HISTORICAL ACCURACY IN GRAND STRATEGY GAMES: A CASE STUDY OF SUPREME RULER: COLD WAR B. Srivastava and M. Katchabaw G. Geczy Department of Computer Science BattleGoat Studios The University of Western Ontario Lynden, Ontario, Canada L0R 1T0 London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7
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[email protected] KEYWORDS BattleGoat’s two previous titles, Supreme Ruler 2010 (BattleGoat Studios 2005), and Supreme Historical accuracy, grand strategy games, video Ruler 2020 (BattleGoat Studios 2008) were set in games the future relative to their release dates, but still required much historical accuracy. Units, terrain, ABSTRACT political maps, even technologies had to tie into real world work that has been done, or was known Historical accuracy is an often overlooked and to be worked on. Fortunately, in both of those understudied topic in the study of realism in video games, from the moment the player starts, the games. For some games, however, this topic is world can diverge fairly rapidly from a historical both an extremely interesting and important one, path, but developers do not always have that quite deserving of attention. luxury. In this paper, we investigate many of the issues and In this paper, we examine a variety of realism and challenges of historical realism in video games, accuracy choices made in historical strategy games, with a focus on strategy games. In particular, we organizing them into several categories: cosmetic, examine these issues and challenges with reference strategically important, balance, and legal or social to Supreme Ruler: Cold War, developed by issues, and discuss the various trade-offs in each BattleGoat Studios, providing both researcher and area.