The Middle Ages in Modern Games: Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2 (2021)

22: It's Medievalism Jim, but not as we know it: Super-Tropes and Bastard-Tropes in Medievalist Games Robert Houghton, @RobEHoughton, University of Winchester Representations of the Middle Ages and pseudo-medieval worlds in games are driven by popular medievalisms in combination with game design traditions and restrictions. This can result in the exaggeration of stereotypes (super-tropes) or the emergence of entirely new visions (bastard tropes), the combination of which presents a unique and original form of medievalism within games.

Super-tropes are mostly straightforward. Games have a strong tendency towards violence. The Middle Ages are seen as endemically violent. So medievalist games are more likely to be violent. They tend to focus on conflict and conquest. Visceral and casual violence abound. Likewise, games in general are heavily Eurocentric (if not Anglocentric) and medievalism tends strongly towards Northern European settings. Games set in this period are mostly positioned in Europe (and almost inevitably in British Isles/Scandinavia) with homogenous white casts. The medievalist notion of Chivalry also finds reinforcement in games: this vision of a rules heavy and black and white morality ties in neatly with the rules and mechanics required by games to function. It also fits with the need for balance and ‘fair play’ in games.

Bastard tropes are consequences of competing gaming and medievalist tropes. Medievalist games are amongst the most violent, but this violence can be innovative. For example, Permadeath (you die, you lose) and Iron Man (only one save, updated automatically) are common in medievalist games – Dark Souls is a prominent example – and emerge to a large extent from a drive to match mechanics to medievalism. Religion in medievalist games is a melange of rival tropes. Medievalism dictates a prominent Church. But games are reluctant to do anything deep with religion. So medievalist games have ubiquitous but trivial religion: symbols, architecture and material culture are everywhere, but there is little of substance in terms of mechanics or even story. Science and ‘progress’ is another area with notable bastard tropes. Strategy games demand ‘progress’ as a core mechanic, usually represented through a ‘tech tree’. But medievalism dictates a Dark Age giving a narrative of stagnation alongside progress mechanics.

Although super-tropes are important, bastard tropes can be just as influential. Games doing something differently doesn’t lessen their impact. There are growing signs that games are seen as more authoritative sources than other fiction media by a large part of their audience and that games may have a substantially deeper impact on their audience’s understanding of the Middle Ages than any other media format. Hence it is vitally important to consider not only where games exaggerate existing medievalist tropes, but where they subvert or bastardise them.

Obviously these super-tropes and bastard tropes aren’t present in every medievalist game. There are plenty of nuances, subversions and deconstructions. Counterplay and modding allow players to mess with dev expectations. Devs often look to history beyond medievalism. But we can see examples of bastard tropes all over medievalist games. Game tendencies and requirements (such as balance, progress, victory conditions etc.) clash with medievalist visions. Often this leads to exaggerations, but frequently we see new accounts emerging.

Hence we can see a new variety of medievalism emerging within games. One which draws on literary and audio-visual medievalisms, but which is fundamentally different in diverse (and unexpected) ways – as a consequence of the expectations and limitations of the medium. The idea that games set in the Middle Ages are influenced by both gaming and medievalist tropes isn’t earth-shattering. But we need 39