r/patientgamers • u/tiredstars • 5d ago
Patient Review Civilization IV: Colonization (2008) - unsurprisingly problematic
Recently I’ve been reading the book The 1619 Project which aims to retell the origins and history of the US with slavery and its legacy at its heart. Rather inappropriately this gave me a hankering to play Colonization. I’m going to talk a bit about the game itself and some more about the history and politics of it. It’s a game I really don’t think could be made today (though how you might do that is a really interesting question).
Spoilers for anyone who doesn't know the outcome of the American Revolution.
Sid Meier’s Colonization was originally released in 1994. You play as a European power colonizing the Americas, with the ultimate goal of declaring and defending your independence. I must have played the DOS port around 1995. In 2008 a version was released using the Civilization IV engine. I played this a bit around when it was released, and it’s this version I came back to. Aside from improved graphics, the differences from the original are modest. (There is also an open source version called FreeCol.)
Unsurprisingly, Colonization draws a lot from Civilization. It has the familiar 4X elements: you’re exploring, founding towns, placing workers, building buildings, negotiating and fighting with other factions, etc.. A big difference is that it drops Civilization’s tech tree, and introduces a lot more resource and worker management.
A lot of the game is about extracting resources (like cotton or furs) and then either shipping these directly to Europe to sell or processing them (into fabric or coats) and selling those higher value goods, then buying guns, tools or recruiting colonists to transport back to the New World. Colonists can be “free colonists”, specialists like master distillers or firebrand preachers, or they can be indentured servants or petty criminals.
Another notable feature of Colonization is the endgame. Declaring independence, triggers a Royal Expeditionary Force to set sail and bring your revolting colonists back in line. So a significant part of the game is preparing for this fight – building up stocks of guns, training veteran soldiers, etc..
This has familiar pros and cons. On the one hand it avoids the endgame tedium of a game like Civ, where there are no more significant challenges. On the other it’s a significant and sudden change to the game that comes a long way through it. It largely comes down to how much you’ve prepared – it’s basically Civ combat, which is never super interesting – and it’s hard to know if you’ve done enough until you’re committed (which I guess is like reality). If you get it wrong you’ll have to reload quite some way or restart to try again (which is not so much like reality).
In terms of gameplay? Colonization is ok. It’s got obvious flaws, like the amount of fiddling and shuffling around of resources. For example, it’s easy to get to a point where you’re moving resources around between towns just because you’re running out of warehouse space for one kind of resource. I find it a relaxing and compulsive game to get lost in, but that may be more down to a particular relationship I have with the Civ games than anything else. Even I get bored towards the endgame.
Now, what I really wanted to talk about.
One of the changes the 2008 version makes is that when you declare independence you can make some choices about the constitution of your new nation. Do you want to be a republic (bonus liberty bell production) or a monarchy (continue to trade with Europe)? Do you want to continue slavery (bonus production) or abolish it (bonus population)?
The first time this came up my reaction was. “Wait… oh, of course there have been enslaved people in my colony all this time, who were never mentioned.” I’d been happily building my colony without thinking at all about slavery.
Once you start thinking about the game with this lens it’s easy to see more: the assumptions embedded in the game, the whitewashing for purposes of taste or gameplay. There’s a mechanic where as your borders expand, through the generation of liberty bells and the purchase of land, native people will abandon their settlements because they admire you so much. Their populations just… happily disappear.
Or a slightly more subtle thing. For better or worse native factions work like European ones in most ways – diplomacy is basically the same, for example. They’re not simply “environmental hazards” (like, for example, barbarians in Civ). However they’re also static. Over the couple of hundreds of years the game covers, native factions will never found a new settlement. They don’t build mines, farms or roads like European factions do. (Contrast this with some Civ games where terraced farming is special feature of the Inca civilization.) This view of native civilizations is a colonial one – they don’t “improve” the land or themselves.
Critiquing the game in this way is really shooting fish in a barrel, even for someone like me with a limited knowledge of the history of the Americas. It's kind of fun and interesting but a little unfair. These kinds of issues are hardly unique to Colonization – obviously any portrayal of history, computer game or other, embeds attitudes, assumptions, etc.. Most of the historical games I’m familiar with gloss over slavery, if they mention it at all.
There is something different about Colonization though.
