Narrative Representation and Ludic Rhetoric of Imperialism in Civilization 5

Narrative Representation and Ludic Rhetoric of Imperialism in Civilization 5 Masterarbeit im Fach English and American Literatures, Cultures, and Media der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Malte Wendt Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck Zweitgutachter: Tristan Emmanuel Kugland Kiel im März 2018 Table of contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Hypothesis 4 3 Methodology 5 3.1 Inclusions and exclusions 5 3.2 Structure 7 4 Relevant postcolonial concepts 10 5 Overview and categorization of Civilization 5 18 5.1 Premise and paths to victory 19 5.2 Basics on rules, mechanics, and interface 20 5.3 Categorization 23 6 Narratology: surface design 24 6.1 Paratexts and priming 25 6.1.1 Announcement trailer 25 6.1.2 Developer interview 26 6.1.3 Review and marketing 29 6.2 Civilizations and leaders 30 6.3 Universal terminology and visualizations 33 6.4 Natural, National, and World Wonders 36 6.5 Universal history and progress 39 6.6 User interface 40 7 Ludology: procedural rhetoric 43 7.1 Defining ludological terminology 43 7.2 Progress and the player element: the emperor's new toys 44 7.3 Unity and territory: the worth of a nation 48 7.4 Religion, Policies, and Ideology: one nation under God 51 7.5 Exploration and barbarians: into the heart of darkness 56 7.6 Resources, expansion, and exploitation: for gold, God, and glory 58 7.7 Collective memory and culture: look on my works 62 7.8 Cultural Victory and non-violent relations: the ballot 66 7.9 Domination Victory and war: the bullet 71 7.10 The Ex Nihilo Paradox: build like an Egyptian 73 7.11 The Designed Evolution Dilemma: me, the people 77 8 Conclusion and evaluation 79 Deutsche Zusammenfassung 83 Bibliography 87 1 Introduction “[V]ideo games – an important part of popular culture – mediate ideology, whether by default or design.” (Hayse, 2016:442) This thesis aims to uncover the imperialist and colonialist ideologies relayed in the video game Sid Meier's Civilization V (2K Games, 2010) (abbrev. Civ 5) by Firaxis Games, including its two expansions Gods and Kings (2012) and Brave New World (2013), and the visual and ludic means through which they are communicated. In doing so, it will also seek to aid in closing the rift between narratology and ludology and offer a solution to their ongoing divide within the field of game studies by providing a methodology that combines both approaches to greater effect while acknowledging their mutual dependencies. While academics have, on multiple accounts, determined that the Civilization series “presents a clear narrative of empire-building that [...] is problematic when set against postcolonial theory” (Ford, 2016), none have supported their claims through an analysis dedicated to the game in its entirety, let alone with a thorough investigation into its ludic qualities. Additionally, their narratological focus often rests on the uncovering of specific narrow ideologies, avoiding the bigger picture that postcolonial theory and cultural studies in general can offer: “Some argue that the series propagates the supremacy of strategic management, while others contend that the series teaches an ideology of techno-utopianism through scientific progress. A third perspective critiques the series from a Marxist perspective, while a fourth perspective maintains that the series teaches the supremacy of geographic location.” (Hayse, 2016:446) Although these exemplary perspectives are valuable in their own right, they do upon closer inspection hint at a greater underlying ideology that combines these sub-theories, with strategic management alluding to the Enlightenment, techno-utopianism as an example of meta- narratives, and the supremacy of geographic location as a euphemism for environmental determinism, all three of which will be looked into in this thesis as some of the many pillars that have served to legitimize imperialism. One of the most prevalent perspectives in regards to the series' ludic values, however, is the claim made by strong advocates of pure ludology, such as David Myers (2003), that the series' “meaning-structuring process” was designed merely to support the ludic reward system, which is why any resulting ideologies must be coincidental and thus outside the realm of critique. Hayse (2016:446) summarizes this popular approach as the idea that “any supposed historic and cultural significance of the Civilization series 1 takes a back seat to its ludic – or game-like – qualities”, shifting “strategic systems management to the foreground as the cultural impact of video games fades into the background.” This approach tries to render the entire mechanical nature of the game only meaningful inside the game, but meaningless outside of it. Since the mechanics only serve to create gameplay, not to construct a narrative, the analysis of their conveyed ideologies must therefore be irrelevant. This view is the result of the deep ludo-narrative divide within