Approval Sheet

APPROVAL SHEET

Title of Thesis: Historical Simulations and the Mechanics of Conquest

Name of Candidate: Andrew M. Arvizu Master of Arts, 2020

Thesis and Abstract Approved: __ __ Dr. Daniel Ritschel Associate Professor Historical Studies

Date Approved: ____04/27/2020______

ABSTRACT

Title of Document: HISTORICAL SIMULATIONS AND THE MECHANICS OF CONQUEST: HOW GAME MECHANICS TELL STORIES ABOUT THE PAST

Andrew Arvizu, Master in the Arts of History, 2020

Directed By: Associate Professor and Affiliate Faculty in Public Policy, Daniel Ritschel, History

Over the past decade, historical simulations have become one of the most popular genres of video games. With audiences in the millions, these historically themed games represent mass-market works of popular history. This paper studies the kinds of historical narratives that tend to predominate within the genre through an analysis of game mechanics. Using the philosophy of experiential game design, this paper contextualizes four games within the broader historiography. An emphasis is given on comparing Tory and Whig histories and also the limitations of the medium in conveying historical narratives.

HISTORICAL SIMULATIONS AND THE MECHANICS OF CONQUEST: HOW GAME MECHANICS TELL STORIES ABOUT THE PAST

Andrew Arvizu

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in the Arts of History 2020

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to the outstanding History and Visual Arts Department at

University of Maryland Baltimore County. Their assistance over the last 6 years has been invaluable in supporting my academic growth and fostering a passion for art and history. Numerous professors, including Dr. Denise Meringolo, Dr. Daniel Ritschel,

Dr. Anne Rubin, and Professor Sarah Sharp have provided essential guidance my on my academic and professional journeys. Moreover, many of the sources and present in this paper were developed with the direct assistance of the above professors.

Thanks to my parents who have supported me, encouraged me, and helped me through everything. Their constant encouragement to be something more has pushed me to become the person that I am today. Without their support, none of this would have been possible.

And, finally, thanks to Melyssa Quan. Beyond providing me with a better understanding of artistic theory, which is well-utilized in this paper, Melyssa has been there to support me in every way imaginable. Thank you for pushing me to be the best person I can be and providing me with the support to make this dream a reality.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION | 2

Literature Review | 6

Methodology | 14

Chapter Outline | 17

CHAPTER 1: Between Engagement and Argument, the Implicit Arguments in the Mechanics of | 20 Commercial Historical Simulations

Learning from Simulations | 28

The Commercial Imperative | 37

Games as Popular History | 44

CHAPTER 2: Europa Universalis and the Changes to the Genre | 47

Europa Universalis III: Historiographical Alignment through Complexity | 52

Europa Universalis IV: Shifting Ideologies through Design Philosophies | 65

CHAPTER 3: Victoria II and the Mechanics of Conquest | 76

Geopolitics and the Victorian Period | 79

Expansion, Colonialism, and Famine | 83

Justification of Imperialism: Honor and Prestige | 94

Politics, Social Movements, and Political Economy | 103

Limitations of the Medium | 109

CONCLUSION | 111

APPENDIX A | 113

BIBLIOGRAPHY | 123

Primary Sources | 127

Steam Pages | 128

Files Accessed | 129

iii

INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 2019, Paradox Interactive released Imperator: Rome. This game was set to become the company’s next flagship historical simulation, taking its place among the wildly successful Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, and Victoria. After an extensive marketing campaign, which had purchased ad space on gaming websites Steam, ModDB, and GoG, the game was released to the public. Unlike the other flagship Paradox games, Imperator faced immediate backlash. The game received a 38% approval rating and the company faced an

1 overwhelming wave of criticism from longtime fans. Among many of the complaints of cut features and bad design one criticism remained consistent. For players who expected a

“historically accurate” experience, Imperator failed to create a sense of historical authenticity. This thesis will study how games construct a sense of historical authenticity and how the constraints of the medium can often dictate a game’s historical narratives. Here, a distinction is drawn between historical accuracy and historical authenticity. The former is an adherence to the academic consensus of history whereas the latter is the use of historic symbolism to elicit a sense of the past. Although games are ultimately produced to entertain, they are also representations of the past, with political ramifications. Using historical authenticity, games can make convincing arguments about the past. Just like any other work of history, popular or academic, historical simulations align to specific historiographical paradigms. Within historical simulations, this relationship is even stronger, as these games purport to simulate not only what happened in the past, but how the past operates.

1 The game’s ratings and feedback can be viewed on https://store.steampowered.com/app/859580/Imperator_Rome. Accessed July 20, 2019. Since the time of this writing, the game’s overall rating has increased to 50%, in part due to significant price drops, free content updates, and downloadable content. Despite the uptick in ratings since the time of writing, the majority of negative comments still speak to the lack of historical authenticity.

Historical simulations, then, may be analyzed as works of popular history. Several recent scholars, notably Jerremie Clyde, Howard Hopkins, and Glenn Wilkinson have argued that games created by historians are examples of legitimate scholarship, equivalent to the publication

2 of a book. If historian-made scholarly games are examples of academic history, then commercially made and historically themed games represent popular histories. These works of popular history reach hundreds of thousands of players, and actively make arguments about how the past worked.

Unlike other mediums, a video game’s historical arguments are created through interactivity. For interactivity to exist, games need mechanics. Mechanics are the way a player interacts with the game world. In Solitaire, for example, the primary mechanic is clicking and dragging a card from the deck to the desired location. When designing games, programmers make conscious decisions about what kinds of mechanics they will include in the game. These mechanics must be concrete and quantitative, since they must be parsed through computer code.

In historical simulations, programmers who make mechanics are making historical arguments. Historical simulations are a genre of games in which players are tasked with managing an institution, usually a country, over a period of time. Programmers must create mechanics which allow players to interact with the game world as their institution. Programmers, then, must quantify the relationships within and between institutions. The developers of Victoria II, a Victorian themed game where players control a country, had to quantify the impact of

2 Jerremie Clyde, Howard Hopkins, and Glenn Wilkinson, “Beyond the ‘Historical’ Simulation: Using Theories of History to Inform Scholarly Game Design,” The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association Vol 6(9) (2012): 3–16. Similar studies can be found here: Vinicius Marino Carvalho, “Videogames as Tools for Social Science History.” Historian 79, no. 4 (Winter 2017): 794–819. And Here: Dawn Spring, “Gaming History: Computer and Video Games as Historical Scholarship.” Rethinking History 19, no. 2 (June 2015): 207–21.

changing tax policy, demographic changes, and civil unrest. In allowing players to control a country, they had to create mechanics which translated decision making into quantifiable results.

These quantifications include how likely a working class rebellion is in a country, how industrialization would affect quality of life, or how much the development of the cotton gin would affect the market for cotton, textiles, and slaves. The act of quantifying these phenomena is comparable to the work of a historian.

Since interactivity is what makes games unique from other forms of media, this study will emphasize the role played by mechanics rather than aesthetic or intentional narrative choices. Numerous articles and studies have been made analyzing the historical accuracy of games. These reviews typically focus on the dates of events, the names of generals, or the styles of uniforms. Done by both academic historians and armchair generals these studies fail to analyze games at their core. By their very nature as an interactive medium, games cannot be historically accurate. By the first turn of any game, the player’s ability to interact with the game world will have already led the game astray from the historical record. Critiquing uniforms of armies or dates of events is a moot point in a game where the player can and will create a-historical outcomes. Instead, the strongest analysis will come from a study of how the player interacts with the game and what the game allows the player to do.

Interactivity is especially important in historical simulations, since it allows games not only to explain what happened in the past, but why certain events happened. Within the constructed space of the game, all rules are limited to mechanics created by the game’s designers. As players become immersed in the game world, they begin to internalize these constructed rules. Since these rules have real-world parallels, representing tangible historical

phenomena, players are passively internalizing rules about how the real world might have worked.

More importantly, a game’s mechanics are often at odds with its outward ethical and ideological position. Within the text of most historical simulations, developers openly condemn ideologies and institutions like fascism, slavery, and imperialism. But mechanically, many of these games either implicitly privilege these ideologies and institutions, or at the very least suggest that their emergence was inevitable. Further, almost every historical simulation game relies on an underlying geopolitical world view which suggests that all nations, peoples, and races are in constant competition for dominance of limited resources. Players, who play as the leaders of their nations, are encouraged to do anything within their power to ensure they are more powerful than their neighbors. Within this context, actions like wars, colonization, enslavement, and cultural or physical genocide are presented as evil but necessary steps to maintain power and prevent one’s nation from being superseded in the global struggle for survival. Yet these games often sing the praises of liberal institutions within their text and aesthetic.

By limiting my scope to a selection of historical games produced by the industry’s leader over the last 10 years, I will be able to emphasize a specific shift in the types of historical arguments they project. Using Paradox Interactive’s flagship series Europa Universalis, I will highlight a major trend in the development of the genre. Between the late 2000s and the early

2010s, audience demand pushed developers to make more simplified, less nuanced historical simulations. This process has propelled historical simulations into the forefront of gaming, but has had a direct effect on the historiographical alignments of the genre. While all of Paradox

Interactive’s games have contained a reactionary undertone as a result of the limitations of the medium, the recent simplifications in their games have shed much of the historical context and consequences necessary for the players to properly understand complex phenomena. Whereas earlier, culpability in, say, cultural genocide would have led to centuries-long negative consequences on a player’s country, now it can be done with the click of a button and the loss of some monetary resources. This act of simplification, which was done to attract more players, has forced these games to adopt the argument that such actions were historically justifiable.

The thesis will then look specifically at Victoria II, one of Paradox Interactive’s most divisive games. The last of Paradox’s complex historical simulations, Victoria II serves as an exceptional point of analysis on what was possible before the simplification of historical simulations. Despite its complexity, the implicit requirements of creating a competitive and interactive game had a profound impact on the types of historical narratives the game’s mechanics could uphold. Ultimately, Victoria II presents a serious challenge ingrained into the genre of historical simulations, that the current paradigm of design reinforces a reactionary interpretation of the past.

The thesis will end with a look at Imperator: Rome and how the extent of Paradox Interactive's simplification of the game’s mechanics has hurt the game’s “historical accuracy.”

While all players are aware that these games do not accurately portray the past, they expect these games to feel authentic. The negative reception of Imperator suggests that gamers believe that simulations in the past have presented them with historically authentic choices through the vehicle of mechanics. Studying the kinds of mechanics that have been deployed in different

games will therefore explain what gamers believe to be historically authentic, and in turn, what implicit historical education designers are offering within their games.