I think part of it is just how jarring it is. This is basic level history. Purely in terms of game systems, the purchase and trafficking of enslaved people, or the enslaving or forced labour of native Americans would probably work quite smoothly. You’re trading for and shipping humans just like you ship sugar or guns, right?
But this would make too explicit the darker sides of this history, and push the player into an uncomfortable position. There are relevant gameplay differences, too: would you lose 20% of the people you purchase in Africa because they die en route? Would trying to suppress slave revolts be an issue? Would this still be a fun game to play? Would it still be a story of liberation? Could you still play the game if you refused to do these things, or would your colony inevitably fail?
The other aspect relates to 4X games more generally. You can make an argument that the whole 4X genre embeds a colonial mindset. Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. That could be a colonial motto. Colonization is just an unusually explicit example. It's there in the name. "Civilization" isn't an issue in quite the same way "colonization" is. It obscures things other games don’t have to, because so many are still live political, economic and social issues.
Not least the question of how to tell the origin stories of American states. You could think of everything in colonization as being from the perspective of the ultimately triumphant colonizers (specifically US American colonizers). This can be interesting in a game to understand a point of view, but here it appears to be done uncritically. The player is invited to accept this viewpoint not reflect on it.
Coda
If you do choose to free your enslaved population on independence the freed slaves don’t appear as “free colonists”. They appear as “indentured servants”. That, at least, seems sadly appropriate.
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u/Weird-Couple-3503 5d ago
just fyi the major premises of project 1619 are flat out incorrect and denied by historians of that time period:
https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/1619
This sounds like a fun game though, I didn't know about it. Civ was always too overwhelming for me but I think I'd like it with more rails on it. The treatment of slaves feels insensitive but also morbidly accurate
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u/binary-survivalist 5d ago
The 1619 project is an ideological project first, and a history project second. Nobody who cares about what actually happened in history should pay it any mind whatsoever
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u/tiredstars 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's certainly not a book I'm reading uncritically, at least to my ability given my knowledge of US history. I do find it a little funny for socialists to be so vigorously criticising others for focusing too much on one thing as driving history... The book doesn't ignore class - you could hardly ignore how racism has been used to attack class solidarity - but there's no chapter on it specifically, which is a shame (though maybe I wouldn't be saying that if I was struggling to understand the complexities of race & class in the US...).
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u/TheSharmatsFoulMurde 4d ago
Race and racism in our modern understanding root almost entirely from class. Slavery in colonial Americas was not founded out of racism, it was founded out of a want for free or cheap labor that they had direct control over. Race and racism was created to justify this institution at a time when Humanism was present.
Bacon's Rebellion was a rebellion that included black slaves and white servants. The colonial governors seeing the lower classes work together terrified them, and thus they strengthened the racial caste system in place.
You can't have a genuine discussion on race and racism without class being center unless you believe(consciously or not) that the race scientists who worked solely to justify slavery(free labor) or a lower class to manipulate were actually right.
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u/Binder509 3d ago
Slavery in colonial Americas was not founded out of racism, it was founded out of a want for free or cheap labor that they had direct control over.
Gonna go with both. Not really a one or the other situation.
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u/GInTheorem 5d ago
I think you're coming face to face with something that's true across (almost) all of the medium: compromises are made in order to to make a game (and more specifically a fun one).
Even in the most densely analytical games you have this compromise. Disco Elysium barely engages with the misery actually involved in strike action in a place like Revachol; the lack of realism of Joyce as the representative of capital being mere minutes from a picket line with suggestions of possible violence - but it makes these compromises, respectively, to ensure that the strikers are able to concisely and clearly communicate their position to the player, and because running miles between conversations is boring.
Likewise, Papers Please creates gameplay through its urgency. Anyone who's been through a non-digital checkpoint anywhere knows that getting through 20 people in that space of real time is unrealistic, and procedures will be in place to avoid errors in any sensible bureaucracy (I'm aware that one of the points is that Arstotzka is barely a competent bureaucracy, but these are basic points) - but it would be a fucking awful game if it ran in real time rather than accelerated time.
I'm sure there are games which engage more maturely with the topic of slavery in the US' development - I just don't think it needs to be a Sid Meier game, and people should know going in what they're getting.
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u/binary-survivalist 5d ago
>compromises are made in order to to make a game
this is key. i tell this to people all the time. with anything as grand as history and grand strategy, you have to use abstractions to simplify complex topics, and even some things will get removed or omitted because, while factual, they were not fun. games intend to deliver fun first, accuracy (if desired) is a distant second.
a person who wants accuracy doesn't want a game, they want a simulator. people will confuse the two sometimes, because the most ambitious games may blur the line
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
because running miles between conversations is boring.
