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volume 16 issue 2
December 2016
ISSN:1604-7982
the international journal of
computer game research
Dom Ford
Dom Ford holds an MA in
English Literary Studies
from the University of Exeter
where he also completed his
BA in English. His research
focuses on Game Studies
as it intersects with
postcolonialism, late
medieval and Arthurian
literature, and theories of
narrative and space.
dominic.ford@live.com
“eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate”:
Affective Writing of Postcolonial History and
Education in Civilization V
by Dom Ford
Abstract
Civilization V as one of the most successfu l and definitive works of the 4X
videogame genre presents a clear narrative of e mpire-building that, I will argue, is
problematic when set against postcolonial theor y. With many studies lauding the
series for its educational capacities I argue that w ith an affective turn to the role of
the player, the game’s homogenization of narrati ves of societal progression
reinforces a Western-centric notion of history. T his co-opts non-colonial societies
into imperialism, while in the process silencing their histories. For this study, I will
read the game’s goals and mechanics through p ostcolonial theorists such as
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and then turn to affect
theory to consider what role the player takes in w riting this history. To conclude, I
will consider what implications this has on the u se of 4X games like Civilization V
for education and the conception of history in the m inds of the players, drawing on
other recent scholars who have similarly probl ematized the series.
Keywords
postcolonialism, empire, imperialism, history, education, affect, technological
determinism, homogeny, Civilization V
Introduction
Figure 1. The introduction to the “Scramble for Af rica” scenario when playing as
Queen Victoria.
January 1881, the Scramble for Africa. Queen Vi ctoria commands the English
Empire’s expansion into inland Africa, already c ontrolling a handful of settlements
around its coast and on the near coast of Europe: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth,
Lagos, Accra, Freetown, Gibraltar, and Victoria. Her mission: explore Africa,
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expand her territory into it, exploit its riches, and e xterminate those who conflict
with these aims, be they native Africans or rival Europeans.
This is, of course, not the historical so-called “S cramble for Africa” of the late 19th
to the early 20th century, but the beginning of a stag ed scenario in Sid Meier’s
Civilization V. Players choose one of 12 lea ders with corresponding empires.
Jules Grévy leads the French, Otto von Bismar ck the Germans, Giuseppe
Garibaldi the Italians, and so on. Or, the player ma y defend Africa from the
Europeans as Cetshwayo kaMpande of the Zul u, for instance. In 100 turns (each
turn representing a period of months: the first turn is in January, the second in
April, the third in July, the fourth in October) the civ ilization with the highest score
is declared the winner (see “Victory Conditions ” in Figure 1 for how points are
scored in this scenario).
While this example is particularly relevant to po stcolonial lines of thought due to it
being a direct representation of a significant histo rical moment in colonialism, its
key elements such as gameplay, goals and ch aracterization are typical of the 4X
genre of videogames. The four Xs refer to the firs t four words of my title, a genre
name that has stuck since it was coined in 1993 by Alan Emrich in a preview of
Master of Orion, a game released in th e same year by MicroProse:
I give MOO a XXXX rating because it features the essential four X’s of
any good strategic conquest game: EXplore, EX pand, EXploit and
EXterminate. In other words, players must rise fr om humble
beginnings, finding their way around the map wh ile building up the
largest, most efficient empire possible. Naturally , the other players will
be trying to do the same, therefore their extermina tion becomes a
paramount concern” (Emrich, 1993, p. 92).
Whether descriptively or prescriptively, this ov erview encapsulates the core
strategies of many games since then. From “hu mble beginnings”, players manage
a fledgling empire as they explore the map aroun d them, expand their territory
outwards, exploit the land for its resources and e ventually exterminate all rival
empires. This is the crux of all 4X games, howe ver each step might be
emphasised, re-presented, or complicated. In th is essay, Civilization V (with its
expansion games Gods and Kings and Brave New World) serves as a case study
for exploring its representation of empire building and the writing of imperial
histories and narratives. Through its primary m eans of sale -- digital purchase on
the online distribution platform Ste am -- the game has become one of the m ost-
played, with over eight million sales, making it a strong presence in modern
videogame culture. Postcolonial thinkers such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and
Michel-Rolph Trouillot provide a useful lens thr ough which the game’s reworking of
colonial history and its treatment of oppressed v oices can be further complicated.
These considerations will be brought together w ith affect theory to consider the
player’s impact on the process of writing these h istories, in particular looking at the
implications of using Civilization V in educ ation.