Literature Review

The academic discussion surrounding history and game design is relatively young. While there have been several seminal works on the subject, many significant questions remain unanswered. Due to the nature of the field, this academic discussion is largely interdisciplinary, drawing primarily from the digital humanities, psychology, and sociology. In the short history of this discourse, there are three broad lenses which academics use to discuss video games. The first, and arguably the earliest, lens is game design. The second, and most popular, is educational theory. The third, and most useful for the proposed paper, is the treatment of games as scholarship. All three of these lenses will be supplemented by traditional historiographical paradigms.

Each of these three lenses provides useful insight into how the design of video game mechanics can shape and convey arguments about how the past happened. Each of these three academic conversations have been largely separate, with the most interaction being between games as scholarship and educational theory. By bringing all of these discussions together, I will argue that the limits of game design generate the telling of deterministic histories that leave the players little room for anything other than reactionary ethics and actions.

Even within these limits, Paradox’s historical interpretations have changed over time. By highlighting this change, I will establish a comparison between popular history in video games and academic history. History, of course, has never been an impartial science. Since its

professionalization in the 19th century, it has undergone a series of methodological and ideological shifts. In my comparison, I hope to show that the historical interpretations of video games have mirrored some of the trends of academic history. In particular, during the 10 years in question, Paradox’s historical interpretations have shifted from emulating Whiggish history to

Tory history.

My argument pulls from theories on interactivity, agency, and constructed experiences that are present in game design literature. While many basic game design books have been vital in facilitating later academic discussions about history and games, few historians have adopted the more theoretical and artistic elements of the design books. Rather than emphasizing the technological limitations of design, I will focus on the psychological and sociological limitations of play, constructed space, and immersion.

Out of the many works on game design practices, the three most relevant to my focus are

Bob Bates Game Design, Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design, and Ernest Adams’ and Joris 3 Dormans’ Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design. These three works emphasize theory over practice. Rather than focusing on the programing aspect of game design, they discuss the epistemological and theoretical experiences of playing and creating games. As a whole, they work to separate the experience of playing a game from the game itself, and discuss key concepts such as immersion, essence, and interactivity.

From these studies came two key books not on game design, but on gaming culture. The first was Evan Torner and William Whie’s Immersive Gameplay, which discussed a variety of

3 Bob Bates, Game Design (Boston: Premier Press, 2004). Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (Amsterdam; Boston : Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2008). Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics : Advanced Game Design (Berkeley: New Riders, 2012).

4 topics relating to how and why people play games. This work was seminal in assessing the psychological implications of entering into a game space. It provided a framework for discussing the constructed spaces which players enter into when players become fully immersed in a game world. Further, it raised questions as to why players willingly expose themselves to emotionally distressing games and how players socialize with other characters through the lens of their characters.

5 The second of these works was Eric Geissinger’s Gamer Nation. This work was essential in bringing the theory of genuine play into the broader academic discussion of gaming.

The genuine play that Geissinger described is a unique, child-like activity which breaks down the structures of reality and creates constructed space and structures with which the observed individual interacts. Genuine play, Geissinger argued, is rarely observed outside of childhood, since it is an involuntary act which only occurs when one’s immersion in the constructed space supersedes their conscious presence in reality. Geissinger suggested that videogames are one of the only places where adults can sometimes experience genuine play, and the appeal of games must be viewed from this lens. Using this lens, Geissinger considered modern iterations of gaming media and culture.

Paralleling these authors discussion of gaming, academic historians have been considering the role of historically themed games. The largest body of discussion on this topic has been in relation to the integration of historical games into history education. Broadly speaking, the academic community has begun to accept that the integration of games into the

4 Evan Torner and William J. White, Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Participatory Media and Role-Playing (Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2012). 5 Eric Geissinger, Gamer Nation : The Rise of Modern Gaming and the Compulsion to Play Again. (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2018).

classroom. Games, according to these authors, are vehicles of learning which can not only improve engagement, but act as a useful supplement and case studies to existing lessons.

While many books have been written on this topic, the foundational work in this field is

6 Jeremiah McCall’s Gaming the Past. This comprehensive work is aimed at history educators and discusses the integration of historical video games into the middle or high school curriculum.

It is comprehensive in its discussion and includes information on the applicability of each genre of historically themed game. McCall ultimately concludes that these games are useful in their ability to teach history beyond simple tangential learning due to the interactive nature of the medium. This assessment laid the framework for discussions of the interaction between learning and interactivity.

McCall continued his discussion of interactivity and education in two academic articles,

“Navigating the Problem Space” and “Teaching History with Digital Historical Games,” both of 7 which look at specific case studies of the implementation of games in the classroom. McCall's works were expanded on by Brad Maguth et al.’s “Teaching Social Studies with Video Games”

8 which provided specific frameworks for the integration of games into history education. This work in particular provided criteria for assessing the educational applicability of a game beyond the more generalized genre-based assessments of McCall.

6 Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History, (New York: Routledge, 2011). 7Jeremiah McCall, “Navigating the Problem Space: The Medium of Simulation Games in the Teaching of History,” History Teacher 46, no. 1 (2012): 9–28. Jeremiah McCall, “Teaching History With Digital Historical Games,” Simulation & Gaming 47, no. 4 (August 2016): 517–42. 8 Brad M. Maguth, Jonathan S. List, and Matthew Wunderle, “Teaching Social Studies with Video Games,” Social Studies 106, no. 1 (February 1, 2015): 32–36.

While authors like Maguth et al. and McCall were vital in starting the academic discussion on video games, their works did not fully assess why games were a better tool than other forms of media. A second cohort of authors, namely Martin Wainwright, Kevin Kee, and

Holly McBride would begin to look at how students can learn from the structures of video games

9 by comparing games mechanics to the historical method. McBride drew directly from McCall and Maguth, arguing that the nature of games makes them not only useful for history education by promoting the kind of inquisitiveness that can improve students’ abilities to interact with primary sources. Kee continued this assessment by observing several recent academic-made historically themed games that were aimed at teaching the historical method. He drew from designers like Bates and Schell, assessing how the inquisitive play which games promote could encourage students to engage in historical inquiry. Wainwright’s work discussed a case study of a college course that used historical video games to teach the historic method. He found that students were capable of analyzing the arguments within games, and in turn, better understood the discursive nature of academic history.

A third and final cohort of thinkers emphasized not the classroom applicability of games, but rather how gamers internalized the narratives they experienced in games. Neville et al.’s

“Literary and Historical 3D Digital Game-Based Learning” presented a bounty of knowledge on

10 how students interact with a constructed game space. They found that games cause their

9 A. Martin Wainwright, “Teaching Historical Theory through Video Games,” The History Teacher 47, no. 4 (2014): 579. Kevin B. Kee, Pastplay : Teaching and Learning History with Technology, Digital Humanities (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2014). Holly McBride, “Defragging Computer/Videogame Implementation and Assessment in the Social Studies,” Social Studies 105, no. 3 (June 5, 2014): 132–37. 10 David O. Neville and Brett E. Shelton, “Literary and Historical 3D Digital Game-Based Learning: Design Guidelines,” Simulation & Gaming 41, no. 4 (August 1, 2010): 607–29.

players to use complex mental frameworks to suspend their disbelief and enter into the constructed game space. Essentially, by allowing students to interact with systems which represent the past, players can feel as though they have had a genuine experience of what the past

11 was, even if they are aware that their experience is ultimately a fictional constructed argument.

This, in turn, facilitates a more intimate learning experience.

Stephanie Fisher’s “Playing with World War II” synthesized the works of this third

12 cohort in a case study of historically themed gamer’s educational experiences. In a series of interviews before, during, and after a high-school level unit on the Second World War, Fisher collected data on subjects’ playing habits, expectations of the unit, and knowledge of the war.

Fisher found that playing historically themed games led to three levels of learning about the historic event: tangential learning, preconditioned expectations, and internalized information.

Playing games about the past not only caused these students to learn more on their own about the period in the past, it also made students question the academic narrative that their teachers were providing when that did not align with the experiences which they had while playing. Combined,

Neville et al. and Fisher suggest that historically themed games can deeply impact the historical interpretations which students learn about the past.

These conversations can be directly extrapolated into broader arguments about how the general public interacts with historically themed games. Beyond simply picking up factual information or the preconditioned expectations that Fisher described, these works suggest that players subconsciously internalize some of the information that they receive from historical simulations. When combined directly with the nature of a constructed game space, the

11 Ibid, 608-9. 12 Stephanie Fisher, “Playing with World War II: A Small-Scale Study of Learning in Video Games,” Loading... 5, no. 8 (May 6, 2011).

suggestion that games are tools for learning means that game mechanics shape the instructions that players will learn. In short, if the games are case studies to supplement historical education, then the evidence that they present are their mechanics. Mechanics become themselves sources to be analyzed.

In a separate, but parallel conversation, academic historians have discussed the educational merit of games not as tools in the classroom but as professional scholarship. Thomas

Bartscherer and Roderick Coover’s Switching Codes was one of the first works to consider this 13 question. This interdisciplinary work discussed how a growing connection between the digital humanities and traditional humanities may change the profession in the coming years. The work suggested that integration of digital tools, both on the research and publication side of academia, would create a plethora of effective new ways to share academic knowledge.

Perhaps the most important work of this conversation is Clyde et al.’s “Beyond the

14 Historical Simulation.” This work calls for institutions to accept “scholarly games” as legitimate contributions to academia. Clyde et al. argued that the “gamic digital mode” was equally as liberating and restricting as the textual mode. Games, for example, can transcend the traditional limitations of a monograph since a game’s arguments are carried in the interactive experience. Clyde et al. were careful to differentiate their arguments from earlier writers, emphasizing the scholarly aspect of scholarly games. These games would not be created to entertain, but rather their goal would be to convey an argument. They also would not be historical simulations, since the past is distant and unknowable. Instead, they would present an argument about why some part of the past happened the way that they did.

13 Thomas Bartscherer and Roderick Coover, Switching Codes Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 14 Clyde et al., “Beyond the ‘Historical’ Simulation,” 3-16.

Clyde et al.’s findings were picked up by several other authors including Carvalho,

15 Uricchio, and Spring. Carvalho contested Clyde et al.’s criteria for the judgement of scholarly games, arguing that games must put forward new knowledge, be transparent in their research methods, and must account for the uncertainties of the gamic mode before being considered as

16 legitimate. Uricchio considered the dangers of the need for interactivity in creating historically themed games, finding that “history in the Rankean sense… is subverted by an insistence on history as a multivalent process subject to many different possibilities, interpretations, and

17 outcomes.” While Spring supported Clyde et al. arguing that scholarly games are “Not historical fiction that sacrifices history for story… , but a video game that presents original research rivaling any great work of history, transforming readers, learners, and viewers into

18 players interacting with history.”

