Foundation, Polymorph Games

In Crusader Kings III, for example, even artifacts can become resources, this for social interactions, equipping own characters, representation of the royal court, and subsequently for generating prestige and piety, which are both intangible key resources. However, in the worlds of Civilization VI, culture and science are resources gained through improvements and city buildings, which are accumulated and invested to enable socio cultural and technological (linear) progress.

So, there is a high significance of intangible key resources, such as happiness (Foundation), culture/science (Civilization), and prestige/piety (Crusader Kings), alongside the importance of natural or tangible resources. In terms of how resources are imagined and represented in digital games, we see three main ideas:

1) The availability of resources is determined by game mechanics. While in Age of Empires (natural) resources are finite to force competition, in Valheim new (natural) resources can be accessed and processed to get new and stronger equipment, to enter new biomes and to face new challenges.

2) Resources represented and displayed in games are determined by imaginations of the Middle Ages: Piety in Crusader Kings for instance refers to popular medievalism, while wood is a key element in many digital games for constructing things and conveying a ‘medieval’ aesthetic via wooden structures that players may recognise and expect (such as half timbered buildings in Foundation or wooden optics in Age of Empires). In doing so, the game mechanics are bound to historical records, historical narratives or today’s images of the past (whereas sci fi/postapocalyptic games can offer a more open framework when it comes to implementing either resources unknown to players or ‘alien’ technologies and construction methods).

3) These ‘medieval’ worlds are shaped by today's economic and technological habits and understandings. Often complex production cycles and economic systems are simulated in digital worlds, which can be further optimised in terms of logistics, labour, efficiency, and profit, but which are otherwise very fragile and not resilient. Changing dynamics in these economies with changing production cycles, as well as alteritarian concepts (production and use of hacksilver, or even bead trading) and socio cultural processes of valuation (such as identity formation, ritual destruction, consumption, and waste disposal) are often missing.

Mostly, resources displayed and used in digital games are tangible and represent raw materials or even elements of a monetary system that are somehow accumulated and spent for game progress. However, as seen before, there are even various intangible resources. Although they may seem diverse, they are even accumulated and used in an economic way to progress in games and are therefore similar to the representation of raw materials, tangible resources, and money.

Cultural perspectives, on the other hand, are rare in digital games, but as Teuber and Schweizer 2020, for example, noted, resources are socially and culturally constructed and based on valuations. Therefore, we suggest to analyse not only resources and their representations as means used, but also practices and processes of valuing things that thereby become resources in games. For example, the Witcher 3 framework allows players to exchange coins, giving them a new value that reflects cultural (and economic) diversity. In Crusader Kings III, players can decide as part of an event series to transform an enemy's skull or an enemy’s castle stone into a trophy. Thus, this narrated thing is materialised and given a new value, providing bonuses to its owner. These examples represent more complex value worlds, but the options are still predetermined by the games’ frameworks.

Multiplayer games enable creative options apart it: In the shared world of Valheim, a built structure could become a resource, that is valued, used, and understood as a sign of power and wealth or skills and progress for oneself or even for others (fig. 2). In addition, player groups may use special sets of armours or weapons, to identify themselves as groups and to distinguish themselves from others, giving different things a new value which thereby become resources.

Fig. 23.2: Valheim, Iron Gate AB

In this context, we think that contingent valuations of things and related identity formations as well as alternative ways of trading and forms of currencies between or within groups of players are possible in multiplayer worlds. Finally, we state three observations:

1) Valorisation by players themselves is in single player games often not an option.

2) Games often lack things that have value in real life for example, consumption, waste, recycling, rites of passage.

3) Cultural dynamics and (shifting) valuations are often neglected or even simplified.

Nevertheless, we think that digital games could be relevant to display, represent, and reflect actual valuations, changing valuations, and related identity formations, and provide players with diversified gaming experiences about different Middle Ages.

Bibliography

S. Teuber/B. Schweizer, Resources Redefined. Resources and ResourceComplexes. In: S. Teuber et al (eds.), Waters. Conference Proceedings for “Waters as a Resource” of the SFB 1070 Resource Cultures and DEGUWA. RessourcenKulturen 11 (2020), 9 19.

Ludography

Age Of Empires IV (Relic Entertainment/Xbox Game Studios 2021)

Civilization VI (Firaxis Games/2K Games 2016)

Crusader Kings 3 (Paradox Development Studio/Paradox Interactive 2020)

Foundation (Early Access) (Polymorph Games 2019)

Valheim (Early Access) (Iron Gate AB/Coffee Stain Publishing 2021)

Witcher 3 (CD PROJEKT RED 2015)

24: “The granary is full, milord!”: The Everyday in Stronghold

Tyla Thackwray, @tylathackwray, Birkbeck, University of London

I'm a PhD student at Birkbeck School of Arts (@birkbeck_arts) and today I'm revisiting one of my fave childhood games: Stronghold, by Firefly Studios (@fireflyworlds) a medieval castle sim, and discussing what it means to seek authenticity & accuracy in modern medieval games (MMGs).

Some players demand 'historical accuracy' in MMGs. They seek candlelit characters, clad in leather & linen, eating hunks of bread and quaffing tankards of ale. They want authentic time travelling adventures on horseback through pastoral scenes and blood drenched battlegrounds. Perceptions of authenticity are shaped by media, some of which interprets the Middle Ages with less attention to evidence and more focus on market demands neither is inherently wrong. Calls for accuracy can also mask a desire not to have preconceptions and prejudices challenged.

Modern Medieval Games often rely on conflict to achieve engaging gameplay, giving the impression that the Middle Ages were much more violent than primary evidence suggests. Warfare's interesting, but for most medieval people, life was more mundane than our modern popular imagination portrays. Personally, I don't enjoy fighting games. When I first played Stronghold, aged ten, I quickly passed over the military campaigns. I couldn’t, and still can’t, enjoy reliving humanity’s worst moments during my leisure time. I wanted explore a quieter, domestic life in my gameplay

The primary modes of gameplay in Stronghold, economic & military, allow you, as lord/lady of the manor, to choose between building an army for war, or focusing on your settlement’s struggle to flourish in a landscape that requires heavy toil amidst wolves, bears, and bandits.

I love stockpiling goods & enjoy the challenge of managing the mercurial moods of my villagers. Excessive misery or happiness are just as dangerous as external violence to the community both cause labour shortages that imperil the chances of victory in economic campaigns. Keeping my granary full of food whilst ensuring sure my peasants don't neglect farming or industry is deeply satisfying. It creates a sense of positive accomplishment look at what I've built, despite the wolves! I think this reflects real contemporary survival challenges.

Stronghold’s cartoonish aesthetic and stereotypical portrayals such as those shown in its intro video (https://youtu.be/Ew0o5 X5AiY) may not be the most historically accurate portrayal of the Middle Ages available, but the game holds value beyond nostalgia. It allows you a glimpse into the struggles of simple survival. I think that the economic & free play modes offer the most realistic challenges to a player seeking an ‘authentic’ experience because most medieval people never experienced battle. Many more peasants were required to keep a community afloat than soldiers were needed to fight.

It’s easy for medievalists to scoff at the simple stereotypes offered by this depiction of the Middle Ages, but Stronghold provides a snapshot into a culture long, and irrevocably, past that is worth considering. The art might not be perfect, but, for me, the mood is. Stronghold’s portrayal of medieval life speaks volumes about our approach to & understanding of a foreign world that we still seek to understand & recreate today. Embracing the dullness allows us to access a different degree of authenticity. So, go and fill your granary!