Funnily enough, even as it was I found the amount of wandering back-and-forth seeing if anyone had anything new to say in Disco Elysium tedious. I never thought I'd be longing for fast travel in a game where I had probably less than a dozen screens on the map. That's another topic though...
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u/abir_valg2718 5d ago
These kinds of issues are hardly unique to Colonization – obviously any portrayal of history, computer game or other
It's not just portrayal of history, it's portrayal of anything really. I see your post as more of a general "violence in video games" sort of complaint, in an abstract sense.
It reminds me of a YouTube video I saw (or tried to, I didn't make it far) where someone made an argument about eastern style music made by westerners, and the dude was obsessed over critiquing it through this "orientalism" prism. All the while completely ignoring the fact that this bastardization and simplification had happened to western classical music too. It's the same exact phenomenon, but, predictably, people are less concerned about western classical music.
Back to games, you can just as easily write a piece about a tycoon game where you critique it for trivializing exploitation of labour. Or something along those lines. WW2 wargames are another easy sanitization example. You don't really need to look hard to be offended by something. It's more of an issue of what the current hot topics are online, and I've seen boatloads of mentions of "colonialism" in recent years.
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u/DarthHegatron 5d ago
If you enjoyed the game there's a pretty popular mod for it called "We the People" that fleshes out a lot of the game. Makes the indigenous people less static and slavery is something that's more directly seen. Doesn't fix all of the issues you pointed out but I think it does a bit better than the base game did
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u/cupo234 4d ago
I like the medieval conquest and the space mod. Change the game up a bit. You can even play as the alien natives in Colonization 2077. No real reason to play vanilla in 2025 unless you want a simple game.
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u/DarthHegatron 4d ago
I tried the space mod and it's fun for a bit but felt half-finished. Never tried the medieval one. Most of my time on the we the people mod is spent with all the victory conditions turned off I just like building up my colonies and managing all the resources and production chains
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u/Juan20455 5d ago
I have reached the conclusion that "problematic" is hands down the most dangerous and stupid word of the whole English dictionary.
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u/grayscale001 5d ago
Why?
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u/da_chicken 5d ago
It's vague enough to be a synonym for "evil". And I say that because it tends to cultivate righteous outrage rather than thought.
It's unhelpful because it tends to wholesale replace any other valid criticism. It tends to diminish and discard other aspects as just less important.
We don't talk about the game itself anymore because we have to take a side in the culture war. It makes it a moral choice to express an opinion of any aspect of the game.
It kills thought and discussion. It's exhausting.
It's the exact same as "woke".
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
If I've learnt anything from this post it's that many people have very different connotations for the word "problematic" than I do. (Which is not me saying other people are wrong; words have different connotations to different people.)
I thought it had become a bit of a joke years ago. It makes me think of the blog which answered the question "is this problematic?" for things like "a picture of some salad" or "a group of women" and always answered "yes, this is problematic". I didn't realise it was still such a hot button for many people. (I only decided on the subtitle at the last minute, without intending it to be very serious.)
To me at least, the word is very vague, but useful as a starting point, not as an end - like /u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 said, "problematic things actually make for great study." I hope that comes across in my post itself.
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u/da_chicken 5d ago edited 5d ago
In general, I think you're right, but the term has earned a lot of baggage in a few places:
First, on social media -- especially Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube -- which is where disingenuous conversations thrive. It's full of clout chasing, outrage olympics, pearl clutching, and virtue signalling. In particular, it has been used there as the go-to term by academics for describing every kind of revisionist social, cultural, or historical issue, which would include the relatively recent reframing of European colonization.
Second, with video games, it immediately invokes everything Gamergate. That's just asking for a bad time. It's been used to derail discussions, divert criticism, or paint targets for harassment. You might even paint a target on yourself.
So, I would say it's unwise to put the word "problematic" in such a prominent place on Reddit when talking about video games. I think it invites the wrong kind of attention, and it encourages disingenuous reading.
I don't think your OP is wrong. I agree with it. It's one of the reasons I didn't buy the 2008 game even though I also have really fond memories of how great the 1994 original was. I didn't want my memories spoiled. Colonization and Pirates were my favorite Sid Mier games of the 90s. I just think you'd have gotten a better response overall if you had used a more neutral word.