This third and final assertion suggests that popular games can be subjected to critical historical review just as much as popular novels, plays, or films. More importantly, the emphasis on mechanics as a mode of argument pairs directly with the separate conversation on education and games. Mechanics are no longer just sources themselves, but they also represent interpretations of the past which are internalized by the player within a constructed space.

As video games have grown more ubiquitous, the academic discussions surrounding them have grown more robust. Both teachers and academics have increasingly looked to games as tools to improve their educational ability. While the scholarly merit of video games is still up for

15 Carvalho, 794–819. Uricchio, “Simulation, History, and Computer Games,” in Handbook of Computer Game Studies (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005), 327-333. Spring, “Gaming History: Computer and Video Games as Historical Scholarship,” 207–21. 16 Carvalho, 803. 17 Uricchio, 327. 18 Spring, 207.

debate, it is undeniable that users learn about the past from their experiences in video games.

Bringing together all three lenses will explain how the principles of game design have impacted the kinds of stories that are told within historical simulations. If users are learning from video games, then the games themselves represent works of popular history. Within these popular histories, certain narratives are more popular, and thereby more lucrative for a company to sell.

As works of popular history, these arguments can be contrasted to historiographical paradigms, like Whiggisim, Structuralism, and Postmodernism. These three lenses provide the necessary perspective to analyze the predominance of certain paradigms within the historical simulation genre.

Methodology

The narrow focus of this study has been specifically chosen. While there are many historically-themed games, historical simulations offer unique insight into the game design field’s interpretation of history. Historical simulations are more than just historically themed games like Assassin’s Creed or Red Dead Redemption. They place players in control of an institution, usually a country, and encourage players to interact with the course of its history.

Because these games strive to model the past, their mechanics make arguments both about what happened and why it happened.

Game code will be critical in explaining changes over time in the types of historical simulations which game developers produce. Code renders the game, which in turn, creates the

19 user experience. Unlike the actual experience, which is unique to each user, code is tangible,

19 Schell, 10-12.

text-based, and immutable. Moreover, by creating the mechanics of a game, game code acts as a primary source for analysis. If these historical simulations are works of popular history, then the code-constructed mechanics are analogous to the text of a popular history book. Just as a historian might analyze said text for ideological or historiographical leanings, this paper uses code as a point of analysis.

Code will be most useful in assessing two factors: quantification and text. Most games contain the entirety of their text in .xml, .tsv, or .csv files. As a result, I have created indexed databases of all of the language contained within the games in question. This centralized repository has allowed for discussions of changes in tone, language, and ideology over time.

Whereas text has provided insight into the games’ historical aesthetic, quantification has specifically highlighted the mechanics of historical phenomenon. This code explains how games attempt to quantify the human experience. In attempting to map historical phenomenon, historical simulations have had to quantify everything from sanitation to upward mobility, slavery to revolution.

The act of converting these qualitative experiences into quantitative data is where developers make implicit arguments. For example, developers must decide on the effects ethnic diversity, political disunity, revolution, and ideological change have on society. By putting a number behind an event, the developer is suggesting what effect a certain event had on the past.

Analyzing these numbers and the formulas therein allows for an analysis of the developer believed the past worked. Often, these decisions fall within an ideology or historiographical paradigm. Certain games, for example, may support a Whiggish interpretation of history, whereas others may present a staunch conserservative outlook.

At times, the implicit ideology of the game’s mechanics contradicts the explicit ideology of the game’s text. In the Second World War simulation, Hearts of Iron IV, for example, developers wanted to highlight the evils of fascism. Both in the game text and in their developer posts, they discussed at length how fascism was self-defeating. Mechanically, however, the quantified effects of a fascist government include higher political unity, production efficiency, and military capability. Players who adopt a fascist government are mechanically rewarded and therefore implicitly incentivized to abandon any other ideology. Despite a desire to highlight the evils of the ideology, the developers implicitly made the argument that fascism had major net

20 benefits.

I have used a database that I have constructed containing sales statistics of games on the

Steam Market. Sales figures for the games industry are notoriously elusive. Websites like

SteamSpy and SteamDB allow users to view approximate data on the sales of games on the Steam Market. While this does not account for all sales, it provides useful insight into the relative popularity of certain game series over time. The primary use of this data is to determine which historical simulations are the most popular. In judging relative popularity, exact numbers will not be necessary, provided the margins of error are equal in the assessments. This information is especially useful in surveying which historiographical paradigms produce the most lucrative games.

20 Hearts of Iron IV\common\ideologies\00_ideologies.txt In terms of mechanics, a player who chooses Fascism over democracy will have access to more features, and therefore more agency than their counterpart.

Chapter Outline

This thesis is divided into three chapters, and an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter introduces the principles of game design and the history of historical simulations. The second and third chapters highlight specific case studies and analyze the mechanics, aesthetics and historical paradigms contained within each game.

The goal of the first chapter will be to explain how historical narratives can be contained within video games. To do this, I will have to explain what mechanics are, how players interact with them, and how they affect the experience of playing a game. Further, I will use this chapter to establish interdisciplinary vocabulary, defining key concepts of “play” and “experience” as they are used in the video game industry. Finally, I will use the first chapter to introduce the changes in the historical simulation industry. Using sales data, I will prove that the industry has grown exponentially by tapping into new market audiences.

The second chapter looks at the transition from high-detail niche historical simulations to simplified popular historical simulations. It analyzes the change between Paradox Interactive’s

Europa Universalis III and Europa Universalis IV. Between 2007 and 2013, the design philosophy of Paradox Interactive underwent a radical transformation as the nature of the historical game shifted entirely. During this transformation, Paradox’s mechanics shifted from projecting a Whiggish interpretation of history to a Tory interpretation. This shift was less a conscious ideological decision than a side-effect of the changes in the demand for historical simulations. This chapter stresses the role mechanics play in conveying historiographical paradigms by tracking their change over time.

Finally, the third chapter focuses on Paradox Interactive’s Victoria II. The last of Paradox’s complex historical simulations, this game serves as an exceptional case study for what the most complex of historical simulations can hope to achieve. This chapter looks at how the need for interactivity and the limitations of the medium actually form staunch ideological walls that are difficult to overcome. Despite being more complex, thereby more capable of nuance and authenticity, Victoria II still falls back on a reactionary worldview that centers on competition. The final chapter explores why this centering occurs and examines what limits the medium place on the genre.

At their core, historical simulations are works of popular history. Their historical narratives and arguments are worthy of study because of their mass market appeal. Paradox’s most popular games sell millions of copies worldwide. Moreover, games are a unique medium with an uncanny ability to allow players to immerse in historical experiences. This unique ability amplifies the impact of the historical lessons players learn from games. While players are aware that their scenarios are artificial constructs, many feel a sense of historical authenticity when they play. In the best historical simulations, no matter how historically inaccurate, the events in the game feel plausible because the game mechanics simulate historical authenticity. Often by appealing to dominant historiographical paradigms, game designers create a believable representation of the past that can engage players for hours at a time. The games also leave them with a definite sense of how history happened and how society operated in the past. With the genre increasing in popularity, understanding the ideological underpinnings of this form of popular history education is essential.

CHAPTER 1: Between Engagement and Argument, the Implicit Arguments in the Mechanics of Commercial Historical Simulations

The year was 1851. The United States’ congress had extended slavery to all newly incorporated states as the Compromise of 1850 failed to be passed. Enraged by the perceived growth of pro-slavery interests, several northern states rose in rebellion against a strong, pro-slavery government. After several key battles in the frontier and around New York, the rebellion was put down, and the Civil War ended in a decisive pro-slavery victory.

This narrative, straight from one of my own failed campaigns in Victoria II, exemplifies the kinds of alternate stories that historical simulations have become so good at telling. Historical simulations are a popular genre of game where players take control of an institution, typically a political party or government. They place players within a specific historic time and place, and offer them the agency to change the past. Throughout the allotted time period, players will be making policy decisions, enacting tax reform, conducting diplomacy, and fighting wars. Despite the highly bureaucratic nature of these games, over the past decade historical simulations have entered into a golden era commercially. This once obscure genre of games aimed at armchair historians has now grown to be one of the most lucrative businesses in the gaming industry.

For the past two decades, the gaming industry has been a rising star in the entertainment business. Repeated blockbuster hits like Grand Theft Auto 5, which sold 110 million copies worth over $660,000,000, have caused entertainment analysts to take the gaming industry

21 seriously. EA, one of the field’s leaders, is publicly traded with a market cap of $29.02 billion.

21 Erik Kain, “Putting Grand Theft Auto V’s 110 Million Copies Sold Into Context,” Forbes, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/05/14/putting-grand-theft-auto-vs-110-million-copies-sold-into-context/ .

22 In this crowded and ever-growing market, historical simulations have followed in this trend of

23 success, with some of the most popular games selling upwards of 4 million copies.

With millions of players daily, historical simulations serve as a new genre of popular history education similar to that delivered in historical films. Rather than learning about the past on the silver screen, this generation experiences the past at home behind a mouse and keyboard.

Studying the kinds of narratives which the historical simulations emphasize will be critical to understanding this generation’s historical preconceptions. Just as historical films shaped a generation’s understanding of the American West, historical video games are forming the public’s ideas about the Second World War, ancient China, or medieval Europe.24

Although both mediums have similar effects on the public, game history cannot be analyzed with the same theoretical framework. While discussions of plot and aesthetic remain the same between these mediums, video games are unique in that they are interactive.

Interactivity necessitates and creates agency by the player, therefore limiting the linearity of the medium’s narratives. As a result, any analysis of the historical narratives in historical simulations must observe both the aesthetic and the mechanics of these games.

22 EA - Electronic Arts Inc. Seeking Alpha, accessed April 5, 2020. https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/EA?s=ea 23 The sale numbers which I am using account for the total number of games sold on the steam market. This information is available via SteamDB, a website which estimates the number of individuals who purchased a game on steam, the field’s largest distribution system. The information on sales in unofficial, and suffers from a large margin of error in the tens of thousands. In all cases, for the sake of brevity, I am averaging the upper and lower limit of sales to reach a single number. Very few game companies release their actual sales figures. The companies relevant to this paper, Paradox Interactive, Creative Assembly and Firaxis Games do not release any formal sales data. As a result, these estimations are the best possible method given the lack of information. 24 For analysis on history in film, see Robert Brent Toplin, Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood (University Press of Kansas, 2002) and Robert A Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (Harvard University Press, 1998).

Mechanics are any entity which allows a user to affect change in the game world.

Likewise, they are the core feature in the construction of the game world. When a user plays a historical game, they are not passively observing the recreation past as one would a painting or movie. Instead, they are actively engaging with the work since the work necessitates interactivity. Digital interactivity radically inverts the relationship between the producer and consumer of art. It creates a categorical separation between the creator and their audience. The creator may only create the framework in which the audience operates. The art work, therefore, is what occurs between the player and the game, not between the player and the game’s creator.