Postcolonial Literature Review
To begin, I will briefly outline Spivak’s and Troui llot’s relevant thinking and their
position in the field of postcolonial studies. Spivak ’s work on the subaltern has
been highly influential. Challenging theorists suc h as Michel Foucault and Gilles
Deleuze, she is sceptical of critics who fail to re cognise their own ideological
frameworks in their writing. This, she argues in “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, leads
to generalizing the subject under “totalizing conc epts of power and desire”
(Spivak, 1988, p. 279). In Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, she
concisely tells Suzana Milevska that the “centr al concept” in “Can the Subaltern
Speak?” “was that once a woman performs an a ct of resistance without an
infrastructure that would make us recognise res istance, her resistance is in vain”
(Spivak; quoted in Chakravorty, Milevska & Ba rlow, 2006, p. 62 [1]. This
infrastructure refers to hegemonic structures of e mpire and patriarchy, and in this
essay I will make links between these structure s and the game’s encoded
structures. Spivak has been criticized by writer s such as Ania Loomba, Benita
Parry and Lata Mani, but her core concept of voic es unheard by structures unable
to hear them remains useful for this essay.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot focuses on the writing of history in Silencing the Past:
Power and the Production of History. Usin g specific examples like the Haitian
Revolution of the late 18th century to the early 19th nineteenth century and
Christopher Columbus’s landing on the Baham as in 1492, he observes the
processes of historicisation, how they work, wh at they emphasize and what is
silenced. With regards to the Haitian Revolution , he remarks on what he calls
formulas of “erasure” and “banalization” which s erve to, respectively, “erase
directly the face of a revolution” and “empty a num ber of singular events of their
revolutionary content so that the entire string of fac ts… becomes trivialised”
(Trouillot, 1995, p. 96). In the example of Columbu s’s landing, he observes a
fading of context as the act of exploration is celeb rated as a great European
achievement. As context is faded out, the event b egins to be championed and
lauded despite being, as he terms it in a way he fe els is more accurate, “the
‘Castilian invasion of the Bahamas’” (Trouillot, 1 995, p. 114). Trouillot’s thinking
will be useful for conceptualizing the ultimate fun ction of particular game
mechanics and structures.
Civilization V and Technological Progress
Civilization V is a game of great strategic de pth, and so I will not be able to cover
all its elements in this essay. However, as I am primarily concerned here with the
writing of history and the voices that are heard an d silenced in that process of
writing, I will start with the game’s timeline, the tem poral progression from turn one
to victory (or defeat). What are players aiming to achieve? How do the game’s
structures guide them? The technology tree prov ides a clear timeline to trace.
Beginning with agriculture, the player is provided with four choices to start
researching: pottery, animal husbandry, archer y and mining. Each choice leads to
a further branch in the tree, culminating in the inter net, globalization, particle
physics, nanotechnology and stealth. Once eve rything else is researched, only
“Future Tech” is available, which provides noth ing but additional score. Crucially,
the technology tree presents a homogenous tim eline of technological progression.
All civilizations -- from Shaka kaSenzangakho na’s Zulu to Augustus Caesar’s
Romans to Sejong the Great’s Koreans -- climb the same tree. While there is
choice, that choice is limited to a handful of discr ete choices made for strategic
purposes -- to emphasise strengths or cover w eaknesses -- rather than to forge a
truly separate narrative. Indeed, the technology tr ee is tiered into eras that solidify
this Eurocentric homonarrativization: ancient, c lassical, medieval, renaissance,
industrial, modern, atomic and information.
Tuur Ghys observes the use of the term “techno logical determinism” to describe
technology trees in strategy games and applies the concept to Civilization IV -- the
previous game in the Civilization series which uses a similarly-structured
technology tree. He uses Michael L. Smith’s de finition of the term as “the belief
that social progress is driven by technological i nnovation, which in turn follows an
‘inevitable’ course” (Smith; quoted in Ghys, 2012 ), and remarks that there is an
“inclusion of social and political principles in the tech tree” with “links in which
‘mechanical’ technologies lead to ‘social’ ones ” (Ghys, 2012). Some are quite
subtle, he says, such as either plastics or fissio n being prerequisites to
researching environmentalism in Civilization IV. G hys asked lead designer Soren
Johnson about this particular link, who called it a “cause-effect relation… plastics
led to a boom in disposable items, which eventu ally made people more sensitive
to how wasteful we are as a civilization” (Johns on; interviewed by Ghys, quoted in
Ghys, 2012).
These kinds of particular socio-political causa l chains in C ivilization IV’s
technology tree make the game’s narrative eve n more specific and restrictive in its
homogeny. Not only does Wu Zetian’s Chinese empire have to research the same
listed technologies in roughly the same order as George Washington’s empire,
but her society is also implicitly subjected to ex actly the same socio-political
reactions to events and technologies. A compar able example in Civilization V is
the requirement for a civil service and guilds to b e researched to lead on to
chivalry, which triggers to medieval era compl emented with a quote from Le Morte
Darthur: “Whoso pulleth out this sw ord of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king
born of all England” (Malory; quoted in Civilization V ).