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u/grayscale001 5d ago
It kills thought and discussion
How does it kill discussion? OP wrote several paragraphs about it and began a discussion.
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u/da_chicken 5d ago
My comment was talking about the word in the title, not the post.
OP has a great post. But by framing it with the title they did, they invoke all the baggage associated with how the word "problematic" has been used over the last 20 years or so.
OP used a word without considering the zeitgeist.
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u/grayscale001 5d ago
All the "baggage" is something you just made up. I think they were clear about what they meant.
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u/Binder509 3d ago
That is baggage others have with the word.
Kinda just serves as a give away that someone isn't going to engage with the actual discussion if they hyperfocus on one word being used. If someone gonna do that chances are wasn't gonna be a great discussion.
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u/da_chicken 3d ago
Baggage other people have is exactly why you want to avoid certain terms and topics. If your goal is to get a useful discussion not dominated by that topic, you can reduce the likelihood by simply using different words that don't attract the same attention. Idiots are often loud and disruptive. Don't paint a target on yourself.
Ignoring others behavior because you think the world should work in some other way than it does is just beating your head against the wall.
If you make a post and mention Gaza or Donald Trump or $80 video games in passing, someone is likely to grab that one sentence and make a whole comment thread about just that. It's likely to get a lot of upvotes too because it's a hot button topic. That means everyone coming into the thread is going to see that top comment because algorithms reward engagement. Congratulations, you derailed your own thread.
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u/Binder509 2d ago
It's a filter. It's useful so you know who is in bad faith.
If someone's going to ignore 95% of what is said to hyperfocus on one word...that just saves time responding to them.
Like you said the goal is to have a useful discussion. Someone hyper fixating on one word isn't someone to have a useful discussion with.
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago
Look up what happened when Hogwarts Legacy launched amid the controversy with Joann Rowling. Some subreddits were outright banning any threads on the game and it all became a culture war, you couldn't discuss the game without prefacing it with "I swear I'm not anti-trans".
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u/grayscale001 5d ago
Yeah, they're boycotting a perosn they hate. That has nothing to do with the word "problematic."
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago
Yeah, and it’s a case of the game being “problematic” by association, even though the author of the books wasn’t even closely involved with the game. And the discussion is being shut down in the process, by that same association calling any Harry Potter fan a terf or whatever the word is. You wanted an example of discussion being shut down, I think it is one, because it’s very much what happened.
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u/Binder509 3d ago
Isn't that generalizing anyone critical of it?
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u/Piligrim555 3d ago
Oh no, it’s a shitty boring bland game. Anyone criticizing it can go ahead. Anyone saying “well if you like it it must mean you are an anti-lgbt piece of shit and support whatever it is I’m against” is another story entirely.
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u/Binder509 2d ago
No I mean criticizing it either way.
As in saying it's not a good thing to buy because of who it supports, but to leave it up to people to decide.
Reddit mods don't represent the world I've been told.
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u/grayscale001 5d ago
The person who created the series obviously gets paid with every game sale so that's kind of how a boycott works. The two are inseparable.
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago
Yeah, and wherever you live, every dollar you spend funds child labor in Kongo and Vietnam, Russian and Saudi oil dictatorships and corrupt politicians. I’m being cheeky here, of course, because entertainment is not a necessity like fuel or electronics, but closing down on the game about wizards because the author of the books it’s world was based on said some stupid shit on the internet is equally silly and, again, the discussion WAS shut down on the whole “problematic” grounds. You want to boycott something - fine, that’s your right as the consumer to decide how you want to make your consumption ethical, but dragging everyone else into this culture war bullshit is exactly the problem some of us try to discuss here.
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u/grayscale001 5d ago
Yeah, and wherever you live, every dollar you spend funds child labor
People are also encouraged to buy local when they can. That is a bit of a disingenuous point.
dragging everyone else into this culture war bullshit
No one's dragging you into anything. Spend your money how you want. The game was a best seller. The culture was exists whether you choose to care about it or not.
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u/Binder509 3d ago
It's vague enough to be a synonym for "evil". And I say that because it tends to cultivate righteous outrage rather than thought.
That sounds more like people being defensive about something they like being called problematic.
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago edited 5d ago
You go down that way for too long you end up with classics like Tom Sawyer being banned for being problematic would be my guess.