Art theorist Krzysztof Ziarek, in comparing interactive art to Walter Benjamin’s established theory on art and mechanical reproduction, argued that interactive works “are no longer just reproducible; they exist as virtual, and as such, remain intrinsically open to temporal

25 interaction and interventions.” Moreover, he concluded that these new forms of media “inscribe themselves into a fluid and futural matrix of interaction and mutations which resembles not an

26 artistic object but an art event.” While the scope of some of Ziarek’s case studies extend beyond the limitations of the traditional commercial video games, his assessment of the role of interactivity holds true. Interactivity liberates the medium from linearity and places agency in the hands of the player.

But like any other form of entertainment, the narratives within video games are constrained by the limits of the medium. Linear forms of media are constrained by emplotment: the audience is compelled to follow the narratives crafted by the author. But games are not linear media. A game’s narratives are dynamic, shaped by changing circumstances within the

25 Ziarek, Krzysztof. 2006. "The work of art in the age of its electronic mutability". Walter Benjamin and Art / Ed. by Andrew Benjamin. 220. 26 Ibid, 222.

constructed game world. The limitations of narratives within games are not tied to the kinds of stories they tell within their plot, since every player will always experience the plot differently.

Instead, games are limited by interactivity, and the mechanics which make the games interactive.

Interactivity is both the feature which makes games unique and limits the kinds of narratives which games can tell. Within the context of a game, interactivity is any way in which a game can provide feedback for a user’s inputs. Between the player and the game, there is a cyclical bilateral relationship. First the game presents players with information, then the player

27 responds to that information, and finally, the game responds to the player’s inputs.

Non-linearity similarly affects the ways in which users experience games. Because games are interactive, no two users’ experiences within a game will be exactly identical. This means that there is a separation between the experiences of the players and the actual game itself.

Renowned game designer Jesse Schell explained that “the game is not the experience” but rather

28 “the game enables the experience.” He continued, explaining that designers “create an artifact that a player interacts with, and cross our fingers that the experience that takes place during that

29 interaction is something they will enjoy.” The closest that game designers can get to controlling these experiences is shaping the mechanics which the players can use to interact with the game world.

These mechanics are designed with the aim of replicating an experience of the developer’s own mind. Whether derived from fantasy or reality, a developer uses mechanics to try to render an experience within a game. To do this, developers aim to capture what Schell

27 Bates, Game Design 18. 28 Schell, The Art of Game Design, 10. 29 Ibid, 11.

30 calls the “essence of an experience” by emphasizing specific features and ideas. Moreover, mechanics are the tools by which players enact their agency within the game world. The game world, separate from the game, is the virtual space which players enter into when they play a game. As a player processes the images that flash before them on their computer screen, they mentally construct a game world. The strongest analyses of this phenomenon center on three-dimensional games. Neville et al. discussed the construction of the game world through gameplay. When players in a three-dimensional, first person game “look” left or right, the game responds by adapting the images on the screen to simulate a horizontal pivot. This mechanic, the ability to look around, serves to support spatial reasoning within the game world. After a short time, players can intuitively reason what is “behind” them, because the game has presented mechanics that are analogous to real life.

Once mechanics come to align with a player’s own understanding of the world, the mechanics of the game become invisible to the player and the player becomes immersed in the game. Neville et. al described this phenomenon as “transparent immediacy” where affecting

31 change in the game world goes from a three-step to two-step process.

The best analogy for this process is learning to drive a car. Typically, first-time drivers focus on how far to push the pedal to go a certain speed or how far to turn the wheel to turn in time. Experienced drivers, on the other hand, can skip the first step and instead think in terms of how fast they need to go or how soon they need to turn. Rarely do experienced drivers explicitly think about exactly how far they need to push the pedal to go a certain speed. Instead, their

30 Ibid, 20. 31 "Neville et al., 609. Despite players only being conscious of two steps, Neville et al. actually argues that the middle step continues to exist, but is unconsciously performed through lucid activity.

familiarity with the act of driving allows them to regulate the speed of their car without considering the specific mechanical considerations involved.

In games, when a player is immersed, they act like an experienced driver. Rather than thinking how far they need to move a joystick, they think in terms of how they need to move.

This transparent immediacy makes games an especially impactful experience since players are able to mentally place themselves into the game world. Unlike a movie, where viewers are passively watching the film, and perhaps imagining the world from a character’s point of view, games require players to enter their consciousness into the constructed game world.

But historical simulations are games outside of the first person. Their mechanics are not looking, moving and jumping but rather raising taxes, passing laws, and fighting wars. Despite the mechanical differences, the role of immersion and transparent immediacy remain the same.

Game designers form their mechanics to be immersive across all genres and historical simulations are no different.

Foremost, historical simulations are not accurate re-creations of the past. If they were, they could not be interactive as the past only happened one way. Further, they could never be exact recreations as the exact past is itself inaccessible. Instead, historical simulations strive to present multiple, interactive narratives about the past, none of which constitute the past itself.

To do this, they are created with mechanics which aim to capture the essence of the past.

Developers model historical phenomena not as they happened but rather how they seemed to happen. Ideas like happiness, political unity, and sanitation are all abstractions of complex historical phenomena. These numbers were absolutely not a part of the past but, to capture the essence of how the past happened, developers must include these mechanics to make the game

feel historically authentic. Here, the essence of the past supersedes the past itself in importance.

Historical authenticity supersedes adherence to the established academic consensus.

All mechanics in historical simulations fall under this purview. While they are not representations of the past, they lay the framework for the user’s experiences in the constructed game world. When playing a game, users are suspending their consciousness of the real world and replacing it with a consciousness of the rules of the constructed game world. Just as the real world has stimuli, rules and reactions, so too does the game world. When fully engaged in a game, the stimuli, rules, and reactions of the gamespace supersede those of the real world, in a

32 sense, becoming real.

This remains true in historical simulations. Here, rules about the essence of the past that are provided by the game become true within the constructed game space. Players learn to operate within these rules and respond to the provided stimuli. While fully immersed in the game, this constructed essence of the past becomes an essence with which the player directly engages with. As a result, players are learning one possible essence, not of what happened in the

33 past, but rather the rules which shaped the past.

Mechanics in historical simulations, which construct the essence of the past, are therefore responsible for providing a general audience with an argument about how the past happened. But this argument is hidden within a constructed game space. As a result, uncritical players may not even realize that they are receiving an argument. While most historical simulation players are conscious that the events of their specific game is ahistorical, they may not realize that the rules which shape their games are likewise ahistorical representations of how the past worked.

32 Nelville et al., 609-10. 33 Schell, 115.

But representing the past is not the only job of mechanics in historical simulations. In fact, it is not even the most important job. The most important job of mechanics is to create a positive moment-to-moment experience which can facilitate immersion in the constructed game

34 world. Central to creating this positive experience is equipping a player with “verbs,” any

35 action which a player can do within the game change. Verbs are derivatives of mechanics, as the mechanics of a game are the rules which decide the types of verbs which a player has access to.

For the most part, providing the player with more verbs creates a more engaging moment-to-moment experience. Since video games are interactive, providing players with more verbs gives players more ways to interact with the constructed game space. The more they can interact with the space, the more players feel that the game is respecting their agency. Similarly, the more players can interact with the space, the more the space feels real, and thus immersive.

This holds true in historical simulations both in aesthetic and mechanics. Historian Dawn

Spring argued that historically themed video games aim to “immerse players in historic arts,

36 cityscapes, cultures, landscapes, music, and the act of historical thinking.” But historically themed games do not always aim to immerse players in the “rules” of how history happened.

Popular historically themed games like Assassin’s Creed are historically themed but are not a historical simulation. Players control a single character and travel through the ancient and medieval world on quests. Here, the theme is historical, but the mechanics could just as well be applied to a science fiction or fantasy battle. Immersion occurs in the aesthetic of history as players are surrounded by a “historical play space” filled with “architecture, characters,

34 Ibid, 21. 35 Ibid, 20. 36 Spring, “Gaming History,” 208.

37 landscape, material culture, and, of course, weapons.” But mechanically, players are not immersed in the past.

In historical simulations, both the aesthetics and the mechanics facilitate immersion in the past. The mechanics of historical simulations create historically authentic verbs. While not accurate, for if they were there would be no agency, the actions which players may take within the game space appear historically authentic. Passing a specific bill, zoning a plot of land for redevelopment, or negotiating a trade deal with a foreign country all appear to be actions which historic institutions may have made. While the specific conditions of these actions will almost always be anachronistic, players can be immersed in the rules which facilitate these verbs.

Mechanics in historical simulations, then, are tools which create a framework for how players understand what was possible in the past.

Learning from Simulations

Like any form of media , all games possess the capacity to influence their players. But historically themed games are especially primed to influence how people think about the past.

The close relationship between game mechanics and historical arguments makes historical simulations effective vehicles for influencing players. As a result, many history educators have considered how to use these games as tools to teach history. Within this discussion, these educators have examined the specific factors which make video games such effective tools for teaching. An assessment of the historiography of games in education sheds light on the ways in which games influence their players.

37 Ibid, 213.

Leading this discussion is Jeremiah McCall in his book Gaming the Past. This work served as the first major work on the implementation of games into the classroom. Despite being a teacher-focused project, McCall provided insight into how people learn from the games that they play. He held that “far from being merely frivolous [games] can provide deep, meaningful learning experiences, and develop creative thinking in ways unachievable by traditional

38 pedagogies alone.” He was echoed by Brad Maguth, Jonathan List, and Matthew Wunderle in

“Teaching Social Studies with Video Games” who argued that games “served as a virtual playground whereby students could look for and experiment with topics, issues, and philosophies

39 discussed in social studies class.” Combined, these two arguments get to the core of what makes historically themed games educational: they allow players to openly explore a constructed historically themed game space. By problem solving within this constructed space, players grow closer to the historically themed period within which they are interacting.

David Neville and Brett Shelton expanded on this explanation describing the three-tiered

40 relationship between the “real space,” the “virtual space,” and the “literary-historical space.”

Through immersion, players become invested within the simulation of the past, allowing them a

“deceptive sense of cultural-historical transcendence” which “ultimately provides students with

41 secondhand knowledge under the guise of a firsthand experience.” The player can never enter the historical space which is ultimately unknowable, since the past cannot be directly experienced. Instead, players can enter a virtual space, the constructed game space, which acts as a representation of the historical space. The conclusions which the player draws are ultimately

38 McCall, Gaming the Past, 4. 39 Maguth et al., 35. 40 Neville et al., 608. 41 Ibid, 610

about the virtual space, since that is what they are immersed in, but they appear to the player to be about the historical space.