The implications of this technological determini sm in the technology tree are
further exposed when technological links are fol lowed beyond their first step. Ghys
observes that researching mysticism in Civilization IV is, by tracing the chain of
prerequisites, required for robotics (Ghys, 2012 ). Similarly, by following
Civilization V’s technology chain it is revea led that chivalry is a required
technology for particle physics. It seems incong ruent when put like that, but what it
illuminates is that when technology trees are str uctured in this linear fashion, they
do not provide the player’s civilization with a tec hnological progression unique to
their society, and in this process alternative narr atives are destroyed. All empires
in Civilization V begin at the sa me pre-determined starting point of human
development. The game fails to account both for societies which do not follow the
same path of technological progression and for s ocieties that emerge at different
times relative to other societies. Indeed, a Scienti fic Victory is won through what is
essentially a version of the 20th-century Space R ace. Certain technologies
towards the end of the tree enable the production o f parts of the space shuttle,
once the Apollo Program “wonder” is completed . When all parts are assembled
and gathered in the player’s capital city, the ship i s launched and the game ends
under the premise that the spaceship will be use d to colonize nearby star Alpha
Centauri. The goal of technological advanceme nt in Civilization V, in other words,
is to reach the real-world United States’ crownin g Cold War achievement -- no
matter which civilization the player chooses.
Exploration, Expansion, Exploitation,
Extermination
The first of the four Xs -- exploration -- perhaps s eems the most innocuous. In the
following, I will direct most attention to this specifi c aspect of 4X games.
Apparently driven by mere curiosity, the word e xploration suggests no active harm
as expansion, exploitation and extermination do . It suggests observation and
detached study. However, in this section I will fo cus closely on exploration firstly
because it serves as the foundation, catalyst and prerequisite for the other three
Xs, and secondly because the concept and narr atives of exploration hold
particular colonial connotations that are not as im mediately clear. Michel-Rolph
Trouillot recounts the historicizing of Christophe r Columbus’s landing in the
Bahamas in 1492. “How interesting,” he remark s, “that 1492 has become
Columbus’s year, and October 12 the day of ‘Th e Discovery’” (Trouillot, 1995, pp.
112--113). Columbus’s famous landing “has be come a clear-cut event much more
fixed in time than the prolonged fall of Muslim Gra nada, the seemingly
interminable expulsion of European Jews, or the tortuous consolidation of royal
power in the early Renaissance” (Trouillot, 199 5, p. 113). Unlike the latter
examples, “[t]he Discovery has lost its process ual character… become a single
and simple moment. The creation of that historic al moment facilitates the
narrativization of history” (Trouillot, 1995, p. 113) . Trouillot asks whether “anyone
would care to celebrate the ‘Castilian invasion o f the Bahamas’” (Trouillot, 1995, p.
114) and it is in this that the simple narrativization of this single moment in history
exposes the colonial frames of exploration. This narrativization fades the context
of Columbus’s landing -- “the making of Europe , the rise of the absolutist state, the
reconquista, and Christian religious intra nsigence all spread over centuries” to
mention just the Old World (Trouillot, 1995, p. 113 ) -- into the background,
“subsumed among the ‘antecedents’ to The Dis covery” (Trouillot, 1995, p. 113).
The exploration, itself the “desperate adventure” of one of the “rejects of Europe”
(Trouillot, 1995, p. 113), becomes romanticized and celebrated as a great
achievement of Europe.
Figure 2. Screenshot of the “fog of war” at the begi nning of the “Scramble for
Africa” scenario.
Exploration is codified into the game in a way tha t rewards such narrativization.
Firstly, returning to the goals of the game, explora tion enables the next three Xs.
The map begins covered by the “fog of war”, as it is known in strategy games
(Figure 2). The player must send explorers into this fog to unveil the land to
expand into, the resources to exploit, and the oppo nents to exterminate.
Exploration is not done for curiosity’s sake. In Nintendo and New World Travel
Writing, Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins remark on t he de-narrativization of the
gamespace in Nintendo games: “Its landscape s dwarf characters who serve, in
turn, primarily as vehicles for players to move t hrough these remarkable places…
we don’t really care whether we rescue Princes s Toadstool or not” (Fuller &
Jenkins, 1995, p. 60). In Civilization V (and perhaps s trategy games more
generally) the opposite is true: Players do not ca re so much about the natural
beauty of the world of the pleasures of traversing it, rather they explore as a
means to an end. That end being, of course, the ac quisition of strategic resources
and information with which to expand their empir e.