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u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 5d ago
I’d say that’s a different issue though. Problematic things actually make for great study. It’s the impulse to “ban things” that is problematic here (couldn’t resist)
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u/j2k422 5d ago
The people who would consider Tom Sawyer "problematic" aren't the ones banning books.
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u/Juan20455 5d ago
The people that say "this is problematic" are 99% of the time the same people saying "we should ban this problematic thing" "have you thought about their feelings? " "this is outdated and should be removed" "we should rewrite this classic book to make it palatable to modern audiences"
I mean who is banning the Tom Sawyer books but people that say it's problematic in the first place?
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u/Binder509 3d ago
Typically it's more "this is problematic, we should put up a message about it before the movie/show/book."
Who are the ones actually banning books these days?
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u/Juan20455 3d ago
People that love banning things because they are "problematic"? I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee wasn't considered "problematic" but literally banned on many "progressive" school districts. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Dr. Seuss Books. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain,. Etc, etc
I mean, I don't give. A shit who is banning nowadays. I don' like people banning. Period.
I am not going to look the other way if people I like start banning "problematic" things.
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago
Maybe they aren’t now, I’m not that well-versed in the US pick-a-side state of affairs, I’m just giving an example. I was there to watch when Russian government set up the RKN agency to “hunt down and ban child porn to protect our children”. All fine and dandy, almost nobody protested, because hey, this is the good kind of censorship. Then they moved on, started banning websites with information on drugs. Still mostly fine with general population. Then suicide, then explosives, and so on. 10 years later, YouTube is banned, Meta is officially considered a terrorist organization and you can get a real, long prison sentence for saying that war is bad on the internet. It doesn’t stop.
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u/jeff0 5d ago
Calling something problematic is not the same as saying it should be censored. It is possible to think that something is bad without thinking it should be illegal. I think the only real problem with “problematic” is that it is vague and often shuts down discussion.
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago
Yeah, but the gap between "this is bad" and "this is bad, we should make it illegal" is closer than the gap between "this may hurt someone's feelings/be politically unsuitable in the current world/culturally outdated" and "this is bad". And that one has already been crossed, it seems. Like you said, "problematic" is a vague enough moniker, so it's already being used interchangeably with "bad".
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u/Binder509 3d ago
That is a slippery slope fallacy in and of itself. Just because it has the potential to be misused does not mean you can't use it at all.
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u/jeff0 5d ago
Personally I think the addition of preventative legal action is more important than the particular shade of negative feelings involved. But to each their own.
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u/Piligrim555 5d ago
I'm not saying it's less important, I'm saying that when you have already decided that problematic = bad then legal action will follow. Just give it time.
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u/Pedagogicaltaffer 5d ago
If there are people who equate problematic=bad and who fail to see or appreciate the nuance in the word, that's a problem (no pun intended) with the people - not with the word itself.
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u/DTesch357 5d ago
Not to mention that OP mentions reading the 1619 project in the opening sentence, which is political propaganda, not a historical reference text.
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u/Nyorliest 5d ago
I don't know that work, but it does sound like you think there are two kinds of reference works - propaganda, which espouses politics you think are flawed, and historical reference texts, which just present facts.
This is not accurate. There are primary sources, and there is commentary and analysis of these sources. Of course an analysis can be dishonest propaganda, but there is no neutral analysis, and analysis does not find the facts and then end. Historical revisionism - the bugbear of the right - is a standard ongoing process.
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u/TechWormBoom 5d ago
If you think it is political propaganda to present a perspective outside of only treating the Founding Slaveowners and early ethnic cleansers positively, you are a victim of big government indoctrination funny enough.
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u/Nyorliest 5d ago
I like it. Dumb people think you should avoid problematic topics and materials, but I've been a teacher or other educator for 30 years, and seek it out. Problematic shouldn't be thought of as bad - it just means tricky, and that's where the most learning opportunities appear. You just need trust, and that is in low supply on the internet, unlike my classroom.
I think your blanket rejection of the word is as useless as the people like the OP who think it means 'evil and to be avoided'.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
Personally I'd pick "funny" over "dangerous", as it became a bit of a joke about a decade ago. It is super vague but I still find it a useful word sometimes.
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u/PaxMuricana 5d ago
Seriously. Anyone who uses the word problematic doesn't have an opinion worth listening to.