This relationship between the constructed game space and the historical space is especially significant in historical simulations. Within these simulations, players are made to feel close to the historical space by being provided with verbs, actions within the game’s mechanics, that feel historically authentic. These verbs allow for immersion in the virtual space, as they provide the player with agency and thus engagement. Now engaged in the virtual space, the player can begin to draw conclusions about the historical space that the game is simulating.

But the key issue is that the conclusions which these players can draw are limited by the verbs, and thus the mechanics which are present in the game. If the virtual space allows players to draw conclusions about the historical space then the rules limiting the virtual space can subconsciously become rules governing the player’s understanding of the past.

Here, players will learn from these games not merely the specific events which happened, but also the rules through which historical institutions interacted. These games teach players what kinds of interactions were possible between historic institutions. The key limitation of video games as a medium of education are the mechanics. Through its mechanics, each historical simulation makes the argument that whatever actions the game allows were the only possible actions an institution could have taken to respond to a given situation. Much like historical narratives are limited by the stories that are included and those that are silenced, so too are historical simulations limited by the interactions which are facilitated by the mechanics. In including some interactions while excluding others, historical simulations make arguments not about what happened in the past, but rather about what was possible in the past.

Many real time strategy games, for example, are renowned for their “4X” experience.

Here, the core verbs of their mechanics are to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. This mechanic set is applied to a variety of settings, including historically themed games, and even

42 historical simulations. When the choices a player can make are limited by these martial and imperialist frameworks, then the conclusions that they will draw about the past are likewise limited. Players will see the past, or at least the constructed game space past, in terms of these options and ideas.

The key, however, is in the increasing frequency of studies suggesting a bleed between the constructed virtual space and the real world. Because of the power of this interface, historians like Jerremie Clyde, Howard Hopkins, and Glenn Wilkinson have suggested that historical simulations have the potential to be used in academia in the form of scholarly games. Clyde et al. described the potential for a gamic mode of history: the “construction of scholarly historical arguments as scholarly games, creating a relationship to commercial games analogous to that of

43 non-fiction to fiction in literature.” These academic works would be reliant on procedural rhetoric, which they described as “a mode-dependent form of rhetoric… the use of computational

44 processes to persuasively and effectively convey an idea.” Clyde et al. held that the author would not portray a linear argument, but rather “a series of general and specific rules through

45 authoring code that a computer can then use to generate the argument.” The argument would be imparted upon the user twofold as “procedural rhetoric functions to not only express a point of

46 view but also persuade the player of the validity of a point of view.” Here, Clyde et al. are

42 “The Best 4X Games on PC” (PC Gamer Network, December, 2019) https://www.pcgamesn.com/best-4X-games 43 Clyde et al., 3. 44 Ibid, 6. 45 Ibid, 6. 46 Ibid, 6.

suggesting that a scholar could make a game which uses its mechanics to make a academic statement about the past which is equally as legitimate as a text.

This idea was supported by Vinicius Carvalho, Kevin Kee, and Dawn Spring. All three authors supported the notion that games as a medium have the potential to facilitate academic discourse about the past. Carvalho, in particular, argued that games have the potential to

“transcend the limits of the traditional monograph” due to the medium’s “participatory

47 potential.” He compared games to academic books, arguing that “like models in textual

48 monographs, games are representations of ideas and theories about real world phenomena.”

These representations “are not at odds with the historical narrative” as “the narrative itself can be

49 understood as one or a series of informal explanation models.” Pulling from Clyde et al.’s analysis, Carvalho concluded that “procedural rhetoric is a means of making and understanding

50 arguments with computational systems rather than conventional language.” By utilizing procedural rhetoric, games could overcome “the ingrained metaphors of verbal discourse with

51 abstract representations about the way the world does or should function.”

These models, which Carvalho and Clyde et al. put forward are contained within the mechanics of the game. As a result, the very core of any game’s arguments about the past will always be constrained by the principles of game design, which dictate how mechanics should be implemented to foster immersion. Mechanics must be open ended so that they can foster the necessary verbs to draw the player into the constructed game space. But open ended mechanics rarely make for pointed arguments about the way the world does or should function. In

47 Carvalho, 794. 48 Ibid, 807. 49 Ibid, 808. 50 Ibid, 804. 51 Ibid, 804.

constructing a scholarly game, the developer must balance making an argument in the mechanics while still keeping the game engaging.

This is not to say that a scholarly game has to be fun. Immersion and fun are two separate concepts. To argue that a scholarly game had to be fun would be like to argue that a monograph had to be exciting. An academic book does not need to be exciting, but it does need to be engaging. It needs to explain itself in a language which engages the reader in the argument of the book. An author who writes an unengaging book will not be read by a major audience, and therefore will not be able to make their argument convincingly. This is equally true in games, but instead of language the tool is mechanics. A scholarly game must have engaging mechanics that keep the player within the virtual space, even if those mechanics are not fun or exciting.

Commercial games understand this tension and are capable of creating engaging, but not necessarily exciting, experiences. Games like Victoria II contain complex mechanics simulating taxation, class conflict, social movements, and legislation. Passing legislation or deciding on tax rates is not fun but it is engaging. It is engaging because players can see the effects of their decisions being respected by the constructed game space. Players who tax too much will have widespread discontent and players who tax too little may go bankrupt. By respecting their player’s agency, these games turn otherwise boring tasks, like balancing a budget, into an engaging experience.

But within commercial games, developers place an emphasis on engagement and not historical authenticity. In almost every case, developers will choose to make mechanics which foster engagement as long as that engagement does not undermine the historical plausibility of the game. This is why developers create broad simplifications of complex institutional

phenomena. Trying to parse out every factor of class consciousness, political ideology, or ethnic conflict would be difficult to develop and overwhelming to a player. To accurately model any of these phenomena, each mechanic would require dozens of associated variables and verbs. As a result, it would be less satisfying for a player to see several small increments across dozens of variables than it would be to see one significant increase in a “happiness” or “class consciousness” statistic.

However, just because these systems are simplified does not mean that they cease to make arguments about the past. In fact, their simplification can make their arguments more pointed. For example, instead of seeing population growth as a sum of a series of factors including fertility rate, replacement rate, economic conditions, civic legislation, patriarchal pressures, and societal norms a commercial game may (and often does) suggest that population growth is simply analogous to the difference between food supply and food demand. In this example, the commercial game is making an exceptionally simple argument which is eerily similar to Malthusian economics. They are, most likely, not doing this for ideological reasons.

Rather, their aim is to make an engaging product that respects the agency of the player within the constructed game space. Asking a player to consider a difference in food supplies is far easier than making a complex argument on population growth. The trend in question, then, is that commercial historical simulations make these kinds of arguments within almost every mechanic.

This trend is especially significant since students learn from games in ways unique to the medium. Professor Stephanie Fisher, in a case study on video game learning, recorded three ways in which gamers learn about the past from historically themed games. The first two: tangential learning and source learning, are by no means unique to video games. When creating

historically themed games, Fisher argued that developers “create an experience that is entertaining but still feels historical, creating, and arguably inviting, a unique space for players to

52 critically engage with these games as historical texts.” In her study of gamers who played

Second World War games, she found that students “accept, resist, and integrate game-based

53 information into their own historical knowledge base and practices.” But students remained aware that many of the historical “facts” contained within the games were anachronistic, explaining that “ participants rejected, and were quite critical of, historical information that had

54 been re-purposed to function as a typical FPS game convention.” This is similar to interpretations of film history, wherein viewers of historically themed films often know that the exact facts which they are watching are not historically accurate, but expect the essence of the work to be authentic to the historical event.

But the third category of learning, preconditioned expectations, is uniquely powerful within an interactive media like games. Fisher explained that students’ experiences within games impacted what they expected to learn in the classroom. Fisher stated that students “ expected the

WWII unit to confirm, refute, or in some way take up their game-based historical interpretations… from the individualized, first-person perspective that they became accustomed

55 to through play.” Their experiences within the constructed game space defined the framework with which they parsed the academic information that they were taught in the classroom.

While this Fisher’s study utilized historically themed first person shooters, this form of learning is especially powerful with historical simulations where almost every mechanic contains

52 Fisher, 80. 53 Ibid, 72. 54 Ibid, 80. 55 Ibid, 79.

an argument about how the past operated. If players of FPS’s expected their history units to conform to the conventions of an FPS, then it stands to reason that historical simulation players will expect the same.

However the conventions of an FPS are far less invasive than those of a historical simulation. The mechanics in a FPS explain what a single person was capable of doing within a given historical space. They describe how one person could interact with their environment, often limiting their players to moving, fighting, and occasionally speaking or building. Historical simulations say nothing little about a single person. Instead, their mechanics teach students how entire institutions operated. They lay out the rules on how trade, legislation, and diplomacy were conducted. When students play these games, they then bring ideas on how these institutions were capable of interacting into the classroom. They expect to see institutions operating within the framework which has been established by the games that they have played because of the relationship between the real, game, and historic space. In engaging with the game space, players believe they are having a plausible experience within the historic space. As a result, they carry back their preconceived expectations into the real space, bringing their expectations about how the world worked into the classroom. In this way, the mechanics of a historical simulation are capable of making compelling and lasting arguments on how institutions in the past operated.

The Commercial Imperative

If commercial historical simulations are truly capable of influencing students’ learning of history, then it is important to understand what kind of historical narratives are being included within the mechanics. But to do so presents a significant challenge since, like any other medium,

the content of historical simulations varies from game to game. Despite this issue, several general trends in mechanics have emerged. Certain historical narratives tend to predominate while others are rarely discussed.

Further complicating the matter is the ever-changing marketplace for historical simulations. Being commercial products, historical simulations have been at the mercy of the financial imperative. Changes in the marketplace elevated historical simulations from obscurity to ubiquity. This genre’s journey provides the necessary context to understand how the most common historical arguments contained within these games’ mechanics have changed over time.

In the 1990’s and 2000’s, historical simulations rarely produced blockbuster games. The genre was far outpaced in both sales and ratings by real-time strategies (RTS) and turn-based

(TBS) strategies. This was, in part due to the success of games like Command and Conquer and Starcraft, both fantastical RTSs, which had dominated the strategy gaming market. Their financial successes, which had profound impacts on today’s giants Electronic Arts and

Activision-Blizzard respectively, had encouraged other developers to try and follow suit. Big

Huge Games’ Rise of Nations and SEGA’s Company of Heroes both tried to apply the real-time format to historical games. Both games leaned fully into the conventions of the genre, emphasizing resource collection, base-building, and combat. While the games carried the aesthetic of history, nothing in their mechanics made them historical simulations. Both games had simply replaced alien warriors and hovercraft with British Redcoats and Sherman Tanks.