The landscape itself is homogenized, divided u p and categorized by type of
terrain. Tiles are not part of an organic, unique lan dscape, rather each tile is
merely a visual representation of a type of terrain , and it is the type that is
important to players. Hill tiles provide more visi on and range when occupied,
rough terrains such as forest or marsh slow mo vement, grassland has a higher
base food value. Land is favoured only because of its strategic value. Players do
not place new cities next to a mountain because it looks awe-inspiring and the
views will be wonderful (indeed, each mountain in the game looks the same).
Players settle there because cities next to a mou ntain are able to build an
observatory, which increases that city’s scienc e output by +50 percent. Or when
playing as the Incas, because they can build the unique structure of the terrace
farm which, erected on hill tiles, provides additio nal food for each adjacent
mountain. Some tiles contain natural wonders lik e Uluru, Great Barrier Reef and
Krakatoa, but again, their only use in the game is statistical. Discovering a natural
wonder (unveiling it in the fog of war) grants happ iness to the player’s civilization.
Exploration is rewarded. Once inside the player ’s territory, each natural wonder
grants a unique bonus yield. For example, Uluru generates +2 food and +6 faith.
Expansion and exploitation are rewarded off the b ack of exploration.
Figure 3. Screenshot of the “Strategic View” with “Hex-Grid” and “Yield-Icons”
view options switched on.
Paul Virilio’s notion of violent speed can also be used to read these gameplay
mechanics. In Speed and Politics, Virilio t alks of political power as a compression
of time and space, the ability to enact violence fas ter and from further away.
“Around 1870 Colonel Delair notes… ‘the art of d efense must constantly be in
transformation; it is not exempt from the general l aw of this world: stasis is death’”
(Virilio, 1986, pp. 12--13). This is truly a maxim at the heart of Civilization V. The
fog of war masks strategic resources and mus t be traversed through to uncover
those resources. The only codified bonus to stay ing put is increased happiness.
But, even then, the only use for maintaining positiv e happiness is to build points
towards a Golden Age, which provides an empi re with bonus production and
culture points as well as increased gold income . In other words, its only use is to
facilitate other forms of victory, all of which requir e exploration. The only
civilization that remains in relative stasis is Ven ice, which cannot build more than
one city. However, one of Venice’s unique abiliti es is the option to purchase city
states using gold, enveloping them into the Venet ian empire: expansion. And,
even so, Venice tends to rank extremely low in c ompetitive rankings compiled by
players such as FilthyRobot (2015) and shared within communities.
To return this argument to Trouillot, exploration is an act celebrated by the game,
championed as the means by which success as an empire is achieved.
Celebrations of exploration, Trouillot argues, my thologizes history. “They impose a
silence upon the events they ignore, and they fill t hat silence with narratives of
power about the event they celebrate” (Trouillot, 1 995, p. 118). This mythologizing
process in-game strips the world of all history p rior to exploration. Natural wonders
serve no purpose except in the resources they p rovide, for example. Indeed, the
game’s swarms of “barbarians” are part of this p rocess. The game spawns
barbarian encampments across the map, whic h do nothing but produce
unwaveringly hostile military units with technol ogy equal to the game’s most
advanced player’s technology (so once the mo st advanced player can produce
musket-wielding troops, so can the barbarians) . These barbarians are generic:
they have no history and no aim besides destruc tion for destruction’s sake,
attacking the players relentlessly no matter the o dds. While the game might be
said to be nothing more than its code -- and these barbarians are literally nothing
more than that, they have no history, objectively s peaking -- they are emblematic
of Trouillot’s point: context reduced to obscurity u nder the celebration of
exploration. Civilization V’s barbarian s have no history or identity precisely
because the game celebrates exploration under the same framework as we
celebrate Columbus’s landing in 1492. Except here the game does not need to
render those details obscure in this mythicizin g of history. It can place those
“contextual details” in a position that begins with obscurity.
Much of Civilization V has a homogenizing effec t, and this in parallel relates to a
further point Fuller and Jenkins make on charac terization: “In Nintendo’s
narratives,” they claim, “characters play a mini mal role, displaying traits that are
largely capacities for action… The game’s dep endence on characters… borrowed
from other media allows them to simply evoke those characters rather than fully
develop them” (Fuller & Jenkins, 1995). Althoug h here they have fictional
characters in mind, a similar technique is empl oyed in Civilization V. Leaders are
borrowed from history, but are ultimately only st rategic vessels for the game’s
action. The course of the game clearly has little t o do with accurate historical
narratives and so becomes distilled down to str ategic decisions. The only
differences between civilizations that impact ga mes (rather than the cosmetic
differences) are in their unique units, buildings an d abilities. The choice of which
leader to play as is therefore a strategic decision . Does the player prefer
England’s unique ability, or India’s? In creating an arena with more competitive
integrity, each civilization finds their entire histor y filtered into two unique
buildings/units and one unique ability. Their histo ry does not provide them with a
unique starting point, nor does it alter their ambitio ns as a society. That is up to the
player, who makes a strategic decision in choo sing their civilization, not a narrative
one.