Part Ten: Bending and Breaking Genres

25: Fenlander: Exploring Life in a Medieval Landscape

James Baillie, @JubalBarca, University of Vienna

Today for this year’s Middle Ages in Modern Games I’m talking about Fenlander, an adventure game I made in three days this January, and how it presents medieval peasant life. I made the game for itch.io’s Historically Accurate Game Jam 5, using a text parser engine and colour indexed photo and digital collage illustrations. The game takes you to a medieval village in the East Anglian fens, as an ordinary peasant trying to make their eel rent.

Your goal is to use your tools, items, and four skill attributes harnsering (skill & fishing), surefooting (travel & balance), hickathrifting (brawn & strength) and skeining (social skills) to make your way through the game and build up a smoked eel surplus. In Fenlander, days and nights roll by: the player has a choice of three main tools eel glaive, peat spade, and reed scythe that they can take to the fen to gather resources. They must also eat, sleep, by watching the landscape and talking to NPCs they can trade and learn additional skills and recipes.

At its heart, Fenlander is a game about survival: going hungry and tired exhausts the player character which can lead to health problems building up and, eventually, death. The landscape of the fens, both as risk factor, provider, and biome, is core to its challenges. With a weighted random chance system for producing resources on the fens, and the fact that you can only take one main tool out at once, balancing the resources you gather is a key to success. The game economy is thus at heart a problem space of how you manage your time: how you expend time working on each resource, versus resting, versus actions to progress through the game, is the main challenge for players.

Fig. 25.1. A game screen from Fenlander. Note the bonus from the heron as a landscape factor

Unlike many survival games, though, in Fenlander survival is necessarily social. Successful players engage with NPCs who move around in daily patterns & offer knowledge or items players can’t

produce. This breaks down the isolationist “frontier” survival model. But there are game limits on how social: the player’s household economy is simplified to give them a one person household. This gives the player more freedom & avoids them being expected to know NPCs at the game start, but simplifies their household economy.

This “economic solo” model prioritises food and resource gathering that pushes players to explore: conversely, family care, spinning, and other ‘feminine’ house centred work may be deprioritised something worth considering when writing peasant economies in games. Simplifying economies also means simplifying time: in RPGs, full year time cycles are difficult to implement in sensible play through time. Even if it takes only three minutes to play through a day and it usually takes far longer the player would need to sit down for over eighteen hours to play a year’s cycle. Medieval societies where certain feast days, festivals, and agricultural cycles were central to life can thus easily lose those social elements.

Progression is another issue: in Fenlander improving & learning skills and recipes provides evolving gameplay. In the game, that’s provided socially or from examining and learning about the landscape. Background descriptions of sounds and experiences in the fens are provided as the player moves through the fenland parts of the game, and observing the landscape can provide stat bonuses as the player learns about the environment. As noted above, social learning is also important, with fellow villagers providing the player with advice or information they need. However, these learning experiences are given outside family units and to the implicitly adult player, implying big starting knowledge gaps. The player only starts with one food recipe that for smoked eels and others must be learned during the game, meaning that the player character starts off with a level of knowledge better matching the player’s out of world perspective than the character’s in world perspective, to allow for these improvements.

Fig. 25.2. The player's house in game. The player forms a one person household for narrative and ludic reasons.

Some of this could arguably have been solved by making the player character an outsider to the setting, explaining why they need to learn so much but this common narrative device, too, has its issues. Firstly, it does not solve the whole problem: the fact that the player does not know how to make bread is still weird even if they do not come from the fens. Second, and more importantly, making the player character an external observer gives them a very different viewpoint on the setting, othering the core location and removing the sense that this location should be an understandable ‘home’ landscape for the player character. We should be cautious about always embodying the player’s lack of knowledge in a game context given the extent to which that requires sending the message that the game’s setting is a curiosity to be explored and observed, rather than an ongoing situation that the player must get to know.

There are more possibilities future versions may explore: year cycles may be too big, but the church, planned but incomplete in version one, may help structure weeks and add focus for the social game, possibly providing a day without work but with bonus NPC interactions available. More NPCs and interactions might create explorations more aspects of life, too: deeper NPC stories with which the player can interact may allow a game to present a more multi faceted view of ordinary life.

Games naturally focus on exceptions and elites in history: but it's worth thinking about how they encode social and structural norms too. Fenlander's mix of time management and engagement with landscape & community are one approach to examining those areas in a game. You can get the first demo version of Fenlander at jubalbarca.itch.io/fenlander: all questions, thoughts, and feedback arevery much welcome. Thanks for reading!

26: Hex and History: Modelling the Middle Ages in Tabletop Wargaming

Stuart Ellis Gorman, @DrCrossbows, Trinity College Dublin

Board wargames can provide insight into how the historiography of the Middle Ages has been adapted for an audience of history enthusiasts and can offer unique insight into representation of the Middle Ages in modern society outside of the well tread grounds of movies and television. Historical wargames designers put a lot of research into their games, but they are still limited by what materials they can access, and even when they can access academic materials current scholarship may not answer the questions they are asking. This can force game designers to turn to older scholarship that does address the types of questions they’re asking. Historians like Oman and Burne are often readily available and provide the type of information that one might not find in a more up to date work of military history. This scholarship can then in turn affect the kinds of questions that designers ask when developing new designs, which can create something of a feedback loop.

Take for example Richard Berg’s classic Men of Iron series of games, which uses hex grids and cardboard counters recreate famous medieval battles. Classic hex and counter games like this are the most popular type of medieval wargame. The predominance of hex and counter games subtly pushes forward a narrative that medieval warfare was dominated by the pitched battle. The focus on famous victories like Hastings or Agincourt further cements these events in the popular imagination as the epitome of medieval warfare. Even outside of hex and counter games we can see a battle centric approach in design. Take for example Columbia’s series of block wargames. This includes games like Hammer of the Scots, Crusader Rex, and Richard III covering centuries of medieval warfare. In all three, however, pitched battles are common and central to the gameplay experience. Only one of them, Crusader Rex, even includes rules for sieges.

Fig. 26.1: Men of Iron: Agincourt, GMT Games

Sieges are emphasised in some games Warriors of God, a strategic game of the Hundred Years War gives sieges similar prominence to battles. However, it is also a light game with a table that randomly determines the death of leaders during the war a mechanic that often produces ahistorical results and could almost be called absurdist. It is certainly not a game taking itself too seriously, even its rulebook is light hearted and comedic at times. Warriors of God is also a Japanese design, and thus rooted in a different historiographical tradition. Medieval wargaming has traditionally not tackled the issues of logistics or politics that dominated in the period.

A more recent development that has shaken the scene up is the release of the game Nevsky: Teutons and Rus in Collision, 1240 1242 which places medieval logistics at the forefront of the play experience making battles and sieges primarily issues of provender rather than pure military strength. Players in Nevsky must maintain provender to sustain their armies, acquire sufficient transport to move that provender while on the march, and balance their long term strategy against the limited time that their lords are willing to serve them in battle. Its sequel, Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain, 1085 1086, even adapts the systems of 11th century Taifa politics, adding a central political element to the game. These are the first two games in the new Levy and Campaign series and there are at least eight more in development. The surge in popularity in this series, particularly among designers, gives some insight into a greater desire for more sophisticated and varied depictions of medieval warfare in the hobby wargaming scene.