By contrast, turn-based strategy games had long utilized the aesthetic of history. Sid

Meier's 1991 Civilization was the genre defining TBS. TBSs throughout the 2000’s chased the success of Firaxis, with each iteration of their Civilization series growing more popular. Many

TBSs responded to Firaxis’ hold on the market by diverging from historical simulation and instead becoming wargames. Slitherine games, in particular, released dozens of TBS wargames on topics ranging from the Second World War to Feudal Japan. Again, the mechanics of these games were so focused on combat that their historical ties were in aesthetics only. Games like

Slitherine’s Panzer Corps emphasized engaging, balanced, and entertaining combat over historical accuracy. While their scenarios, units, and characters were based on the Second World

War, the game’s mechanics placed players in direct control of the actions of an entire army with simplified controls and abstracted attack, defence, and morale statistics.

While both TBSs and RTSs were gaining in popularity, historical simulations were struggling to find their market. In the 2000’s the games attempted to target the niche audience in armchair historians, people already somewhat familiar with the time periods being covered.

Games released by Paradox Interactive, the leading historical simulation company, added new levels of complexity to their already difficult game series. These games were so detail oriented that a modified version of Paradox’s Hearts of Iron II was used for officer training at the US 56 Marine War College. By making their games more complex, and by representing more interactions within and between institutions, these games moved beyond the appropriation of the aesthetic of history. These historical simulations made complex arguments not about what happened in the past, but rather what the rules of the past were and why certain events happened.

The company’s flagship games Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron all received this treatment. Between EUII and EUIII, paradox added additional options for negotiations, new mechanics for simulating internal politics, dynamic market and trade data,

56 Taffy3 “MC War College WWI AAR,” Paradox Interactive Forums (November 22, 2019) accessed May 16, 2019, https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/mc-war-college-wwi-aar.736522/.

inflation and government investment, and many new historical events and decisions. Between

Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun and Victoria II, Paradox developed an artificial intelligence for capitalist investors to make informed decisions about where to invest their capital. Hearts of Iron III’s map grew from 2601 provinces in the previous iteration to over 10,000 provinces, each with data on population, weather, industry, local resources, and happiness. By adding this level of nuance, these games were able to see some growth in this popularity and sales. HoI III grew from 75,000 to 750,000 sales, EUIII made both strong sales and rating at 350,000 and a 79.34% 57 approval rating, and Victoria II’s popularity spiked from 63.81% to 85.43% over 750,000 sales. These numbers were an improvement, but they were miniscule in comparison to

Paradox’s historical competitors like Firaxis and SEGA. SEGA, for example, had published three back-to-back critical successes between 2006 and 2010: Total War: Medieval II, Total War: Empire, and Total War: Napoleon. Each of these hybrid RTS and TBS games had old over 58 3,500,000 copies and consistently scored above the 85% mark. The Total War series has always been on the fringe of being a historical simulation. Undoubtedly, the games emphasized conflict, often placing players in command of major battles. Between the battles, however, players are expected to manage the economics, politics, and diplomacy of their nation. Although these representations were never as nuanced as some of their historical simulation counterparts,

SEGA used mechanics to simulate basic social issues like class, religion, industrialization, and international trade. Notoriously, however, the game ignored more difficult institutions like race,

57 All sales statistics are pulled from https://steamdb.info/. As mentioned earlier, there is a large margin of error. Approval ratings are pulled from Steam Customer Reviews, which can be located here: https://store.steampowered.com/. These items have a low margin of error, excluding volunteer bias. Both sets of data are subject to change, and were accessed on 11 March, 2019. A complete list of these statistics and their sources can be found in Appendix A. 58 Ibid.

slavery, and colonial genocide. Total War: Empire, for example, places players in charge of colonial empires in the 18th century. Players are encouraged and rewarded for killing off native tribes and the game makes no mention of slavery or ethnic persecution. They do, however, have to contend with social unrest from class conflict and with the early effects of industrialization.

While it seemed that historical simulations had found a small but secure niche, the early

2010’s would challenge their position in the market. In 2010 Firaxis Games released the best-selling historical strategy game to date, Civilization 5. While the Civilization series had always been popular, Civilization 5 soared to new heights, reaching over 7,500,000 copies sold 59 and a critical rating of 94.59%. The game departed from its predecessor Civilization 4 by removing many of the complexities that slowed its predecessor down. Religion, trade, and internal politics were vastly simplified. Complex systems which had been introduced in past games were cut down in complexity or removed altogether. This was done in conjunction with the gamification of several major features. Now, major institutional phenomena like international trade, internal government, and religion were all integrated in a way which emphasized playability over historical authenticity. While many features would be added in the two subsequent expansions Gods and Kings and Brave New World, Civilization 5 became a case study in placing user-friendliness over historical authenticity.

Such a massive commercial success had a profound impact on the market. SEGA’s next two games, Total War: Shogun II and Rome II followed the trend of simplification to tremendous. Shogun II, for example, limited unit rosters from the traditional 30-50 to around 20 while making each unit meaningful and clear in purpose. Further, many past diplomatic

59 Ibid.

interactions between nations were cut from the game, returning the series to an emphasis on combat and expansion. Rome II followed suit, and while it added almost 200 Roman era tribes and nations, it did away with much of the internal politics and intrigue of the earlier games. By simplifying, SEGA held onto their consistent 3,500,000 sales while increasing player

60 engagement. Whereas their previous most engaged game, Total War: Empire had received 61 27,559 concurrent players, Shogun II grew to 38,517 and Rome II reached 118,240. Further, these games became platforms for continued profit. Earlier Total War games had released 4-5 expansion packs. Shogun II was the first game to break that average with 8 expansions and Rome II brought in an astounding 14 expansions, the last of which came out as recently as 2018. Caught in a sudden market expansion, some historical simulations tried to hold on to their niche of complexity. After the successful release of Victoria II just one month before Civilization 5, Paradox published three more games in 2010: Arsenal of Democracy, Ship Simulator: Extremes, and The King’s Crusade. These games struggled financially and critically, selling only 62 75,000, 150,000 and 75,000 copies and earning a 78.2%, 46.56% and 39.58% respectively. The next blow came when Paradox tried to release a modification of one of its most popular flagship games, Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game. This game boasted hundreds of new events, a new 1914 starting date, dozens of new units and playable countries, and more complex research and logistics systems. Despite getting outstanding reviews from fans, resting at a respectable 83.81%, the game failed spectacularly in sales. HoI III had sold 750,000 copies in 2009, but DH only 63 managed 150,000 with a height of only 502 concurrent players at once.

60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid.

Reeling from several back-to-back failures amid a booming market, Paradox redoubled their efforts and began planning a new flagship title: Sengoku. Developed on a new, state-of-the art engine, the game was planned to modernize their aging Crusader Kings’ engine and create a deep, complex game about the interpersonal and political relationships of royal families during the Period of the Warring States in Japan. Hundreds of characters were mapped over a century-long period, with each character having temperaments, traits, and aspirations. Politics and economics were present in the game, but were used more as extensions of the interplays of these historical figures. By far, this was one of the most nuanced games Paradox had planned to release and this was undoubtedly Paradox’s attempt to re-secure its position in the market.

When Sengoku was released in 2011 it was a financial failure. The game sold around 150,000 copies and received a weak 62.3% approval rating. Whereas flagship Paradox games

64 had boasted 1,500 or more concurrent players, Sengoku peaked at only 174 players. Perhaps most telling, while Victoria II had received 2 expansions and Hearts of Iron III almost 20, Sengoku was dropped from the team’s production line almost immediately, receiving only several bug-fixing patches and no expansions. The hegemony of complex historical simulations was in peril.

Rather than ride out a dying trend, Paradox followed the market and looked to simplify and clarify their games. Their next flagship game Crusader Kings II used Sengoku’s engine but relied on clearer, more simplified mechanics. Learning from their competition at SEGA and

Firaxis, Paradox emphasized accessibility to a broad audience over historical nuance. After focusing their entire development team on Crusader Kings II (it was the only game they chose to

64 Ibid.

release in 2012 after the failure of Sengoku) Paradox was rewarded with its greatest commercial success. Crusader Kings II sold 3,500,000 copies, received a 86.66% approval rating, and has fostered over 30 expansions and DLCs. Perhaps more telling, Crusader Kings II peaked at 65 141,439 concurrent players, above both Rome II (118,240) and Civilization 5 (91,363). Simplification had worked, and it was not long before they applied it to the rest of their games.

Europa Universalis IV was the next flagship game to receive this treatment. Released in 2013, the game revolutionized the EU series by making diplomacy easier and faster, by abstracting and accelerating regional economic development, and by simplifying internal politics significantly. The game followed CKII’s trend of success, selling 1,500,000 copies and 32 66 expansions and DLCs. Next was Hearts of Iron IV. Likewise, the game’s mechanics were simplified, with politics almost comically abstracted and many complex issues and decisions reduced to 30 day “national foci.” The USSR, for example, can turn almost any country, including Britain or the US, Communist by 1940 through the use of spies.

Simplification undoubtedly had the unwanted effect of removing nuance from mechanics that are historically contentious. EUIV makes no commentary when the player invest “monarch points” in the development of slave “trade nodes” in Africa. Likewise, it encourages the religious and ethnic unity of nations, going so far as to ping the player with alerts whenever a new ethnic or religious minority is present in their country. Players, then, can spend their monarch points

“removing” the minority, a process which can be as fast as three years. In EUIII however, players were faced with far more nuanced decisions. Internal legislation was deeply nuanced,

65 Ibid. There are several reasons, in addition to the amazing simplification of the game, for this major margin increase. Three times, Crusader Kings has been temporarily free on the Steam workshop. Players could download the game at no cost and play for the length of the weekend, before having the game returned. This strongly boosted sales and undoubtedly increased same-time player counts. 66 Ibid.

with players receiving positives and negatives from the levels of economic, civil, political, and religious liberties in their country. Killing or enslaving people removed their population from the province, lowered the province's development, and raised unhappiness in nearby provinces. By responding to the demands of the market, Paradox’s appeal to a popular audience has left these mechanics as vestiges of more nuanced historical discussions.

As a result, these games are not presenting incredibly simplified arguments about how the past worked. The act of simplification simultaneously makes for greater engagement and more unilateral historical arguments. Players are, then, likely to take away a more constrained framework for how the past operated within their preconceived expectation of learning about the past. Students who play these new games will be entering the classroom with more deterministic ideas about how institutions in the past operated and may, as a result, struggle with or simply reject more complex academic interpretations.

But for many, these simulations are the only time they will engage with a certain time period. EUIV, for example, allows players to play as one of about 50 Holy Roman Empire princedoms. Like many obscure periods of history players are going to receive academic instruction on the nuances of early-modern German aristocracy. While they may engage in tangential learning, seeking out more sources to flesh out their understanding of the period, this new learning will be done within the framework established by the mechanics of the game.