It has been argued that this element is, in fact, a redeeming feature. Ted
Friedman, writing on Civilization II in 1999, is not unaware that the gam e’s
“dynamic of depersonalization elides the violen ce of exploration, colonization, and
development even more completely than the sto ries of individual conquest
described by Fuller and Jenkins” (Friedman, 1 999, p. 145). However, he argues,
“what makes this palatable… is the abstractnes s of Civilization II. Any nation can
be the colonizer… Barbarian hordes are never specific ethnicities; they’re just
generic natives” (Friedman, 1999, p. 145). This degree of abstraction is echoed by
other critics. Rolfe Daus Peterson, Andrew Jus tin Miller, and Sean Joseph
Fedorko, for instance, agree that the game’s actu al historicity is “entirely
inaccurate,” but contend that its historical accura cy lies in its conceptual simulation
of diplomacy, geopolitics, resource manageme nt, and so on (Peterson, Miller &
Fedorko, 2013, p. 43).
In a way, abstraction is precisely my point. Tho ugh far from Friedman’s
celebration of the equal opportunity of all nations to conquer, and of the non-
ethnicity of barbarians, and of Peterson, Miller an d Fedorko’s praise of the
conceptual accuracy of the simulation, this abst raction becomes a totalizing and
damaging force. (Peterson, Miller & Fedorko 20 13 do pick up on this in their
conclusion, a point I will return to later.) What I me an by this is that the ethnicity of
the barbarians does not matter because they do not matter; the game’s interface
presents them as a mindless hindrance to the bu siness of empire-building, rather
than as a native people with their own history, cu lture and values being removed.
While all nations do have the opportunity to becom e the imperial force themselves,
they also cannot do anything but be that. In the slow march to the state of
eponymous “civilization”, the game presents a Eurocentric imperialist narrative of
socio-political and technological development t hat morphs into a Western Cold
War narrative as the only way to do that.
Affect and Education
With this imperialist narrative coded into the gam e’s mechanics, what role does
the player then take on? Can the player of Civilization V be considered a detached
observer, or does s/he write this colonial history herself/himself by immersing
herself/himself in the gamespace? Diane Carr c riticizes the kind of analysis this
essay has so far been engaged in, arguing that “th ey (the players) share a
tendency to focus on the game’s rules and pseu do-historical guise, at the expense
of its more playful, less quantifiable aspects” (C arr, 2007, p. 222). Indeed, while
my analyses thus far have largely agreed with w hat Kacper Poblocki in 2002
argues about the Civilization series (I, II and III at that point) -- succinctly put as
“every Civilization… has an equal opportunity t o become the United States of
America” (Poblocki, 2002, p. 168) -- Carr is righ t to insist on a fresh angle. Drawing
on Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s influentia l Rules of Play, she reminds us
that “policy makers, sociologists and civil serv ants looking to scientific simulations
for evidence and players enjoying games… w ill differ in what they are looking for,
and how they are likely to interpret and apply wh at they find” (Carr, 2007, p. 225).
The game’s Western bias and forced imperiali st narrative is clear and codified, but
in examining the role of the player in writing postc olonial histories it is important to
question how players interpret the game’s rules . From that, perhaps it will be
possible to forge the links between modes of pla y inside the “magic circle” of the
game and the larger ideological issues of postco lonialism. I am, of course, not
saying that players of Civilization are staunch Western imperialists who fe tishize
the British empire. That would be a very damnin g conclusion from an author with
over 200 hours of playtime on Civilizati on V clocked. Rather, what needs to be
considered is the extent to which the process of rehearsing this narrative through
gameplay is problematic.
There is a certain rhythm to 4X games like Civilization V. It is intrinsic to the name
-- the player chooses her or his civilization and then explores, expands, exploits
and exterminates. S/he then finishes the game an d repeats the process, playing
this narrative again and again. In Civilization V, this proce ss is set in no fantasy
world: In playing, the player rehearses the devel opment of Western civilization.