Medieval wargaming has long been dominated by a historiography rooted in the works of A.H. Burne and his kind the study of Great Battles and Famous Victories at the cost of the sieges, raids, and political manoeuvring that are crucial to understanding medieval conflict. There is a promising sign of change, or at least more alternatives, in the form of series like Levy and Campaign but there is still a lot of room for games to tackle the complexity medieval politics and diplomacy and to integrate wargaming with more elements of medieval culture and history.

Fig. 26.2 Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain, 1085 1086, GMT Games

27: Alternating Activations and Alternating Identities: A study of Medievalism within Modern Tabletop Wargaming

James Reah, @jamesreah123, Independent Scholar

Miniature Wargaming (MWG) is often an overlooked representation of Medievalism and is yet one of the best examples of liberal Neo medievalism. Both developers and consumers mine the medieval world for both lore and narrative, and how models aesthetically appear. Miniature Wargaming reaches audiences of millions across the globe, and ever increasing developers, games and events show this. Games Workshop, the current leading company in MWG, for example is expected to be worth £12bn by 2023. The majority of MWG formats take place in a fantasy setting which lends itself to “pitched battle” style games. These fantasy settings predominantly present a medievalised world: this is represented both within accompanying lore, and in models’ appearance and nomenclature.

Within rules, aesthetics, and unit composition, Neo medievalism appears through tropes and stereotypical representations. Historical wargames will aim for a more authentic medieval theme, but fantasy wargames will use the liberties that Neo medievalism offers.

Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings aims to replicate the brutality of medieval warfare within a fantasy setting. It achieves this modern viewpoint through focusing on combat as the primary mechanic and special rules for units such as armoured knights who charge The human faction within The Last Argument of Kings allows players to create their own medieval fantasy kingdom through a unit roster that covers several tropes of medieval culture. This can include heavily armoured knights, and units that are related to a radicalised monotheistic religion.

Warhammer 40,000 (40K), presents a theme around Gothic Medievalism, as well as focusing on religious fanaticism that is often associated with the Middle Ages the entire society being willing slaves to a “god emperor” and the presence of numerous inquisitions

Mortem et Gloriam originally focused on the ancient world, but expanded to include medieval eras. The game has a strong historical focus and attempts to authentically replicate historical warfare through the rules and authentically represented medieval model ranges.

These Miniature Wargames, while guided by a firm ruleset, invite people to engage with medievalism in a personal and tailored way. Players will collect and play with select armies often based on their appearance and lore, enabling players to focus on favoured neo medieval themes. Moreover, the hobby offers expression with Medievalism through painting miniatures. Many may refer to historical and artistic sources to convey a sense of authenticity in their models' appearance. Others may use this as a platform to express their own interpretation.

Miniature Wargaming can be applied edutainment and ludology. Students can use the rule set and armies to “play out” a battle and discuss tactics, disciplines and historical parallels, or create a new ruleset, with critical considerations on history, authenticity, and entertainment. Games in this genre encompass a range of representation, such as narratives, model aesthetic and rules designed to critically simulate aspects of medieval battles. Miniature Wargaming encourages self expressive engagement with the medieval world and its most defining features in modern culture.

Part Eleven: Modern Impositions

28: Gender and Sexuality between modern expectations and Viking narratives in

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Joana Hansen, @medievalJo, Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel

In Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, women naturally appear in all parts of the game as NPCs in a variety of occupations or positions such as huntsmen or merchants, warriors, noble women, or nuns. There is also one Jarlskona, however women are less visible in the political sphere. Overall, we can see that there are many female NPCs, but they are not the ones that carry the plot forward and they are less represented in positions of power.

I would argue that gender in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is made visible and invisible in equal measure: Gender is less visible in a sense that there is no obvious discrimination against a sex and female characters are represented in most fields. Certain occupations for instance are not assigned to a gender norm. Even with the main protagonist Eivor, whom the player can choose to play as a man or a woman, the plot and all dialogue options stay the same. Eivor is never questioned in her abilities or has to fulfil different expectations, if chosen to be played as a woman. Neither is it overly emphasized that she is a woman she is however an outstanding warrior which is pointed out by several other characters throughout the game. This also contributes to her high standing within her clan.

While no one faces direct discrimination for their gender, the Viking world in the game is simultaneously deeply formed by a sense of heroic masculinity that focusses on a male dominated field of seafarers, warriors, and conquerors: for example, the most valuable goal of every Viking to die an honourable death is very much omnipresent in the game and functions as a recurring motivator within the plot. But to die honourably is almost exclusively achieved in battle and while having a few fighting female characters, this part of Viking life in the game and in pop culture in general is stereotypically much more associated with men.

Viking women in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla are simply imagined as equally wild, brutal, and brave as the Viking men are supposed to be. Therefore, the seemingly ‘gender equal’ society is still very dominated by ‘being masculine’. On a sidenote, we can see a similar thing about sexuality, where the different possibilities for Eivor to have several romances suggest sexual openness which plays into Viking attributes of being ‘wild’ and ‘untamed’.

The trope of women warriors isn’t new of course; can be found in (not only) Saga literature and is a reoccurring theme in the reception of Vikings but it is interesting to see how this trope is overly emphasized to play into a stereotypical Viking world, while still being read as reflecting modern expectations.

How can those depictions be so stereotypical while also being read as somewhat ‘progressive’? This feels contradictory and Ubisoft also seemed to struggle with this: While being criticized for a lack of female characters and then including more of them, it’s still predominantly the male Eivor that is shown in the launch trailer for example. It seems, game studios still fear a backlash when including more female characters in their marketing, especially with historical games. But not including women due to perceived ‘historical accuracy’ is often just misogyny in disguise.

To conclude: having more female characters, especially as warriors, works in a Viking scenario because of its long reception history that made its way into pop cultural stereotypes. Yet, it seems, women are simply masculinized to better fit into the Viking society in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Bibliography

Downham, Clare: Von Æthelfleda bis Olga. Frauen und Kriegsführung, in: Matthias Toplak/Jörn Staecker (Hrsg.): Die Wikinger. Entdecker und Eroberer, Berlin 2019, 151 161.

Gardeła, Leszek/Toplak, Matthias: Walküren und Schildmaiden. Weibliche Krieger? In: Ders./Jörn Staecker (Hrsg.): Die Wikinger. Entdecker und Eroberer, Berlin 2019, 137 151.

Jesch, Judith: The Viking Diaspora (The Medieval World), London 2015.

29: Medieval Nordic Culture and Mythology in Valheim

Jéssica Iolanda Costa Bispo, @JIBispo1996, Nova University of Lisbon

Valheim, published by Coffee Stain Studios and released, in early access, in 2021, is an openworld survival video game which offers the player a fascinating and immersive experience based on Medieval Nordic culture and mythology. However, instead of relying exclusively on Nordic legends and tropes, Valheim reinterprets them in order to, it is presently argued, significantly improve user experience, while simultaneously presenting a contemporary perspective on these stories.

It is possible to explore how these myths are reinterpreted if we take into account the thirteenth century Icelandic works Prose Edda, compiled by Snorri Sturluson, and Poetic Edda, comprised in the manuscript titled Codex Regius; these are currently considered to be the most detailed sources for knowledge and research of the body of legends and myths of the Nordic population during the Medieval Period.

