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.

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