Anna Gibbs’s chapter “After Affect: Sympathy, Sy nchrony and Mimetic
Communication” provides a useful framework through which the player’s
interaction with the gameworld can be understoo d. Although she is not writing on
videogames specifically, she remarks that “rea ding fiction produces new affect
states in us, which change not only our body che mistry, but also… our attitudes
and ideas as we shaped from a narrative a struc ture of meaning” (Gibbs, 2010, p.
193). This, she says, is the result of mimicry: “a response to the other, a borrowing
of form” (Gibbs, 2010, p. 193). Civilization V might not be breeding a generation of
ruthless imperialists, but it may well be reinforc ing notions of history that focus on
the West and champions war in a way that celeb rates singular events to the
detriment of their contexts, to refer back to Trouill ot. Josef Köstlbauer uses the
word mimicry, in this case borrowing from Joh an Huizinga, to apply directly to
simulation games such as Civilization, rema rking that “simulation games inhabit
the spaces in between play and reality” (Köstlba uer, 2013, p. 172).
Carr takes a ludic approach that suggests a deg ree of separation between the
game inside the “magic circle” and the world ou tside. She draws on David Myers
who, after analysing online discussions betwee n dedicated players, concludes
that the “most frequently discussed aspects of th e game… are the relationships
among in-game signifieds -- without reference to or really any concern about their
significance (or signification) outside the game c ontext” (Myers; quoted in Carr,
2007, p. 227). However, many have been calling for just that connection between
in-game signifieds and the real world histories to which they refer. John K. Lee
observes in his study that “students did develop factual knowledge” by playing
Civilization III (Lee, 2010, p. 23), and co ncludes that “teachers might want to
consider using games such as Civilization III in whole class learning activities”
(Lee, 2010, p. 24). On the website LearningWorks for Kids, Civilization V is given
a “Learning Quotient” of 9.6 out of 10, reflecting “ho w well the media balances
entertainment quality with the potential for improv ing thinking skills and academic
proficiency” (LearningWorks for Kids, n.d.). Edw ard Webb reflects on his use of
Civilization IV to teach undergraduate students, stating that he has had
“increasing success” in helping “upper-level u ndergraduates grasp the nuances of
complex political, social, and economic proces ses” (Webb, 2013, p. 3). These
suggestions are all made under the implicit ass umption that the history provided in
the Civilization series is accurate and the refore suitable for learning.
There are, of course, more nuanced discussion s that do problematize the content
of the series. While Jeremiah McCall makes a compelling case for the use of
historical simulation games such as Civi lization in secondary education , he
acknowledges that the series “is not particularly well suited to retracing the exact
path of a specific historical civilization” (McCal l, 2011, p. 45). He instead focuses
on the broader, conceptual elements that such ga mes can reinforce, such as the
importance and balance of geopolitical relations hips, resource management, and
so on. While precise historicity is not part of the Civilization series’ remit, “as a
general model of how civilizations develop and interact, however, Civilization
offers some highly defensible models,” citing the link between productivity and
happiness as an example (McCall, 2011, p. 24) . Similarly, as discussed earlier in
this paper, Peterson, Miller and Fedorko remark also on the usefulness of the
simulating aspects of the Civilization series, but temper that with an
acknowledgement that the series “reveals a bia s toward representing all of history
as inevitable and constant scientific advancem ent and social progressivism” but
that aspect “affords room for critical thinking and critique” (Peterson, Miller &
Fedorko, 2013, p. 44). Adam Chapman in his pa per “Is Sid Meier’s Civilization
history?” stresses that if the games are to be con sidered histories, then they must
be treated as such: subjective, biased narratives guided by Althusserian
ideological pulls (whether consciously or unco nsciously) (Chapman, 2013, pp.
312--332).
In this vein, responsible employment of Civilization games in educational contexts
should include some degree of engagement with the games’ embedded imperial
ideology. However, not all proponents have incl uded this caveat. Carr (2007),
quoting Myers, is right to bring up the distinction b etween in-game signifieds and
external sign systems, but the discussions she quotes are conducted between
dedicated, high-level players on online forums w ho clearly have an interest in
optimizing their play for victory: an inherently m ore ludic approach. Advocacy for
Civilization games to be used a s learning tools suggests in itself that this
disconnect is not universal or intrinsic to the gam e. Indeed, the game makes an
explicit connection by using the names and like nesses of historical leaders and
setting up game scenarios based on historical e vents. So, the question then
becomes whether or not using 4X games as ed ucational tools is intrinsically
problematic. Lee provides examples of his stud ents’ educational progress, noting
that “students we [sic] able to define embassy an d were able to articulate at least
one problem that beset Jamestown settlers” (Le e, 2010, p. 23). This might seem a
laudable (if small) achievement for the use of Civilization III in education; but here,
Gibbs’s notion of mimicry is helpful. Students le arn what an embassy is in basic
terms, but in playing the game they also rehears e the historical narrative coded
into the structures of gameplay that frames the im plementation of embassies in
the game. As a specific example, embassies in the game are implemented
through the diplomacy menu. If the target leader a ccepts the player’s request to
set up an embassy, their capital is revealed to th at player through the fog of war.