Valheim derives its title from a supposedly tenth world which Odin, the most prominent god of the Nordic pantheon, created to imprison his foes. Immediately after the start of the video game, the following text can be seen on screen:

Long ago, the allfather Odin united the worlds. He threw down his foes and cast them into the tenth world, then split the boughs that held their prison to the world tree, and left it to drift unanchored, a place of exile... For centuries, this world slumbered uneasily. But it did not die... As glacial ages passed, kingdoms rose and fell out of sight of the gods. When Odin heard his enemies were growing once again in strength, he looked to Midgard and sent his Valkyries to scour the battlefields for the greatest of their warriors. Dead to the world, they would be born again... in Valheim! (n/p)

The player controls an avatar that, assuming the identity of a warrior from Midgard the Earth who fell in battle, is reborn in Valheim to fight Odin’s foes.

There is not, however, any reference in the Eddas to a tenth world. “Völuspá” (“The Seereess’ Prophecy”), a poem which is found in the Poetic Edda, references only nine:

I remember giants born in early in time Those nurtured me long ago;

I remember nine worlds, I remember nine giant women, the mighty Measuring Tree below the earth. (4)

As for the Prose Edda, it states that Odin made Hel ruler over nine worlds: “Hel he threw down into Niflheim and made her ruler over nine worlds.” (39).

Valheim’s tenth world, although incorporating Nordic elements, is designed for the modern day public, especially video game players: its different biomes (a total of six at the time of writing) provide an illusion of progression, requiring the warrior to possess certain tools or wear specific sets of armour/clothing in order to survive; a similar effect is achieved by the increasingly difficult bosses that must be faced and defeated in combat, or the several new blueprints which can be found, required to build new, more advanced objects. These dynamics help maintain a certain level of tension and release, keeping players on edge and interested.

Valheim also reinterprets certain Nordic mythological creatures. In the Prose Edda, valkyries are described as women who “serve in Valhalla”, bringing “drink and see[ing] to the table and the ale cups.” (44). In the video game, though, the Valkyrie who transports the warrior to Valheim takes on a more ferocious, anthropomorphic form, a mix of woman and bird. Thus, it presents an empowered version of the Valkyrie from the Edda’s, evoking the untamed and unrestrained feminine energy. Hugin (“thought”), one of Odin’s ravens, also makes an appearance. The Prose Edda states that Odin has two ravens who whisper news in his ears (47); besides from this task, the ravens do not have much more agency in the Nordic myths; distinctly, Valheim uses Hugin as a virtual agent. The bird provides guidance and tutorials to the player, and thus its agency is expanded and its prominence within the Nordic narratives increased.

Also worthy of attention is the huge branch which adorns the sky in Valheim, functioning as an edge of the world. Since it is an area out of reach for players, it could be presented without features (e.g., a single tone of blue). However, by including Yggdrasil, the colossal ash tree which traverses all worlds and constitutes the centre of the Nordic cosmos, another Nordic trope makes its way into the video game’s interface while contributing to the virtual world’s majestic views. The stag Eikthyrnir which chews on the branches of Yggdrasil (Sturluson Prose Edda 48) is reinterpreted as one of the enemies faced by the warrior, and is renamed Eikthyr. Megingjord, Thor’s belt which increases his strength, is transformed into a useful item that allows the warrior to carry more weight. These and other examples might be pointed out and they certainly help shedding new light on Nordic mythology and culture, extremely important in Medieval Scandinavia but continually making their way to us through new media, offering interesting reinterpretations and critical perspectives on a myriad of issues which, although from a clearly distinct time period, are still important nowadays.

Bibliography

Sturluson, Snorri. The Poetic Edda. Translated by Carolyne Larrington. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda. Translated by Jesse L. Byock. Penguin Books, 2006.

Ludography

Valheim. Iron Gate Studio. Accessed 09 June 2022.

Valheim. PC Windows Version, Coffee Stain Studios, 2021.

The author, Jéssica Iolanda Costa Bispo, wishes to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Portuguese funding institution FCT Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, through an awarded PhD Studentship (2021.04811.BD).

30: “Dan of the Dead”: Music and MediEvil

Karen M. Cook, @CooksterKC, University of Hartford Andrew S. Powell, @ASPMusicTheory, Auburn University

In what follows, we present some of our work in progress on the critically acclaimed cult favorite MediEvil series for Playstation consoles.

The games’ central premise is temporal displacement, ironically embodied by skeletal hero Sir Daniel Fortesque. Dan died in 1286 fighting the evil sorcerer Zarok, who plotted to take over the kingdom of Gallowmere. While legend holds that Dan killed Zarok before dying himself, in reality he was felled in battle by the first arrow. Zarok returned one hundred years later but, in raising an army of the undead, accidentally resurrects Dan, who seizes the opportunity to attain true hero status by finally vanquishing Zarok.

The sequel shifts forward to 1886, where the sorcerer Lord Palethorn uses Zarok’s spellbook to raise London’s dead including Dan. He joins local professor Hamilton Kift, his ghostly sidekick Winston Chapelmount, and an ancient mummy named Kiya to defeat Palethorn. Kiya is killed by Jack the Ripper, but Dan uses a time machine to save Kiya, then defeats Palethorn and joins Kiya in eternal rest.

Our work combines medievalist, gothic, film, and game audio scholarship to first explore how the games construct their worlds and narratives through sound. We suggest that the soundtracks play with aural tropes to create and violate Gothic, medievalist, horror, and comedy sensibilities. We then continue on to a study of how the music connects to the games’ transgressive temporality, which plays out both in literal time travel and in cyclical arcs of resurrection and redemption.

The original concept for MediEvil was a fusion of Ghosts ’n Goblins with The Nightmare Before Christmas. The visuals are vibrant and over exaggerated, full of dark shadows and jagged edges, and the gangly characters and fantastical creatures that romp through the graveyards, asylums, ruins, wild landscapes, and Victorian sewers draw as much on Beetlejuice as on medieval bestiaries.56

Composers Paul “Bob” Arnold and Andrew Barnabas have created a complex musical web of cross temporal references. The quirky Danny Elfman like soundtrack uses low brass, a playful “oom pah,” metallic twinkling, wordless voices, dissonance, and layered contrasts along with a slew of musical medievalisms such as harp, Gothic organ, church bells, lutes, recorders, and so forth. Sections of chant like music use Latin or random syllables, and snippets of actual liturgical chant appear in religious locations.57

We argue that the first game’s music projects “temporal linearity”: medievalist and filmic idioms are independent but create meaning and humor by increasing or decreasing in salience. This mirrors Dan’s own “time,” which juxtaposes his past with his new present. For example, in “Hilltop Mausoleum,” the Gothic church organ, harp arpeggios, low brass, a church bell, and Latin chorus give way to the

56 Sample images are available at https://gallowmere.fandom.com/wiki/MediEvil 57 https://tinyurl.com/3x9pwx88

comedic, carnivalesque xylophone, oom pah low brass, angular high brass, and overly exaggerated dynamics.58

The sequel’s musical influences, however, branch in multiple directions to create a kind of “temporal circularity” that blurs historical distinctions and reflects Dan’s time traveling journey. Whereas in the aforementioned example, the medievalist cues and the more carnivalesque theme alternate and interrupt one another, in “The Count,” the underscore incorporates a host of references simultaneously. The music in this theme combines bits of the Dies Irae chant and Carl Orff’s famous “O Fortuna” with epic scoring reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and a quote of Danny Elfman’s Batman theme, while medievalist harp and Gothic organ layer on top of this thematic mélange.59

Fig. 30.1: Transgressive Temporality in MediEvil

Such boundary crossing allusions and relationships mirror Dan’s time traveling journey from the outset of the game as well as the course of his adventure. His quest to save Kiya and return to his own time transgresses his past, present, and future.