Seeing as these games can reach millions of players these historical simulations represent works of popular history which directly impact how a section of the public understands the past.

Games as Popular History

Historical simulations are works of popular history. Through their mechanics, they make implicit arguments about the rules which govern institutional interaction. For many, these games are the first and only exposures to a specific time period. As a result, it is important to understand what kinds of narrative predominate within this emerging genre of games.

Academic historians simply cannot demand that historical simulations make more historically authentic arguments about the past. To do so would be to tell developers to make less engaging, and therefore less profitable games. However, academia should understand that this genre of game is impacting a growing number of new students of history. Further, academics can use historical simulations as a tool to understand the heritage history of the general public. Even the most complex “historically accurate” games appeal not to academic interpretations of history, instead relying on popular or “heritage” versions of history. The formation and proliferation of

“heritage” are described in David Lowenthal’s The Heritage Crusade where he defines heritage as a “legacy” that provides “common commitments [which] bind us to others within our group.”

67 These heritage myths support convenient truths about a community’s past, serving not as

“testable or even a reasonably plausible account of some past, but a declaration of faith in that

68 past.” By utilizing only those traces or elements of the past that are favorable to a community’s sense of collective identity, heritage creates culturally affirming narratives. Heritage, Lowenthal

69 concludes “thereby attests our identity and affirms our worth.”

67 David Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2. 68 Ibid, 121. 69 Ibid, 122.

These games similarly respond to the desires of their audience, and games which appear historically inauthentic are quickly criticized by their audience. Inauthenticity, however, frequently refers to the game’s adherence to the established heritage narratives about the given time period prevailing in popular culture and education. These games, then, provide insight into what kinds of beliefs are popular within the ever-growing game-playing public.

The tension between engagement and argument is at the core of historical simulations, commercial or scholarly. While academic historians cannot tell developers to make historically authentic arguments at the cost of engagement, academics should be critical when developers create games with reactionary arguments which are at odds with a significant academic consensus. Allowing Germany to win a World War Two game is not a problem, but suggesting through mechanics that fascism is the superior ideology needs to be challenged.

CHAPTER 2: Europa Universalis and the Changes to the Genre

The nature of video games as an artistic medium derives from their capacity for interactivity. This interactivity, constructed of a series of mechanics, has the capacity to elicit the essence of an experience or idea, which is projected onto the player in their constructed game

70 space. Mechanics are at the core of what makes each game unique. It is through this relationship between creator, game, and player, that an artist can make their case to their audience.

Like any other form of popular history, historical simulations seek to present a recognizable representation of the past. This representation is not based on an academic consensus, but instead relies on a culture’s collective memory of the past. Stored within this collective memory are a series of ideas, aesthetics, and narratives that are generally seen as

71 emblematic of period. Historical films appeal to their audience's collective memory by constructing a sense of historicity through familiar stories and recognizable imagery. Games, as similar works of popular history, utilize an identical strategy to meet the expectations of their audience.

But historical simulations go one level farther in their appeal to collective memory. In addition to aesthetics and narratives, mechanics are used to articulate the essence of the past.

Essence, in game design, refers to what Schell defines as the “essential experience” that is

72 constructed by the moment-to-moment experiences of a game. The essential experience is the

70 Schell, 11. 71 Sam Wineburg, Susan Mosborg, Dan Porat, and Ariel Duncan "Forrest Gump and the Future of Teaching the Past" Phi Delta Kappan, November 2007, 171. 72 Schell, 20.

core idea of the game, or what the game seeks to emulate. The job of a game designer, then, is to use mechanics to craft moment-to-moment experiences which get at the essence of the essential

73 experience. In a game about baseball, for example, the essential experience is a real life baseball game. A game, being a medium for representation and not replication, cannot perfectly replicate a real-life baseball game. Instead, the game must strip the essential experience into a series of moment-to-moment experiences which get at the essence of the real-life counterpart.

The game might include such mechanics as pitching, batting, catching, and managing stamina. In doing so, the game is representing the essence of the essential experience, playing baseball.

This process is repeated in historical simulations, whose essential experience is a period of the past. These games cannot replicate the past, but instead must approach their essential experience by creating moment-to-moment experiences through mechanics. Like every part of a historically themed game, mechanics adorn themselves with recognizable facets of the past. To elicit historical authenticity, games emulate the style, narratives, and historiographical trends associated with their historical moments or periods, and they reproduce recognizable representations of the past. This relationship between mechanics and historiographical trends and historical aesthetics provides mechanics with the potential to convey implicit ideological beliefs within the core of the gameplay experience.

This is especially potent, given that the mechanics of most historical simulations tend to center on the broad theme of conflict and competition. At their core, most historical simulations thematically are about expansion and conquest. If not conquest, they are at the very least about entities competing to gain control over limited resources. These resources may be territory,

73 Bates, 21.

materials, votes, wealth, or political capital, but their role is the same across all of these games.

Resources are a tool, used by the designer, to encourage their players to compete for domination.

From medieval competition between feudal lords to 19th century colonial land-grabs, the great conflicts of the past are the subject of numerous historical simulations. Even lesser known topics, from the Italian Wars of the 16th century to the infighting of Russian princes in the 15th century, are the subjects of games. Whether these games have explicit “win” conditions does not matter, they constantly engage players in short-term loops of competition for resources.

These competitions come in many forms. Sometimes, players are competing directly with other players to secure strategic recourse. More frequently, they are competing with AI factions,

74 who sometimes represent hundreds of entities in a dynamic simulation. In others yet, players are competing against entities within their own virtual “societies” for resources and power. The ruling class competes against the workers for “happiness” and lower taxes. The fascists compete against the communists to secure more “political influence.” The English compete against the

French for land and furs.

Competition constructs the core feedback loops of these games. By giving players space to compete, developers offer them the necessary agency to facilitate immersion. Engagement in competition across a series of variables leaves players with both a sense of authenticity and control. The authenticity derives from recognizable aesthetics and familiar narratives of a

75 historical game, but also in large measure from the sense of the complexity of the simulation.

74 Most historical simulation games allow for multiplayer, but typically are only played with two players. While some allow upwards of 20, that number is still a fraction of the number of available countries that get represented. In Europa Universalis III, for example, around one dozen players can play in a single game, but there are over 300 countries represented on the map for players to interact with. Further yet, the majority of games played are done in single player, as the “pausable real time” system works best in solo play. 75 Bates, 20.

Confronted with multiple variables and institutional relationships at play, the player feels immersed. These rules help to construct a playspace that feels rooted in the realm of historical possibility. Seeing familiar symbols of history represented in numbers and meters, icons and tokens, helps to build a sense of genuine historical authenticity.

Control, on the other hand, derives from the agency which these competitions offer.

These escapist fantasies thrive on the sense of control which they offer to their players. Seeing meters, scales, and buttons sprawled out on the screen leaves players not only with a sense of authenticity, but with a sense of empowerment. The player gets to decide what parties will come to power, how taxes will be distributed, which neighbors are to be conquered, and what culture is to reign supreme. No matter how many mechanics the game puts in place to rein these systems into accepted historical frameworks, or how many limits to these options are raised, the player is ultimately the one in control. Within the bounds set by the limits of the mechanics, players can lead Napoleon to triumph at Waterloo or Oda to defeat at Nagashino.

If competition is a key feature of these games, then it bears investigation into how it is portrayed as part of the historical narratives portrayed in the games. Certainly, the dimensions of history that are portrayed in video games – wars, international relations, economic and trade policy, and domestic politics - may be viewed as a series of ongoing competitions. The nature and significance of these conflicts is at the heart of much traditional scholarly analysis of history.

Significantly, this is also what developers do when they create a game: they shape and define, in effect, how classes and nations interact with one another. To make a game playable, they must define by finite numbers and mathematical formulas the human experiences of conflicts over class, imperialism or race.

In doing so, they implicitly take a side on these issues, deciding not only what is important in the context of their games’ competition for control and dominance, but also guiding or prioritizing policy choices made by historical players in their games. In short, the choices the players are encouraged to make by the mechanics of games are derived from the ideological decisions or preferences made (explicitly or implicitly) by the game designers. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon can be seen in Paradox Interactive’s World War Two simulator

Hearts of Iron. In the most recent edition of the game, players guide their chosen nations through the events of the 1930’s and 40’s. A major aspect of the game is political alignment, wherein players must choose to align themselves with “democracy,” “fascism,” “communism,” or

“monarchism.” This simplistic reading of the politics of the 1930s is deeply anachronistic and conservative. The lack of nuance suggests that the governments of France, Britain, America, and the British Raj were identical as were the governments of Republican Spain and the U.S.S.R.

Moreover, each ideology comes with a set of predetermined benefits and negatives. Fascist troops are more disciplined, democratic nations research technology faster, and communist nations can impress more soldiers in the draft. These fairly blunt examples highlight how no analysis of these issues can be truly impartial, and to suggest impartiality is itself a deeply conservative judgement.

Moreover, as the industry has changed over time, so too have these interpretations of the past. Since developers are compelled to make implicit arguments about the past in their mechanics, it is possible to compare the narratives within these games with broader historiographical trends. Most often, it is clear that these interpretive decisions are less conscious historiographical alignments, than responses to the changing paradigms of game design and

mechanics. Since conquest is a central mechanic to historical simulations, changes in the presentation of conquest can be used to identify both historiographical and ideological alignments.

Europa Universalis III: Historiographical Alignment through Complexity

Using Paradox Interactive’s flagships series Europa Universalis as a comparative case study highlights this shift. In the late 2000s, Paradox’s historical simulations presented a remarkably Whiggish interpretation of the past. Herbert Butterfield, the quintessential critic of this historiographical trend, summarized Whiggish history as a cult of progress which views the

76 past through the lens of the present. Whiggish history follows a narrative of progress and its heroes, the great men who advanced the rights and conditions of their fellow men steadily over time and in fierce struggle with the conservative defenders of the status quo. Whiggish historians draw a direct link between these great men in the past and our own present, suggesting that their understanding of the world was modern and egalitarian, while their opponents’ views were

77 reactionary and repressive. Famous examples of the Whig interpretation in British history include characterizing the Reformation, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the reform of

th Parliament in the 19 century as outcomes of a long struggle by progressive reformers on behalf of religious tolerance, political democracy, and civil rights.

According to Butterfield, this interpretation of history, with its emphasis on the conflict between advocates of progress and its opponents, was dominant in broad-stroke, textbook histories which projected their present-day values into the past and lacked the space to engage

76 Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1929), 17. 77 Ibid, 22.

78 with history “for the sake of the past.” However, Whiggish interpretations also turn out to be particularly attractive for game developers who seek to represent hundreds of countries of decades or centuries as an entertaining competition between the “good” and “bad guys” of the past. The game simply cannot engage with the past for the sake of the past when gameplay, not historical education, is at the center of design.