Therefore, a strategic move can be to establish a n embassy under the guise of
diplomacy simply to get the precise location of th eir capital city marked on the
game’s map so that the player can attack. This g ameplay mechanic is not based
off of real world military or diplomatic strategy, an d yet comes packaged with the
concept of diplomacy-through-embassy in-gam e. The same can be said of
elements discussed previously in this essay. A student might learn the etymology
of the term “barbarian”, but may receive with it the dehumanizing colonial ideology
that surrounds in-game barbarians.
Postcolonial theory on the writing of history and th e treatment of colonized voices
allows us to consider further why games in the Civilization series are problematic,
particularly when used in education. In “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak contends that there is a nee d to avoid “reintroduc[ing] the
subject through totalizing concepts of power and desire” (Spivak, 1988, p. 279) in
colonial discourse and analysis. She is concer ned that critics who fail to
acknowledge their own ideological framework in which they live, observe and
write, merely end up generalizing and co-opting subaltern peoples into the
Western narrative. With a framework such as Civiliz ation V, the subaltern in
Spivak’s terms is inextricably suppressed wit hin the game’s rules. There is no path
to victory that does not employ the internal and ex ternal logics of empire
structures, nor are there any avenues for subalte rn insurgency. Spivak discusses
a “violent aporia” (Spivak, 1988, p. 206) within w hich the female subaltern lies.
Constricted by native patriarchies and foreign im perial hegemonies, there is no
structure within which their voice can be heard, no mode of interpretation for their
acts.
Similarly, Trouillot notes the trend in history to si lence events and zeitgeists by
modifying the structure in which they are read. U sing the example of the Haitian
Revolution of the late 18th century to the early 19th century, he claims that “the
chain of events that constitute the Haitian Revolu tion was unthinkable before these
events happened” and then as they did happen th ey were instead “systematically
recast by many participants and observers to fi t a world of possibilities” (Trouillot,
1995, pp. 95--96). In other words, overarching gra nd narratives deny the inclusion
of contradictory voices, and in doing so silence those voices. Defined by a coded
set of rules, Civilization V presents a f ramework that is even less impenetrable.
Not only do the tragic acts of female subalterns ( to use Spivak’s examples of sati)
go unregistered, they simply do not even exist in the gameworld. Indeed, women
themselves are a scarcity, appearing almost no where except as leaders (who
belong to a significantly less oppressed class o f people anyway). These insurgent
acts, the cries of the subaltern as it may be put, do not need to be ignored or co-
opted because the game’s framework does not even permit their existence in the
first place. Under these terms, then, Civilization V becomes a pure manifestation
of the imperial grand narrative that allows for no c ompeting narratives, blind to
even the nuances within that narrative -- such as class issues. When employed in
historical education, it is this conceptualization o f history that is being engaged
with.
Western Space
Bernadette Flynn’s work can offer a more spatia lly-oriented way into this dilemma:
As reinforced by Foucault and Soja this notion of space as empty,
static and disembodied has become central to a Western ontology of
spatial creation and representation. We can see how this has become
the standard for the majority of computer games in which the objects
and avatars are made up of 3D geometry placed in an empty and
bounded space (Flynn, 2008, p. 120).
This is also the case with Civilization V -- indeed it is immediately apparent in the
hex tile formation of the gamespace. “Navigation of the computer space is a
cultural act where social practice, gender, and id eologies of representation are
inoperable for the gameplay event”, Flynn claim s (2008, p. 141). Building on the
work of space and place by theorists such as L efebvre, it becomes increasingly
clear that the lived, navigated space is inseparab le from that space’s ideological
constructs. And why should that not also be the c ase in games? Writers including
Flynn, but also Brett Nichols and Simon Ryan h ave equated gameplay to Edward
Soja’s “third space” and Lefebvre’s “lived spac e” which -- while being distinct from
the empirical and representational spaces that p recede it -- are also inextricably
involved in it: “Space operates as a metaphoric, expressive, and sensual
language operating in a dialogue with the embodi ed subjectivity of the player”,
concludes Flynn (2008, p. 144). This spatial app roach would suggest that even for
the more ludic player who has detached in-gam e signifiers from real-world sign
systems moving through the gamespace is ine scapably ideological.
Figure 4. Screenshot of a typical space in Civilization V with “ Hex-Grid” and “Yield-
Icons” view options switched on.