In our larger project, we dig in more deeply to the differences between all four soundtracks with regard to technology, revision, and orchestration; we explore how other musical tropes such as the violin, harpsichord, and piano further affect and reflect Dan’s transgressive temporal timelines; and we utilize scholarship on the Gothic, as well as on Danny Elfman’s style and collaborations with Tim Burton, to analyze the roles that nostalgia and memory play in the game on Dan’s part as well as that of the players.

58 https://tinyurl.com/5n8favyh 59 https://tinyurl.com/5n9ye2mn

Bibliography

Bessell, David. “What’s That Funny Noise? An Examination of the Role of Music in Cool Boarders 2, Alien Trilogy and Medievil 2.” In ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, edited by Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, 136 44. New York, NY: Wallflower Press, 2002.

Cook, Karen M. “Beyond (the) Halo: Chant in Video Games.” In Studies in Medievalism, edited by Karl Fugelso, XXVII:183 200. Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2018.

. “Beyond the Grave: The ‘Dies Irae’ in Video Game Music.” Sounding Out! (blog), December 18, 2017. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2017/12/18/beyond the grave the dies irae in video game music/.

Deaville, James. “The Topos of ‘Evil Medieval’ in American Horror Film Music.” In Music, Meaning, & Media, edited by Erkki Pekkilä, David Neumeyer, and Richard Littlefield, 26 37. Helsinki: International Semiotics Institute, 2006.

Elferen, Isabella van. “Danny Elfman’s Musical Fantasyland, or, Listening to a Snow Globe.” In The Works of Tim Burton: Margins to Mainstream, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 65 82. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Halfyard, Janet K., ed. The Music of Fantasy Cinema. Genre, Music and Sound. Equinox, 2014. Danny Elfman’s Batman: A Film Score Guide. Film Score Guides. Scarecrow Press, 2004.

Powell, Andrew S. “A Composite Theory of Transformations and Narrativity for the Music of Danny Elfman in the Films of Tim Burton.” PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2018.

Trigg, Stephanie. “Medievalism and Theories of Temporality.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, edited by Louise D’Arcens, 196 209. Cambridge Companions to Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Part Twelve: Ludological Theory

31: The Girdle and the Bottle: Exploring Ludoludo Harmony in

Sir Gawain and Ocarina of Time

Andrew S. Latham, @LathamPhD, Midland College, Midland, Texas

In this thread, I argue that, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the girdle represents Gawain attaining ludoludo harmony in the Knight’s beheading game, subverting prior suggestions that Gawain’s use of the girdle represents him cheating in the Knight’s game. But what is ludoludo harmony? When a player reconciles their ludological practices with a game’s intended ludology, they achieve ludoludo harmony. It occurs in a hypertext where a player manipulates domesticated glitches and navigable hyperlinks to achieve harmony.

When the Knight reveals his identity, he argues that Gawain lacks “loyalty” because “[he] loved [his] life,” though the Knight “blame[s] [him] less than he would a womanizer (Armitage 179). Gawain, ashamed, blames his weakness on “womanly guile” (Armitage 181). However, the girdle should not be thought of as weakness. Rethinking the girdle and the Lady as Gawain attaining ludoludo harmony shifts away from the rampant misogyny of the original text. The Lady’s heroics offer Gawain a new way to navigate the Knight’s game.

To consider how this ludoludo harmony is achieved, look at players of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OoT). In OoT, there is a domesticated glitch (Boyle, 2015) called the Ganondoor skip, where a humble bottle becomes the most powerful item in the game. Ganondoor is used to travel from the Deku Tree, the game’s first dungeon, to the Tower Escape cutscene at the end of the game. Bolux and Lemieux (2017) explained how a bottle can trick the game into making the player character, Link, pull out his Ocarina instead. This skip confuses the game, leading to it loading the escape cutscene at the end of the game’s narrative. In essence, the player uses the bottle to bypass almost everything intended by the game’s makers and skip to the finale. The bottle becomes the most important item because it allows the player to access a new series of hyperlinks to beat OoT, achieving ludoludo harmony. The bottle gives the player the ability to sequence the values that govern where the game sends the player next.

Comparing, then, the bottle and the girdle leads to a new interpretation of Gawain’s actions during the epic. Instead of considering the Lady’s actions a temptation, why not consider her heroic for allowing Gawain to achieve ludoludo harmony in the Knight’s game? The ludoludo harmony achieved by both Gawain and Link should feel self affirming. Both navigate outside the boundaries set by the game makers to achieve their harmony, but why is this action considered cheating? Their games do not explicitly forbid their actions. Rather than being shamed, Gawain should feel vindicated for identifying his hero, the Lady, and receiving aid. Doing so would require Gawain to demand acknowledgement of his player agency, which he does not do. Instead, he submits at the end to the Knight’s intent. The Lady’s subversion of the game’s rules are heroic, enabling Gawain to achieve ludoludo harmony. In the future, the bottle and the girdle should not be treated as cheating. Instead, these exploits should be hailed as examples of players seizing their own agency.

32: What Makes Crusader Kings, Skyrim, and Golden Sun

Similar?

Proposing

a Descriptive “Character Creator” Framework for Medievalist Games

Adam Bierstedt, @sagathain, Simmons University

This paper outlines an early version of a new descriptive framework for historical games, derived from gamic character creators. I hope the Character Creator Classifier (CCC) can help create ‘snapshots’ to allow faster, better selection of analytical tools.

The CCC seeks to answer 2 issues:

1 Adam Chapman outlines ‘realist’ and ‘conceptual’ simulation spectrum. While useful, this is often too broad for analysis.

2 Many Historical Game Studies conferences talk about fantasy games. How do we usefully include them in “historical” schema?

The CCC tackles these issues by creating 5 sliders: Realism, Conceptuality, Fictionality, Referentiality, and Educational Design. These are supplemented by text fields describing setting and ludic genre (themes which contain too much variability to describe via slider). Importantly, these sliders are not independent. Like with Dark Souls below, the sliders influence each other and exist in tension. Even though the sliders positions are determined by the researcher and are subjective, keep interdependence in mind with this tool.

The Realism slider describes visual and mechanical fidelity, simulating moment to moment of living in a physical space. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is therefore very realist. NOTE: High Realism is not high accuracy! It’s perceived immersion and affect.

Conceptuality describes how a game renders larger political and social processes. Crusader Kings 3 is the obvious example, but a story about politics is also conceptual. Conceptuality exists in tension with realism, and they realistically can’t both max out in a simulation!

Fictionality is how much a game pretends that its setting is not ‘real’ history. Skyrim = very fictional, despite obvious Norse influence, while Civ 6 is much less fictional (though still much more fictional than CK3).

Referentiality refers to historical/folkloric entities or places referred to by name/replica. Often but not always is inversely related to fictionality. But, the JRPG Golden Sun is very fictional and referential. Ulysses is Ulysses, even when they’re an anime magician.