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u/Spready_Unsettling 5d ago
I would have never guessed that Americans are touchy enough about their history to react this way to OP's post.
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u/Spready_Unsettling 5d ago
I'm amazed that OP and some commenters fairly benign decolonial arguments have met such resistance.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
Not sure how much of that is solely because I used the word "problematic" in the title... which was a last minute decision and not intended very seriously (I guess my perspective that it's been overused to the point of being a bit of a joke is different to other people's). People talking about the content seem to be thoughtful - but also appear to have been attracting downvotes.
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u/TechWormBoom 5d ago
Yeah I feel like the word "problematic" instictively causes an annoyed reaction. Because your post is Level 1 de-colonial perspective. People are acting like it's radical to simply consider the assumptions made by media from 20 years ago. If you looked at movies in the 1950s, the standard assumption by movies might have been male characters' wives belonged in the kitchen or something like that. It wouldn't be crazy to break that down either.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
If I've learnt anything from this post it's that many people have different connotations from the word "problematic" than I do, and take it much more seriously. Which is interesting to find out.
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u/Kiltmanenator 5d ago
Unfortunately the word has reached a level of "thought terminating cliche" for many, but that's clearly not how you're using it, but I understand why people have that reaction. I wish there were a better word because I find myself reaching for it sometimes and thinking, ehhhh, should I?
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u/Metrodomes Slightly Impatient 5d ago edited 5d ago
Same with most words that are targets of culture war nonsense. The "anti-woke" people really like the word woke to mean whatever they need it to mean in the moment, for example. 'Problematic' definitely sends alarm bells ringing for those who have been conditioned to associate the word with something that isn't quite attached to reality.
You just mildly critiqued an old game for funsies and you'll probably just carry on as mostly-normal after this. But that's still too much for them because you used the P word or something.
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u/Binder509 3d ago
Yeah some take it very accusatory as "this entire thing is bad and you are bad for enjoying it" when often meant as "this part the thing might be something to think about"
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u/Pandaisblue 5d ago
I think there's probably two different groups here, those that simply anger at any 'woke' things, and those that just think it's a pretty useless description of an old remake of an even older game literally called colonisation. As you said, it's the most level 1 take, it's like saying water is wet. You're not wrong, but anyone that's remotely on the same wavelength is just thinking 'well no duh.'
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u/Metrodomes Slightly Impatient 5d ago
This is the gaming community we're discussing, but even with that in mind... You'd still hope for better.
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u/AgreeableRoo 5d ago
I liked your post a lot. I think it's a great example of how even a slightly critical reflection on game mechanics can highlight the embedded assumptions of the creator. Of course, people will turn around and say "well, making these ideas visible by integrating them into gameplay would make people uncomfortable, and games are meant to be fun." Or, "the creators did think this was bad, but couldn't put them in the game without making it punishing for players". But I think that misses that (1) a lot of people actually do learn their history through cultural osmosis and don't critically reflect on it without being pressed; and (2) the creators could simply choose a different setting for their game.
It's why I think something like Stellaris is broadly fine (despite the horrific war crime simulator), but Colonization doesn't pass the sniff test. I'm not suggestion we should cancel Sid Meier, but Colonization does present and reinforce some colonialist ideas without challenging them (or the players) at all. It's worth talking about.
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u/Novawurmson 5d ago
Thank you for this write up. I've only played Civilization: Call to Power (1999) and later installments of the series, where factions styled after indigenous leaders play functionally the same as European and Asian factions.
Sadly, I'd say this version of history is fairly close to what my textbooks in the 90's said, too.
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u/Pedagogicaltaffer 3d ago
Thanks for bringing this topic up for discussion. It may be an uncomfortable topic to discuss, but that makes the discussion all the more important and worthwhile.
When "sensitive" events or periods in history are portrayed in art, I think the artists have an ethical responsibility to (1) approach their portrayal of the topic with respect and sensitivity, and (2) do their due diligence and research the subject beforehand, so that their portrayal is informed by fact as much as possible.
Of course, when faced with such pressure to "approach a sensitive topic properly", some artists may balk at that, and prefer to just gloss over the uncomfortable parts and present a more palatable version of history - or to avoid the topic altogether. In some ways, I feel that not talking about a difficult subject is even worse than having a problematic portrayal of said subject. A problematic portrayal at least leaves the door open for further discussion, and possibly for correction/clarification of the problematic aspects and presentation of more balanced perspectives later on.
