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.

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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.

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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)

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