Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Player Processes, and Transmedial Connections
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Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Player Processes, and Transmedial Connections Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Ross Clare September 2018 Abstract Videogames are a hugely popular entertainment medium that plays host to hundreds of different ancient world representations. They provide very distinctive versions of recreated historical and mythological spaces, places, and peoples. The processes that go into their development, and the interactive procedures that accompany these games, must therefore be equally unique. This provides an impetus to both study the new ways in which ancient worlds are being reconfigured for gameplayers who actively work upon and alter them, and to revisit our conception of popular antiquity, a continuum within popular culture wherein ancient worlds are repeatedly received and changed in a variety of media contexts. This project begins by locating antiquity within a transmedial framework, permitting us to witness the free movement of representational strategies, themes, subtexts and ideas across media and into ancient world videogames. An original approach to the gameplay process, informed by cognitive and memory theory, characterises interaction with virtual antiquity as a procedure in which the receiver draws on preconceived notions and ideas of the ancient past to facilitate play. This notion of “ancient gameplay” as a reception process fed by general knowledges, previous pop-cultural engagements, and dim resonances of antiquity garnered from broad, informal past encounters allows for a wide, all-encompassing study of “ancient games”, the variety of sources they (and the player) draw upon, and the many experiences these games offer. The first chapter demonstrates the interrelationships between cinematic and televisual representations of antiquity and their action- based videogame counterparts, illustrating the ways in which branches of the onscreen tradition are borrowed and evolved in their new interactive forms. The next collective of ancient games locates “general” ancient materials in role-playing videogames, where familiar signifying materials are deployed to confront players with colonial spaces. The next chapter investigates the other side of ancient gameplay in foreign lands by investigating at how strategy games can become entrenched within a standardised visual vocabulary to provide one-sided, even troubling, impressions of classical empires represented in these gameworlds. The final chapter concretizes the transmedial, broadly cultural approach to ancient games and their play processes by presenting first-person videogames as multi-layered, multifaceted texts in which disparate, but specific, nodes of interpretative traditions surrounding ancient materials are drawn upon to immerse players in stylised, narrative- rich and thematically deep experiences. This study therefore has three primary motivations: to see how antiquity is represented and made functional in the interactive medium; to see how this affects player reception of these ancient games; and to build an interconnected “big picture” of antiquity in videogames within a wider media environment. Contents Acknowledgements v List of illustrations vi Introduction 1 1. Theories & Approaches 14 1.1 Approaching videogames 14 1.2 History in videogames 18 1.3 The gameplay process 25 1.4 Genre frameworks 34 1.5 “Popular Antiquity” and transmediality 36 1.6 New perspectives 43 2. Finding a New Epic in Action Videogames 45 2.1 Epic games and epic films 46 2.2 God of War 50 2.3 Miniature epics 76 2.4 Interactive Roman spectacle 92 2.5 Conclusions 104 3. Postcolonial Roleplay in Ancient World CRPGs 106 3.1 Introducing role-playing games 107 3.2 Confronting colonialism in Nethergate 111 3.3 Is Titan Quest colonialist? 131 3.4 Comparing colonial experiences 147 3.5 Conclusions 152 4. Strategy Games and the “Roman language” 154 4.1 The strategy game framework 155 4.2 Constructing a “Roman language” 160 4.3 Imperium Romanum 164 4.4 Constructing “Rome” with Greeks? 175 4.5 Indie futures with managerial Rome 180 4.6 Reconfiguring classics and genre in Age of Mythology 184 4.7 Conclusions 193 iii 5. First-person Antiquity: Contemporaneity & Experimentality 195 5.1 Embodiment and perspective 196 5.2 Ancient Carthage as apocalyptic nightmarescape 197 5.3 First-Person fear & New Age spirituality in Eleusis 204 5.4 Visual Novels and Ancient/modern women 225 5.5 Conclusions 244 Not Game Over: A Conclusion 247 Bibliography 261 iv Acknowledgements This work was made possible through the financial support of the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, and the assistance of many individuals. I would like to thank my fellow PGs (and ex-PGs) for their guidance and encouragement, particularly Dr James Ford, without whom I would not be writing this today. Special thanks also to Kate Carraway, who met with me weekly over coffee to discuss our work and, more often than not, to listen to me complain. Big shout-out to my friends