Lastly, Educational Design. Games designed for teaching or with lots of teaching potential have specific constraints that other games don’t. Recognizing intention and potential affects how we analyze games and so gets its own slider.

Let’s see the CCC in action with 4 examples (Golden Sun, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla Discovery Tour, and Skyrim). The slider positions are assigned by me and are therefore intentionally subjective, but understanding how the sliders represent inter related design decisions creates a snapshot of how a game intersects with ‘history’.

Fig. 32.1: The Character Creator Classifier

The snapshot is really powerful for two reasons:

1 even a rough picture lets us describe games a little faster than just playing them for 10, 20, 50 hours.

2 the highly visual design makes identifying potential similarities easy. It should be emphasised that the CCC is descriptive, not prescriptive! If it is useful to describe a game with this tool, that game is ‘historical.’ It also may be expanded (let me know other sliders that may help!) But hopefully it is a tool that empowers comparison in robust ways

Part Thirteen: Religion III: Playing with Religion

Tales of Chivalry

Renata Leśniakiewicz Drzymała, @RenLesDrzym, Jagiellonian University

The game Arthur's Knights: Tales of Chivalry developed by Cryo Interactive is set in the Early Middle Ages, in a time shortly after the Roman occupation of the British Isles and in a world torn between faith in the great goddesses and veneration of the Christian God. Taking the role of Bradwen, the illegitimate son of King Cadfanan, leader of the Atrebates tribe, the player has two options: to play as a Celtic warrior or as a Christian paladin. Thus the player gets basically two games in one.

Both paths lead to a similar goal, but the hero is given different tasks to complete and meets different characters. Locations also are similar, but some of them are limited to either the Celt’s path or the Paladin’s path. For example, the player cannot visit a Christian monastery in the city of Magovenium as the Celt, while as the Paladin he cannot enter the sacred forest of Arden, where the wizard Merlin lives.

Regardless of the chosen path, the player visits two worlds during the game: the real world of Bradwen’s Britain and the supernatural world of fairies, Avalon. During his adventures the hero faces both human and non human opponents, such as Saxons, Picts, enchanted servants of Morgan le Fay or ogres.

However, there are also two other worlds in the game, understood more metaphorically: the pagan world of the great goddesses and sorceress Morgan, and the Christian world of God and his saints. Both of them are shown as antagonistic to each other. The fairies show an aversion to Christian faith which has resulted in their expulsion from the human world. Christians, on the other hand, fear any display of Avalon’s magic as something coming from the realm of Satan.

This antagonism also carries over to Bradwen’s own family: his father and uncle have grown very distant from each other after the latter’s conversion. Neither of them understands or respect the faith of the other, nor do the rest of the characters in the game. Thus the picture of two religions and two worldviews is quite schematic in Arthur’s Knights. Pagan is nostalgic, magical but fading. Christian is triumphant but somewhat fanatical and austere, with additional problem of Pelagian heresy in the background.

33: Bradwen the Celt or Bradwen the Paladin? Two Worlds and Two Religions in Arthur's Knights:

Fig. 33.1: Bradwen as Celt and Bradwen as Paladin, Arthur's Knights: Tales of Chivalry, Cryo Interactive

However, there is an exception: the character of Bradwen who connects both metaphorical worlds. On each of the two paths, the hero is helped by both fairies and Christians as he needs representatives from both sides to fulfil his mission.

Bradwen’s two stories are therefore an attempt to introduce some nuances to the somewhat schematic world of the game. They are also an interesting reference to oral tradition, songs, ballads and legends that vary depending on the storyteller. As one of the characters in the game says, “there is not one story of Bradwen, bur rather, two”, since “the same life, as seen by different witnesses, will result in different stories”.

The young prince of the Atrebates as the Knight of the Red Dragon and friend of Gawain/Lancelot (depending on the path) is eventually included in the Arthurian cycle of legends, which itself is a genuine mixture of pre Christian and Christian elements.

Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo, @jmrubio120, Central European University

The Witcher (2007) is a game in which the player embodies Geralt of Rivia, a witcher, a professional and mutated monster slayer. The main narrative revolves around Geralt’s quest to recover the secrets to witcher mutations from a crime syndicate called Salamandra The Continent, the geographical location where the game takes place, is a neomedievalist space: it features kings, knights, castles, and all the violence and dirt characteristic of gritty medievalism, similar to other fantasy productions like Game of Thrones. However, the presence of modernity of The Witcher is disorienting; although all the aesthetics of the game point to the medieval past, this is a world that has crime syndicates, illegal narcotics, environmental activists, human experimentation, cops and private detectives, etc

Religion is the exception. In a world with so many modern attitudes, religion remains eminently medievalist: fanatic, intolerant and dangerous. People are shown worshiping demon deities and the Church promotes mob violence in multiple scenarios. The Order of the Flaming Rose is the army of the Church of the Eternal Fire.; both serve as allegories for the Templars and the medieval Catholic Church, which in the game dedicate themselves to the persecution of “heretics” and non humans. Although sworn to protect the weak and innocent, the Order is only seen on the game fighting non humans (elves, dwarves), who are persecuted more for racial than religious reasons; in fact, there is no clarity about what this “religious conflict” is about. In fact, religion is intertwined with race. Various races seem to have different cults, and throughout the streets of Vizima racial discrimination is evident: non humans hang from the Order’s barracks, they are placed in the quarantined area so they might die of the plague, and at some point nobles discuss impaling an elf In this way, the Order is at the same time a monastic order, anti guerrilla unit, and racial police. The fact that no matter what the player does the Order will always be the end villain further reinforces the game’s approach to medieval religion.

Religion works in opposition to magic and alchemy, which are shown as useful scientific knowledge. Sorcerers and alchemists know about genetics, atoms, have laboratories, and their knowledge serves concrete purposes while religion is often rejected as superstition. Religion is shown as useful when it is able to channel magic like in the case of druids, the Lady of the Lake, and the evil god Dagon. However, the Order and the Church are unable to do this, which highlights the superstitious nature of medieval religion in the game The Order’s Grand Master and constant final villain, Jacques de Aldersberg, embodies this premise. He is powerful because he can wield magic, but dangerous because the zealotry of his religious ideas led him to engage in murder, kidnapping, and human experimentation. This narrative point is further reflected in the gameplay. Geralt can use alchemy to craft potions and bombs and wield magic to aid in combat, but religion has no practical use for the player. In fact, the main characters more often than not dismiss religion and prophecies as superstition

To conclude, even if the cruelty of the world of The Witcher is derived from its modernity (war, gangs, racism), the existential danger derives from the “medievality” of “Catholic” religiosity whose fanaticism channels the worst human impulses in the game.