If moving through the gamespace is a social, ide ological, representational act in
terms of that player’s relationship with space, the n we must return to how players
move through that space. This brings us back to the game’s rules and structure,
by which movement are heavily guided and inc entivised with spatial expansion. In
high-level strategy, two types of macro game pl an are referred to as “tall empires”
and “wide empires”. “Tall empires” harbour few cities (usually three to four) and
funnel their resources into them, typically aimin g for a cultural, diplomatic or
scientific victory. “Wide empires”, by contrast, expand aggressively and rapidly,
intending to hold large amounts of wide-distribute d territory for stronger military
positioning and monopolization of resources. Bu t both methods are intrinsically
engaged with space and expansion. Unlike in re al wars, borders do not need to be
recognised by other civilizations -- they simply exist. This is a Western conception
of space too: Geopolitical territories are coded in to the game. Stepping into
another’s territory without an open-borders agree ment automatically declares war.
The game enforces Western conceptions of sp ace even more strongly than in real
life, both in more abstract terms -- geometrically as Flynn mentions -- and
geopolitically, forcing a discourse of land owner ship that is inescapably imperial.
To return to Spivak, this quashes even further the possibility of insurgency, which
is obliterated spatially from the game map. The o nly agents that are able to
traverse space are those belonging to empire -- all others are reduced to statistics
and sub-humans: (un)happiness, barbarians, production levels.
Conclusions
The question posed asks whether or not Civilization V is a problematic game in
terms of postcolonial thinking, how and why that might be, and what implications
that might have. Ignoring the role of the player for o ne moment, the game’s
structures and rules clearly develop an imperia list narrative. This is not something
the game’s developers have tried to hide. Even a side from the 4X genre, the first
line of the game’s description on S team challenges players to “become R uler of
the World by establishing and leading a civiliza tion from the dawn of man into the
space age: Wage war, conduct diplomacy, disc over new technologies, go head-
to-head with some of history’s greatest leaders a nd build the most powerful
empire the world has ever known” (2K Games , 2010). For why this kind of game
might be problematic, the player must be include d into the equation, along with the
game’s standing in videogame culture and wide r society.
The game’s position in the videogame world is well-established. Over eight million
sales on Steam solidify it as one of the c urrent most-played games, and as
established earlier in this essay, the title has gain ed some traction more widely for
its perceived educational capacity Carr (2007) argues for a level of detachment
between in-game signifiers and the real world id eologies they refer to. When
players talk about expanding into enemy territory , killing the natives as if they
were annoying flies, and using religion purely as a tool to further their empire, that
discourse is not seeping into real world discour ses on empire. For Carr (2007), the
barrier between in-game signifiers and real wor ld sign systems is impermeable --
one is not influenced by the other in any significan t way. There is certainly true in
this line of argument: Civilization V is not bre eding a generation of ruthless
imperialists.
However, this detachment is not universally ste adfast. Those who call for the
series’ use in education expose a permeability in the passage of in-game signifiers
to real world applications. They hope for students to play the game, make
connections between events, objects and conce pts within the game and reapply
those to their real world counterparts. The game exposes a different problem
which pertains to how players engage with a ve rsion of history that is presented
from a limited and limiting Western perspective and the structure that, as Spivak
and Trouillot -- and, for example, the subaltern his torians -- illuminate, silence
voices and histories that run counter to the West ern narrative of progress and
modernity linked to imperialist notions of civiliz ation and conquest. Taken on its
own, therefore, it seems logical to conclude that C ivilization V is unsuitable for a
balanced, globalized education of history and co lonialism. However, there could
well be success found in balancing the use of the Civilization series with
discussions of these problems, using the game as a way of engaging students
and introducing the basic elements before discu ssing postcolonial thought through
a critiquing and problematizing of the game’s un derlying structures and of
historiography itself. Such an approach would al ign with Adam Chapman, who
proposes that “approaching the historical videog ame from the historian’s
perspective allows us to allay many concerns and criticisms by showing that these
are epistemic issues that are inherent to history rather than the videogame”
(Chapman, 2013, p. 327). Studies of an empirica l nature on this topic of education
using Civilization could also go a long wa y to revealing more comprehensively the
affective impact of the games on students’ and pl ayers’ view of history and
colonialism.
Endnotes
[1] Caught between “patriarchy and imperialism , subject-constitution and object-
formation, the figure of the woman disappears, no t into a pristine nothingness, but
into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figu ration of the ‘third-world woman’
caught between tradition and modernization… a violent aporia between subject
and object status”, as she puts it in “Can the Suba ltern Speak?” (Spivak, 1988, p.
206).
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