Jacob, Jake, Tom, Kris, Jill, Nat, and Rae, and the much-missed Ian Beeken. Without our daily conversations, I’d never have reached the end of this project. I thank all the support staff at the University of Liverpool, especially Chris Pierce, who had to put up with an awful lot of questions. I appreciate the input of every single member of the Department also, in particular Bruce Gibson for his continued support in non-thesis-related matters. Biggest thanks of all must go to Fiona Hobden, perhaps the most generous, understanding, approachable and endlessly supportive individual I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Discussion with Alexander Horn was also a fantastic source of help and inspiration. I end by thanking my Mum and Dad, my brother Jono, and my partner Charlotte Huish, whose constant support means more to me than I could ever communicate. v List of Illustrations Image 1.1: Original diagram. Images 2.1 – 2.7: God of War 3 (2010) SCE Santa Monica Studio: Sony Computer Entertainment. Images 2.8 – 2.9: Apotheon (2015) Alientrap: Alientrap. Images 2.10 – 2.12: Okhlos (2016) Coffee Powered Machine: Devolver Digital. Image 2.13: Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance (2003) Acclaim Entertainment: Acclaim Studios Manchester. Image 2.14: I, Gladiator (2015) Steel Monkeys: Next Dimension Game Adventures. Images 3.1 – 3.7: Nethergate: Resurrection (2007) Spiderweb Software: Spiderweb Software. Images 3.8 – 3.13: Titan Quest (2006) Iron Lore Entertainment: THQ. Image 4.1: Caesar III (1998) Impressions Games: Sierra Entertainment. Image 4.2: CivCity: Rome (2006) Firefly Studios, Firaxis Games: 2K Games. Images 4.3 – 4.5: Imperium Romanum (2008) Haemimont Games: Kalypso Media. Images 4.6 – 4.7: Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients (2015) Longbow Games: Longbow Games. Image 4.8: Grand Ages Rome (2009) Haemimont Games: Kalypso Media. Images 5.1 – 5.3: Salammbo: Battle for Carthage (2003) Cryo Interactive: The Adventure Company. Images 5.4 – 5.6: Eleusis (2013) Nocturnal Works: Nocturnal Works. Image 5.7: Melos (2015) Skarn: Nine Square Zone & Visual Wordplay. Images 5.8 – 5.9: Helena’s Flowers (2015) Heiden: Heiden. vi Introduction In the first century BC, a protector, or ‘Medjay’, traverses Roman Egypt, fighting occupying imperialist forces while gradually revealing a tragic past of conspiracy, loss, and death. In the twenty- first century world of today, a videogame player co-governs the actions of this Medjay, named Bayek, as this story and the world it takes place in is slowly revealed. Abandoning his hometown of Siwa, Bayek travels over sand-dunes and fends off bandits, until the horizon suddenly opens before him, a sun-kissed cinematic panorama of Alexandria materialising as the player presses ‘forward’ on her controller.1 Everything seen here, from the famous lighthouse to the surrounding farmland, can be explored, touched, even climbed by the player through Bayek. From here, the player embarks upon a mission to drive out Hellenistic soldiers from his homeland and much of Northern Egypt, before encountering and combatting the newly invading Romans. Bayek’s world is replete with Graeco-Roman architecture, material culture, politics, and people, and it is the player’s task to free Egypt from these power-hungry forces by dismantling their governing structures, killing their leaders, and destroying their constructions. Bayek’s own deeply personal story is revealed to the player intermittently in short, film-like sequences between interactive episodes, adding richness to the fiction and bringing a human element to this historical world. From meeting Cleopatra to assisting Vitruvius with his building programme and even murdering Julius Caesar at the Senate in Rome, twenty-first century technology here brings to life, in breath-taking detail, a virtual ancient world. Despite its close association with historical and archaeological records and sources, Assassin’s Creed: Origins (Ubisoft Montreal, 2017) (AC:O) is nevertheless a constructed fiction, a videogame. In the adventure that follows, the player will encounter historical figures known to us through the literary record and will discover a prehistoric alien technology as she explores pyramid tombs and the extra-terrestrial secrets buried beneath them. For Hellenistic Egypt, on the cusp of Roman occupation, acts as a background to a much greater celestial mystery. Alongside these two distinct-but-overlapping dimensions, at intervals the player returns to an Egypt of the present day, for Bayek is himself part of a simulation played by an in-game protagonist. In this in-game version of the real world, contemporary researchers access the ‘genetic memories’ of their ancestors and “play”, just like real-world players, the past lives of their lineages. The player therefore controls another player, who simultaneously controls Bayek. AC:O is but one instalment in the science- fictional Assassin’s Creed series in which players encounter rich, meticulously-constructed and detailed worlds of the past, which are themselves contained within a fictional, technologically 1 The female pronoun is used throughout.