34: “You are pure, you shall live!”: Religious fanaticism and the End of the World in the Medievalist world of The Witcher (2007) Video Game

Part Fourteen: Post-

Apocalyptic Medievalism

35: Nier Replicant’s perspective on medieval eschatology: Post apocalyptic setting as a critique of medieval tropes in Japanese RPGs

Albert de Vanves, @relinuss, The Army Museum of Paris/Paris Sorbonne University

NieR starts in our future, in the year 3287, but the environments and setting look like a typical fantasy action RPG: the protagonist wakes up in a village, meets guards, hunts for food and fights with a sword against “Shades”, monsters that attack on sight. To save Yonah, his sick daughter/sister (depending of the version) from the Black Scrawl, the hero is tasked by the two leaders of the village to restore the power of “Grimoire Weiss” by defeating large monstrous Shades all over different locations. As in many fantasy based games, this quest is presented in the form of a prophecy by Popola, delivered as artwork reminiscent of a medieval illumination scrolls by. The player is motivated by the goal of saving Yonah and the world from a deadly disease and dangerous enemies

The crepuscular tone of NieR is pushed by throwbacks to the Biblical Apocalypse. NieR's prequel, Drakengard, ends on the destruction of the world by the arrival of a Red Dragon and a giant Grotesquerie Queen. This should remind you of the Whore of Babylon/the Dragon in the book of Revelation. In a world that loops back to medieval times, NieR’s story brings the threat of a new annihilation as a legitimate motive for the PC to use violence, especially when confronted to his dark look alike counterpart, “The Shadowlord”, who serves as an Antichrist figure. As the story depicts the desperate struggle for food of the villagers and against the Black Scrawl, we can think of the discourses at the end of the Middle Ages, when scholars expected God but also the Antichrist to bring an end to these troubled times of wars and plagues.

Of course, there is a twist: approaching the first ending of the game, the player discovers that the Shades were the original humans, and those populating the world right now are only “Replicants”. The protagonist is the one that ends humanity by defeating his own “Gestalt”. Prompted to start a 2nd playthrough, the change of perspective reveals the lies of the prophecy and the point of view of the major enemies of the game, who were not trying to destroy the world. The PC was wronged, but never actually questioned in his quest for vengeance. His obsession against the Shadowlord especially echoes the surge of eschatological anxiety after the Great Schism in 1378: as more and more preachers accused the Pope or the other one to be the Antichrist, others were less and less uncompromising with the Church.

The shift of perspective is the core of NieR's story: its main designer, Taro Yoko, explores the theme of violence and morality in games since Drakengard. Character’s actions are justified by their own motives, but also by a nihilistic feeling that the world is ending. As a commentary on violence in games, the uses of medieval eschatology in NieR opens more considerations: how many medieval or fantasy games use the threat of the Apocalypse, of an “Antichrist” or of a decaying world to justify radical, and even violent, behaviors?

Final Note: in these correlations between NieR and late medieval discourses around the end of times, is missing a God. The Wait for God is a matter I hope to discuss in a later paper about the sequel, NieR : Automata, and about its “post post apocalyptic” setting.

36: Fallout 4: Medieval Ages in a post apocalyptic future

João Paulo da Silva Roque, @JooP16996186, University of Lisbon

Fallout 4 is a role playing game set in a post apocalyptic future, developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks, in which the player controls a character who needs to survive a harsh and deadly environment, in the aftermath of a nuclear war. When taking into account medieval culture and mythology, this character, referred to as the Sole Survivor, can be interpreted as a knight, attempting to save not a princess, but his own son, fighting monsters and injustice along the way, thus embodying the hero trope. In order to do this, the Sole Survivor is required to brave a wasteland: a radioactive region which is barren and extremely dangerous, not only for its radiation, but also due to the presence of aggressive creatures and human factions. Gathering companions who provide assistance is indispensable; these assume the role of squires and carry the Sole Survivor’s belongings: PIP BOY, for instance, is a personal processing unit that will nonetheless function as inventory and help during combat.

Some of the monsters the Sole Survivor will face include Deathclaws, dragon like creatures whose appearance is similar to that of the dragons presented in the renowed medieval works Beowulf and The Saga of the Volsungs. To help fight threats such as these, the Sole Survivor will have at his disposal several power armors: these are nuclear powered mechanical suits which will act as the knight’s armor and, furthermore, they can also be used by enemy NPC´s (Non Player Characters). This calls up the trope of the Black Knight, an enigmatic agent of evil, much like the Sole Survivor’s enemies when donning their power armors and high powered weapons. The Sole Survivor, carrying along his mission, will, contrarily, embody the archetype of the righteous White Knight, associated with justice and bravery.

Another one of Fallout 4’s mechanics involves giving the player the option to choose to align the Sole Survivor with one of three factions (there is a fourth one, the Minutemen, to which the Sole Survivor is automatically allied with; however, for the purpose of this paper, it will not be considered for its lack of bellicism and for not interfering with the other factions): the Brotherhood of Steel, the Institute and the Railroad. The Institute, working from the shadows, creates synthetic beings, indistinguishable from humans; people fear these beings, known as synths, as they subvert what collective memory identifies as being human. For the Institute, a science hub, they are mere tools, permanently available to complete tasks for the scientists. Despite this, they are also a symbol of progress and technological evolution.

As for the Railroad, synths are equal to humans: it is unrestrained, persecuted science, while the Institute is science within the law. Let us remember Alfred the Great (848/49 899) and his attempts to promote education while under close scrutiny of the Roman Catholic Church. The Brotherhood of Steel, in stark contrast, embodies the skepticism, conservatism and zealotry of this Church in the Middle Ages; its code of conduct perceives synths as a threat, and so they are in a crusade against them. The Brotherhood of Steel is extremely restrictive and functions through a strict hierarchy.

The Institute and the Brotherhood of Steel are presented as symbols of the well known medieval feud which opposes scientific progress and religion. As such, it is possible to establish parallels between the Middle Ages and modern games and medieval motifs retain their relevance nowadays. Fallout 4 offers a great range of thematics that can very well fall within the spectrum of medieval mythology and culture and its interpretative possibilities make it a very interesting video game.

37: Neo medievalism, Americana, and the Post Apocalypse: Honest Hearts, Ancestral Puebloans, and the Sorrows

Thomas Lecaque, @tlecaque, Grand View University, Des Moines

Fallout: New Vegas takes the player to the post apocalyptic wastelands surrounding New Vegas the desert, the hills, the neon lights guarded by robot sentinels, the forces of the NCR stretched on Hoover Dam, and the looming menace of the fascist Caesar’s Legion. Fallout games truck in neo medievalism & Americana retrofuturistic 1950s sci fi Americana crumbling under the radiation, and the knights of the Brotherhood of Steel, in their plate man, paladins armed with laser gatlings, reminding us of the core fantasies of genre. The DLC “Honest Hearts,” though, takes the player out of the New Vegas Wasteland into Zion National Park, inhabited by a number of groups that the Fallout Universe describes as “tribals,” at term as problematic as you can imagine, and which features extensive rock art.