game studies, which has shifted many ludologists into a defensive stance, according to which video games as an inherently interactive medium may under no circumstances be analyzed through the lens of narratology, as this would not only not do the game justice, but also fail to acknowledge the uniqueness of the medium. This claim, however, falls prey to two fallacies: Firstly, it assumes that ludology can create knowledge about rules and goals without the use of representation, a tool of narratology. Secondly, it assumes that the knowledge about games exists in a vacuum, within the confines of which goals and rules are the final conclusion beyond which there is no other knowledge to be produced. This thesis will neither focus on the narratological surface design of Civ 5, nor will it stop at determining its inner mechanical workings. Instead, it will use both approaches in tandem to extract evidence of imperialist ideology from both the surface design as well as the underlying rules and goals. While the analysis of narrative representation can rely on an established toolset, however, the connection between gameplay and communicated ideologies requires a relatively young joint ludo-narrative theory, which will be provided by Ian Bogost's 'procedural rhetoric' as introduced in Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2010:ix): “[V]ideogames open a new domain for persuasion, thanks to their core representational mode, procedurality. I call this new form procedural rhetoric, the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures.” This approach counters the nowadays diminishing, extreme ludological portrayal of games in a vacuum and falls in line with the growing realization within the field that interactivity, the unique element that sets this medium apart from all else, carries – like all other works of culture – meaning, and thus the potential for an ideological bias: Clara Fernández-Vara (2015:8) suggests that “[r]ather than limiting ourselves to thinking about games as a medium to convey messages, we can think of them as artifacts that encode certain values and ideas, which players decode and engage with as they play.” In the same vein, Egenfeldt-Nielsen (2016:35) even uses strategy 2 games (like Civ 5) as an example for games' communication of value systems: “Games are communication media: Games may communicate ideas and values. For instance, a strategy game may teach us how complex systems like cities or warring nation states work.” Accordingly, this thesis will look to one of the most popular strategy games in the world as an ideal candidate for an ideology-focused close reading. The Civilization series has developed into a staple of the strategy game genre since the series' inception in 1991. Its fifth installment, released in 2010, still holds the place as the most popular strategy game on the leading PC gaming platform Steam with peak concurrent player numbers of more than 30,000 as of March 2018, even after the release of Civilization VI (2K Games, 2016), including its first expansion Rise and Fall (2018), which falls short of its predecessor by more than 5,000 concurrent players. This makes Civ 5 the 15th most played Steam game as of 2018, according to the public daily statistics provided by Valve's Steam app itself (Newell, 2018). Even more staggering, however, is Civ 5's amount of total sales, through which “the game has become one of the most-played, with over eight million sales, making it a strong presence in modern videogame culture.” (Ford, 2016) Due to its mass appeal, combined with the game's representation of culture and history, the field of game studies has determined the Civilization series as culturally significant and thus in dire need of study, resulting in a “proliferation of scholarship that surrounds [the] series [...]”, (Hayse, 2016:445) many of which refer to its popularity as the “pinnacle” (Dor, 2016:276) of turn-based strategy games, and Civ 5 in particular as “one of the most successful and definitive works” (Ford, 2016) in its genre. It is, however, the genre's level of complexity, that, according to Dor (2016:281) has kept many experts in the field from analyzing strategy games in greater detail, as the time required to fully grasp their underlying systems can prove intimidating: “Methodological investigations in strategy analysis should address this in the future by showing how a complex activity such as strategy can be meaningfully archived.” While this thesis is not an exercise in methodology at its core, it will nonetheless offer one potential solution to this challenge by developing and executing a methodological approach specifically tailored towards the investigation into Civ 5's imperialist ideologies. 3 2 Hypothesis While the goal of the thesis revolves around the unveiling of ideologies related to imperialism within Civ 5, its hypothesis needs to distinguish the unique nature of the ludo-narrative approach from the preceding works with similar purpose.

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