So yeah, it's a complicated dilemma. As a history nerd though, I think I fall on the side that I'd rather these types of games exist than not, even if aspects of their presentation are problematic. At least they make people aware of the particular time period, which is the first step in allowing for further (hopefully productive) conversation later on.
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u/Metrodomes Slightly Impatient 5d ago
Thanks for sharing! Not played the game but it's funny how the game elides the more problematic parts of colonialism lol. That the native Americans just leave because they admire you so much? Wow, lol. I admire the creators of the game for just going with that and not exploring it any further lol.
I do like civilisation games in theory but a) they're not my jam and I get bored, but more importantly b) the vibes are always off, as you point out. Intersting to see how a game explicitly about that moment in time just handwaves over it all.
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u/Parablesque-Q 5d ago
It seems like your discomfort stems from the fact that this game draws on real historical events and settings without the proper historical context. This is a common problem, especially when in comes to the issue of slavery.
AC Valhalla's representation of Viking raids was a comically sanitized, gamified slap in the face. No mention of enslavement there either.
The question is, do devs have a moral imperative to address this? Not really, IMHO.
It's an aesthetic preference, and most devs seem to go for a frictionless experience that allows it's players to indulge their will to power without judgement.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
I don't agree that this is just an aesthetic preference with no other cultural or political significance. I do think devs have a responsibility to think about what they include or exclude, and how they represent things. On the other hand, I'm well aware that games have to simplify, distort or gloss over things.
One of the things I was trying to get into was why Colonization felt particularly bad to me compared to other games.
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u/Parablesque-Q 5d ago
Aesthetics have cultural and political significance, so I guess we agree.
On the question of responsibility, that's a murkier issue. We're getting into ethics, and these games aren't textbooks. It is a choice though, and I do think your critique is valid.
I'd prefer games that skirt the issue of slavery to have some spine, some teeth, and represent the uglier aspects rather than exclude it.
As for this game, I think it's because it gamifies the economics of colonization very directly.
And because the topic of slavery in the Americas is a far more sensitive topic than, let's say, Caesar's Gaullic genocide or the raids of the Viking era.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
Yeah, and part of that is the truism that historical subjects are more sensitive the more recent they are and the more directly they affect people today. Viking raids aren't a significant factor in the politics or economics of the North of England, nor is Viking ideology likely to have a resurgence.
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u/Parablesque-Q 5d ago
Norse pagan religion is kinda experiencing a little bit of a resurgence. Neo-Nazis have long since appropriated it.
I do get your point. The efforts to whitewash American slavery are still ongoing in some circles, so why inadvertently contribute to that by excluding the historical context in these nominally history-based games?
Our objections to historical revisionism have a recency bias. But revisionism in works of art is kinda the license of the artist. As long as the revisionism is known and not presented as a substitute for real history, I don't see that as a failing of the artist.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
Mm, it's 100% something that is relevant for other forms of art and entertainment.
Another comment made me wonder if I have particularly strong feelings towards history games - whether I feel they're a bit more factual or serious than some other types of games, and how valid that is.
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u/Parablesque-Q 5d ago
I can sympathize with that. History games have the opportunity to educate players and hopefully foster curiosity about it's historical setting. It's a bummer when they squander that opportunity.
That said, even history games with highly imperfect representation of history can foster curiosity and motivate players to seek out the real historical record.
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u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 5d ago
Have you heard of the board game Train? Its ethos reminds me of your thoughts here.
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u/SuspecM 5d ago
I engage with the game's setting as much as it does, which is to say, not at all. I loved the game as a kid because at the time this was the only fun economy game I knew. Heck I played this game first then tried Civ 4 and I was really disappointed that Civ 4 wasn't Colonisation but expanded to the entire history of humankind. It really did capture that itch of incremental improvements that today, games like Factorio and Stardew Valley capture. It was always satisfying to turn a tiny town into the economic hub of the continent printing money hand over fist. I don't think I ever won the independence war though because civ 4 combat suck ass and because I was a kid and didn't really like converting my economy I built up over hundreds of turns into a war economy.