The “native” so problematic, this has been acknowledged and discussed by the director at length group living in Zion in the game are the “Sorrows,” a group descended from children who wandered in shortly after the apocalypse, protected by the "Father of the Caves". The Sorrows make rock art, found throughout Zion and that rock art is in itself a neomedieval bit of Americana, replicating the “medieval” art of the region itself, products of the ancestral Puebloan peoples, the Fremont, and others, like this from Zion National Park. The term “medieval” is of course problematic to use outside of Afro Eurasia but as a shorthand for a period,60 it is useful to remind students and players that there is a world outside of Europe in that period. The American Southwest is filled with incredible artwork from numerous groups for example, the richness of Chaco Canyon’s artworkor the so called “Hunter Panel” in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah from the Fremont culture.61 Honest Hearts uses a different style, but still places rock art throughout the map of Zion. The images are a combination of “medieval” examples with modern ideas tall human figures, hand prints, an assault rifle and the number 22, all relevant to the Sorrows' history. Tall human figures are found throughout the region, for example in Horseshoe Canyon, Utah. Handprint rock art is common, like the one from Fish Canyon, Utah. Rock art motifs are used, and manipulated, for the game.62

This is, essentially, neo medievalism. In the same way that the Brotherhood of Steel’s plate mail and “knights” give a refracted vision of the past in the game, so too does the rock art, create an image/identity for the Sorrows of the “medieval” American Southwest. This is neo medievalism in games, a flavor of the past divorced from context to sell contemporary narratives and we are good at identifying it when it is medieval European imagery, but we need to remember this is also true with examples from the “global Middle Ages”. Honest Hearts is fun, but it reinforces stereotypes about Natives in the same vein as Fallout’s repeated problematic use of “tribals,” and even its art is using problematic neomedieval tropes to build identities and rhetoric. We need to study and teach “medieval” America more, in history alongside anthropology and archaeology, in medieval history

60 For more, see Alex West’s piece at: https://indomedieval.medium.com/the hemispheric middle ages part i 173779f237f6 61 See http://read.upcolorado.com/read/the greater chaco landscape f2cad13b 68f1 4d50 bc01 9f755e62eed4/section/386b1b65 bf43 46df 8cb2 63939ac8afbb

62 See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart news/new analysis suggests utahs famous rock art surprisingly recent 180952482/ and https://capitolreef.org/blog/the horseshoe canyon petroglyphs utahs underrated tourist guide/

surveys, so games like this are not the only place students, gamers, readers, and the public encounter Native history pre occupation.

Part Fifteen: Closing Keynote

38: Best Practices for Speculative Species Design

James Mendez Hodes, Independent Game Developer, @LulaVampiro

To close out #MAMG22, I’d like to discuss how to design a sapient species and its cultures (plural, important) for speculative media, specifically from a cultural consulting and cultural design perspective. I made up this advice to help clients’ orcs, aliens, alien orcs, etc. a) avoid harmful real life tropes, and b) set players and fans up for good interactions at game tables or fandom spaces. But they also led to more interesting, playable species in a game/narrative design sense.

If you like really tropey fantasy races, I probably can’t help you here, but you know how to make those already just do the tropes. You’re set. Speaking as your cultural consultant, though, maybe be careful with the tropes, especially “evil races”: https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/1/13/orcs britons and the martial race myth part i a species built for racial terror

But if you want your species to go somewhere new, and especially if you want your cultural consultant’s job to be cheaper and easier, bring the points below into your process. You can’t hit all of them. That’s OK that’s why there’s so many. I’ve split them into 3 sections.

Narrative and Creative Process

These points cover principles to consider through all phases of creation; as well as how careful narrative design supports strong builds. Make sure others get to see your good choices.

• Make up focus groups in your head. Imagine many different identities’ and viewpoints’ emotional reactions to your stuff. Which do you want to create? Which don’t feel right? Is there anyone you want to feel uncomfortable in the space (racists, Nazis, etc.)?

• Imagine these reactions as if they know your demographics in real life. Then, as if they don’t. How much do you want your identity in focus or under fire if there’s discourse or controversy? How important is it to understanding your work?

• Center and protagonize members of the species. Depict them as they see themselves primarily and/or first, before introducing outside perspectives where they’re more easily othered or exoticized.

• The more intense, controversial, or traumatic topics in the work, the harder it is to do each one justice especially with smaller or shorter works. If you work with or subvert extant harmful tropes, keep just one or two per species.

• Want to invert or satirize tropes? The more clever and subtle you are, the more likely you’ll accidentally recreate what you try to invert. At some point in the audience’s interaction with your satire, your viewpoint must become crystal clear.

• Stay current on the way the bad guys in real life talk. You want to create an environment that’s hostile to their conversations, so if someone starts in with some race science bullshit they can’t cover it as saying “I’m just talking about this species in this game.”

Biology and Environment

These points cover your species’s biology and relationship with its surroundings ’ecological and political pressures. We want to biology to inform, but stand distinct from, culture and personality, to avoid bioessentialism.

• Biologically distinguish species in ways which fall outside existing human diversity. Species which are “humans but bigger/smarter/prettier etc.” are more likely to hit stereotypes about real demographics. Fewer stereotypes mention, for example, electroreceptive senses or wings.

• Intelligence is a concept commonly misunderstood and frequently seeded into false, harmful stereotypes. I discourage it as a biological distinction. But if you must give a species Brain Powers, get real specific: spatial reasoning, audio memory, copying movement.

• Same goes for “strength,” “athleticism,” etc.: still risky, but focusing in on reaction time, grip strength, etc. is somewhat less likely to invoke stereotypes. Somewhat. If it’s a thing humans can be or do, some villain somewhere may have ruined it.

• Design your species’ environment, both ecological and social/political, together with biology (and for that matter culture). I know you know this, but: remember they should probably adapt reasonably well to the pressures they experience.

Culture

These points cover cultural traits, informed by biology but distinct from it. I think this section is most important of all, since harmful cultural misconceptions are what I deal with all day both professionally and, well, for other reasons.

• Create at least two cultures per species. Humans have hundreds of cool cultures; interesting monsters and aliens deserve at least a couple. Got space to depict only one culture? Imagine a second as you define your first, just in case. It’ll be more vivid that way.

• Do you want to lean away from cultural associations, creating something no one links to any one real world group? Or lean into them, drawing intentionally from specific touchstones? Lean Away seems easier, but I’ve never seen it truly work. Lean In is more reliable.

• If you must lean away, remember: your brain is full of cultural signifiers and unconscious bias. So is your audience’s. Instead of only trying to innovate, draw intentionally from diverse, far flung cultures and influences.

• If you lean in: one, thank you for being brave and trying. Two, rather than casting a wide net and risking cultural conflation, Orientalism, etc, pick a specific time and place. It’s easier to research and less work. You can hire fewer consultants this way.

• “Primitive” species/cultures are hard mode. Noble Savage, Martial Race, and similar stereotypes strongly bias our perception of this idea. Humans were already socially sophisticated, technologically adapted to their circumstances millennia ago.

• Give them space for joy and play. Hobbies, parties, sports, debate, humour, complex relationships, special interests, fashion, religion that’s got art and community, spoiled pets, reality TV, epic poetry, goth poetry, role playing games, inside jokes, comfort in sadness.

During the original Twitter conference, Robert Houghton asked for a brief example of a species I’d designed using this system. I replied that I had applied it to orcs in Incredible Dream’s upcoming Kinfire Chronicles board game. Their original orcs were primitive, nomadic, and violent, embodying noble savage and martial race tropes. What nonhuman biology could they have besides tusks and green skin?

The team hit on weather sense. We considered what lifestyles the ability to predict the weather accurately might support, aiming to create two. We decided on agriculture and exploration. So, some orcs raise crops and animals. Their culture prizes long term investment in community and family, defence and growth. Other orcs are pioneers, traders, or even raiders, always a step ahead of the hurricane. This approach made sense of existing orc art featuring rough edged animal skins: it’s a wilderness scout look now. Pirate and merchant vessels often have orc weather watchers aboard. Thanks for your patience with a sprawling, tough topic. My favourite sapient nonhumans are as diverse and complex as we are. They don’t just avoid offense; they bring excitement. Your audience can’t wait to draw them, play as them, identify with them. Neither can I.