Here, then, we come to the fatal flaw that undermines almost all applications of this argument. Its proponents would seemingly have you believe that the games of which they speak are rhetorically neutral sandboxes, exact mirror images of some tangible objective reality. But this they are not. Even if they purport to “simulate” real events to one degree or another, they can hope to capture only a tiny sliver of their lived experience, shot through with the conscious and subconscious interests and biases of the people who make them. These last are often most clearly revealed through a game’s victory conditions, as they are in the case of Colonization. To play Colonization the “right” way — to play it as the designers intended it to be played — requires you to exploit and subjugate the people who were already in the New World millennia before your country arrived to claim it. Again, then, we’re forced to confront the fact that every example of a creative expression is a statement about its creators’ worldview, whether those creators consciously wish it to be such a thing or not. Labeling it a simulation does nothing to change this.
The handling — or rather non-handling — of slavery by Colonization is an even more telling case in point. By excising slavery entirely, Colonization loses all claim to being a simulation of real history to any recognizable degree whatsoever, given how deeply intertwined the Peculiar Institution was with everything the game does deign to depict.
Jimmy Maher, at it again, being such a treat to read.
“A creative expression is a statement about its creators’ worldview”. Very powerful and very true. It is the reason why creators have to expand their knowledge, to go broad rather than deep but I digress.
Game developers still don’t do a great job at grasping consequences and outcomes. It’s not a surprise that we talk so much more about tools and new tech or production than morality, gameplay and what kind of fictional reality game developers create for their players.
Spending all kinds of energy to avoid accountability doesn’t scream maturity.