38: The Sovereign Code: The Eurocentric Mechanics of Nationhood in Strategy Games

38: The Sovereign Code: The Eurocentric Mechanics of Nationhood in Strategy Games

Rhett Loban, @rhett_loban, Macquarie University Tom Apperly, @t0mm7, Tampere University This work is a collaboration between Dr. Rhett Loban an Australian-based Torres Strait Islander Scholar and Game Designer and Dr. Thomas Apperley a Finland-based scholar from Aoteroa’s Pakeha (White Settler) community. We are going to discuss some work we did together exploring the potential of videogame mods to add indigenous perspectives to videogames. Indigenous game developers have been active in producing/creating games from an indigenous perspective ( https://theconversation.com/video-games-encourage-indigenous-cultural-expression-74138 ). Yet the representation of indigenous peoples and cultures in games is often disappointing. Grand strategy games often present indigenous peoples merely as potential subjects for Europeanstyle colonialism and are often presented in an ahistorical, ad hoc, and generic way. Within the genre Europa Universalis IV by Paradox Interactive has generally depicted indigenous people with more frequency and detail than other Grand Strategy games especially in the ‘Conquest of Paradise’ and ‘El Dorado’ expansions to the game. The complexity of Europa Universalis IV offered the potential for exploring history as a multiplicity. https://bit.ly/3fPSSmH To explore how an indigenous perspective might work in #EUIV Rhett Loban developed a mod ‘Indigenous People of Oceania’. ‘Indigenous People of Oceania’ added new technology groups that reflected the differing lifestyles of the Oceanic peoples, and many new indigenous pacific nations (including Mabuiag, Fiji, Hawai’i, Ngāi Tahu, Asaro, Gubbi Gubbi), including information about the nation's history and culture. The mod successfully added details which portrayed many aspects of indigenous cultures. BUT the mod still had to work within European/Eurocentric concepts of nationhood, territory and sovereignty. Nation, State and Sovereignty—are the conceptual tools that European colonial powers and white settlers used to justify displacing Indigenous people from their lands and instituting new forms of colonial governance. By encoding these concepts in the game Europa Universalis IV excludes the addition of indigenous perspectives. While information can add a richer depiction of indigenous people and cultures, it only makes a more colourful perspective for the colonizer. See: https://bit.ly/3vtBURW

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