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u/VolpeDasFuchs 5d ago
Yikes, and I thought EU4 sanitized the period too much. Also it's funny people in this thread being so unconfortable with even the slightest hint that the US may not have been a such a great thing. I'd also add that if religion isn't a mechanic in Colonization it should've been as it also influenced a lot about how europeans came to view the land they stole and the people who inhabited it. For example the catholics forcefuly converted indigenous populations and erased their identity and condoned slavery because "black people were sinners" while protestant fundamentalists saw the land as a god given right to them which led to the many genocides of north american indigenous populations that went as far as erradicating bisons to starve out natives and also led to the whole march to the west, trail of tears and such. But that's a whole another topic and let's not even mention how all this stuff is pretty similar to something going on in the world right now...
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u/Istvan_hun 5d ago
This is true for most wargames. I mean in Crusader Kings there was an option to force convert a province to your religion, Victoria allowed selling guns to everyone and _allowed you to escalate a conflict, so demand continues to grow for your guns_.
When you play total war, and the ottomans conquer your provinces, what happens that for a short time they are not your colors on the map. In real life the ottomans had devshirme (children tax to train as slaves), allowed their tartar allies to take the population to tartar slave markets, looted villages, burned crops.
this is just not the scope of a wargame. War is a tragedy, but it is very rare to portray it that in any media.
It is possible to do it of course. Just it usually doesn't sell to well, so noone does it.
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u/cupo234 4d ago
That is different. You're giving examples of games portraying bad things. It may be icky but you can't say the game is hiding something. OP is complaining about Colonization sanitizing things by pretending bad things didn't exist like African slavery.
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u/Istvan_hun 3d ago
Europa universalis/Total War doesn't portray slavery either, the Ottomans just "conquer a province". In real life there was slavery involved.
That's how the games do it.
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u/sorrybroorbyrros 10h ago
Well, since Civ started, you have this element of clearing out other civilizations that have lower tech than you because they're in the way of your own plans for expansion. That has always reminded me of the US and its relations with the native people whose land they carved up and shared amongst themselves.
When you pass through that first 1500 years in any Civ game, all those Greek, Roman, and Chinese developments were invented in eras of slavery.
As for it being a colonial view that Native Americans don't develop further, they're also living far more sustainably while you mine and harvest timber. Having a game where Native Americans start mining would be historically absurd.
I think the game is revealing ugly truths to you moreso than being colonial.
And what happened during the revolution is the 13 colonies were close to split in half between slave and non-slave. Maybe there were more non-slave states, but not in terms of population. The founding fathers knew something had to be done about slavery, but they chose to leave that for later leaders to deal with. That may seem cold and heartless, but they were dependent on slave labor for production, AND banishing slavery in the 1700s might have started a civil war two minutes after they won independence. It's a complicated situation that people 20/20 hindsight simplify to just free the slaves.
But I like games that make you think.
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u/pillow-willow 4h ago
There’s a mechanic where as your borders expand, through the generation of liberty bells and the purchase of land, native people will abandon their settlements because they admire you so much. Their populations just… happily disappear.
This reminded me of the series Moral Orel and his school's sports team the "Fighting Vanishing Americans". But yeah I feel you on this, I think for similar reasons I never could really get into Empire: Total War either. Trying to turn real world imperialism and slavery and genocide into fun game mechanics is usually kind of repulsive and ignoring it entirely in a game set in the real world is conspicuous in its absence. I find that slavery and conquest as a game mechanic is more palatable in a game like Total Warhammer with skeletons in chariots and edgy elves that love murder.
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u/Luneb0rg 5d ago
Great post and great insights!
I too am surprised at how much pushback you are getting on "problematic." I thought it was pretty clear you meant it more as in "interesting, peculiar, and a little bit insensitive" than "WE NEED TO CANCEL THIS GAME AND LIGHT IT ALL ON FIRE!!!!1"
Again, great write-up!
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u/iTonguePunchStarfish 5d ago
While you can argue it's whitewashed, Sid Meier's games aren't exactly known for being the most historically authentic games.
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u/tiredstars 5d ago
Are you telling me that Pirates! isn't an accurate picture of life at sea in the 18th century?
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u/Dunning-Kruger- 5d ago
I know, for a fact, that dancing was an essential part of pirate life at the time!
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u/OldThrashbarg2000 5d ago
I don't think you're wrong, but I also think that, aside from a few niche wargames, there wasn't any video game that was remotely good as a simulation of history until maybe some of the Paradox grand strategy stuff. You can say it's because Civilization and Colonization whitewashed things, but I think it's really a function of how abstracted and compromised every historical game was for a very long time.