This paradigm dominated Paradox’s earlier games. From the original Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun released in 2003 to East India Company in 2009, an emphasis has always been placed on the steady march of progress through the guidance of great men and heroes. East India Company saw players “civilize” India, bringing technology and stability to the subcontinent, and Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun loudly sings the praises of the rise of classical liberalism.

After nearly a decade of Whiggish historical simulations, Paradox Interactive underwent a significant historiographical transition. This transition aligned exactly with an ongoing mechanical shift in Paradox’s flagship games in the early 2010s. As their mechanics became more streamlined and user-focused, their historiographical ideology shifted from Whiggish to

Tory narratives. Tory history, or high political history, is a historiographical school that rejects the Whiggish emphasis on the struggle on behalf of grand ideals of reform and progress, and instead emphasizes history as the complex interplay of individual political actors, all struggling to fulfill their own personal self-interests and ambitions. Historian Robert Crowcroft succinctly explained that within the Tory paradigm “whatever their individual ideological inclinations, on a day-to-day basis politicians are most concerned with their own influence and that of their rivals.

78 Ibid, 53.

It is this contest for ascendancy that shapes the majority of their actions, and hence ideological positions are necessarily usually flexible given the power-political nature of their

79 environment.” Rather than the Whiggish march of progress, Tory historians hold that society and culture are largely stable structures that experience little change over time. History from their perspective is mainly the political story of the fierce struggle for power within the dominant elite at the top, and that change is mainly the by-product of this struggle. The impact of these machinations within the elite on wider culture and society is mostly unforeseen and often accidental, though a broad humanitarian conscience within the elite also causes slow but steady improvement of daily conditions over time. Examples of such “Tory interpretations” in British history have covered the expansions of parliamentary democracy in 1832 and 1867, the Factory

th Acts that eliminated child labor in the middle of the 19 century, and even the absorption of the

th 80 Labour party within mainstream political culture in the 20 century. This Tory paradigm is reflected in Paradox’s later games as their mechanics came to focus almost exclusively on expansion and conquest. Rather than emphasizing progress over time, the games increasingly center on self-serving grabs of land, resources, and power. Progress, when it is depicted, is the result of what historian Jennifer Hart describes as “the historical

81 process” or “blind forces,” rather than a series of ideologically driven movements.

79 Crowcroft, Robert. "Maurice Cowling and the Writing of British Political History" Contemporary British History Vol. 22, No. 2, June 2008, 281. 80 Hart, Jennifer. "Nineteenth-Century Social Reform: A Tory Interpretation of History" Past & Present, No. 31 (Jul., 1965), 39. See also Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (1967), 333-392; Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour, 1920-1924: The Beginning of Modern British Politics (1971); 0. MacDonagh, "Emigration and the State, 1833-55: an essay in Administrative History", Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 5th ser., v (I955), 133-159; Robert Crowcroft, Attlee’s War: World War II and the Making of a Labour Leader (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011). 81 Hart, 39.

Mechanically, this means technologies and reforms occurring at a pre-described date, rather than as a result of the actions of Whiggish great men.

Two generations of one game, Europa Universalis III released in 2007 and IV released in 2013, serve as revealing examples of how these mechanics have changed over time. The games place players in control of one of around 300 countries on a map that spans the entire world.

Chronologically, the games are the direct predecessor to Victoria II, as they span from around 1400 to 1836. Players control the economics, politics, diplomacy, and military of their chosen country by assuming control of whoever is in charge of their nation. When one ruler dies or is deposed by another government, the player then continues playing as that new leader.

Like most simulations, competition is key to Europa Universalis. From the first few turns of the game, players must be planning on how to overcome their neighbors and grow in power. A typical game will see players assume the leadership of a European power, and then starting wars, carrying out aggressive mercantilist practices, and creating colonies in Asia, Africa, and the New

World. A game as a non-European country, by contrast, will see players competing for regional dominance in a dash to gather enough resources to repel the eventual European invasions.

But beyond the general sense of geopolitical competition, Europa Universalis contains several mechanics which are worthy of investigation. The following mechanics were chosen because they exhibit the effects of simplification in portraying complex historical phenomena.

This simplification directly causes the historiographical shift between the third and fourth editions. While Europa Universalis III’s systems were never perfect representations of the past, they far outpaced Europa Universalis IV’s mechanics in offering historical nuance. Generally

speaking, this loss of nuance has prompted these games to tell more reactionary and deterministic historical narratives.

The first specific mechanics for comparison between editions are economic, social, and political conditions and development. In both editions, the map of each state is divided into a number of provinces, much like a board game. Each province has a series of statistics associated with it that change throughout the game, ranging from stability to tax base. Each province's statistics are then used to determine country-wide items like overall stability, tax revenue per annum, and revolutionary fervor. In Europa Universalis III each province had the following stats 82 :

- Population: the number of people living in the province - Growth: The rate of population growth per year (in percentage) - Supply Limit: The number of divisions which could scavenge off of the land without suffering attrition - Revolt Risk: The likelihood of a revolt in occuring in this province (in percentage) - Culture: The dominant culture group living in the province - Manpower: The number of military-aged adults who will come of age each month - Stability Cost: The difficulty of governing this region - Tax: The yearly land tax assessed on this province - Tariffs: The yearly income from tariffs assessed on this province - Production: The yearly commercial taxes assessed on this province - Primary Trade Good: The most-produced good in this product (Wine, linen, grain, etc.) - Trade Good Production: the number of “units” of that trade good which are produced 83 each month in this province - Religious Conversion Chance: The percentage change per year, that an active conversion will successfully convert the local population to the state’s dominant religion

This dizzying array of stats was available for each province in a player’s empire. England alone, at the start of the game, had 21 provinces to manage. Naturally, players would often

82 Several more stats are included, but they are specific to military endeavors and therefore do not need to be noted in the body. These include Max Attrition, Fortification Level, & Garrison Size. 83 Two more statistics relevant to trade are shown on the province screen, but are not province-specific. These are “Price” which is the average market price of that good at the local center of trade and “Trade Value” which is equal to Price x Trade Good Production.

neglect to study each of these statistics independently. But the simulation constantly took these numbers into account. Further, these numbers were constantly changing as growth in population results in higher “Manpower,” “Tax,” and “Production.” Technological improvements and government edicts similarly altered these provincial stats, boosting “Trade Goods Production” or raising “Growth.” This simulated a general trend of progress, as per the Whiggish paradigm.

Provided the government remains “stable” and passes gradual reforms, the conditions of the

84 nation would improve. Mathematically, in this simulation, the general historical trend was for the situation to continuously improve, provided steady reforms are maintained. One of the third edition’s largest mechanics, provincial management, was Whiggish in nature.

Unlike the later edition of the game, all of the resources of the third edition eventually translated into a few key resources, chief among them is the currency, Ducats. While players must also manage Prestige, Manpower, Legitimacy, Stability, and Infamy, a player’s most important resource was their national wealth, represented by these Ducats. The importance of this resource was a consequence of its liquidity. Players would be constantly spending Ducats constructing buildings, investing in technology, supporting colonial endeavors, and hiring “great men” to the court.

Despite the glamour of the third edition’s armies and vast map, the largest source of player agency in the game was found in the budget screen. Here players agonized over how to invest their revenue. First, they chose how much money to invest into their armies and navies.

The more money they spent, the better their armies’ morale and the faster recruits joined the

84 Stability is an abstract representation of how capable the government is in controlling the local populace. It ranges on a scale from -3 to 3, where negative numbers give players across-the-board maluses and positive numbers offer bonuses. Keeping a positive stability will increase tax base, population growth, trade efficiency, and other integers which represent the “progress” of the nation.

forces to fill vacant ranks in the military. Then, they decided how much to fund religious or colonial endeavors. More investment here meant faster colonization or conversion times. Finally, players balanced the remaining income between seven sliders, each representing an aspect of their nation’s government.

These seven dimensions were Government, Production, Trade, Naval, Land, Stability, and Treasury. Investing money into the first five of these branches encouraged innovation in their respective fields, leading to improved technology and efficiency. Investing in Stability leads

85 to no innovation, but rather gradually raises the Stability rating of the nation. Investing in the

Treasure similarly leads to no new innovations, but any income invested here gets turned into

Ducats, which can then be spent as the game’s primary resource. Players managed sliders, having to allocate a percentage value of their monthly income to each of these seven dimensions totalling 100%.

The game offered a difficult challenge as players decided whether to invest in improving different aspects of their nation or in making money. Investing too heavily in innovation meant players would lack the funds to buy armies and build buildings, while investing too heavily in the treasury would mean the player’s nation fell behind their neighbors in technology and innovation. Further complicating this dilemma was the addition of inflation, which went up steadily as players invested more in the treasury. Higher inflation meant every action cost more

Ducats to do. So, players who were nearly bankrupt could invest all of their revenue into the treasury, essentially cutting all funding to other branches of the government, but in doing so,

85 Random events, unjustified wars, and changes in government all cause loss to stability while the only way to increase stability is to invest money into it.

these players suffered long term consequences, as the long-term economic effects of inflation would take decades, if not centuries to wear off.

This conflict between investment and savings forced players to gradually alter their priorities as the game plays out. Mechanically, players were punished for investing too much in any one thing. Instead, they had to incrementally change their levels of investment to meet their current needs. More importantly, players were explicitly punished for investing too much into one field or another. Specifically, an optimal strategy was to invest equally in stability and innovation. Players who invest too heavily into innovation would suffer the consequences of low stability as they try to progress through radical means. Likewise, players who invest too much in stability, ergo tradition, would be left behind by more progressive alternatives. Ideally, players would size the appropriate times to make progress, always making steps forward but never overstepping their bounds and sacrificing stability.

This reflected a conservative version of the Whiggish paradigm of the past, which

Butterfield described as a steady march of progress with “not so much progressive fighting reactionary but rather two parties differing on the question of what the next step in progress is to

86 be.” This described the traditional Whig narrative of modern British history as a story of incremental change, implemented carefully by a forward-looking yet cautious elite that debated the details of the pace of reform, but not the necessity of timely adjustments that, above anything else, were designed to keep the people contented, and thus to maintain its rule. True reactionaries and militant radicals were antagonized by the conservative nature of this aristocratic regime in

Britain, just as they are by the game’s mechanics today, which favor slow but continuous reform.

86 Butterfield, 19.

This preference for incremental change was mirrored in the game’s portrayal of domestic policies. Players controlled the politics in their respective country by manipulating eight

“domestic policies” sliders. Each of these sliders represented a divide in political ideology. The eight policies in question were:

- Centralization vs Decentralization - Aristocracy vs Plutocracy - Serfdom vs Free Subjects - Innovative vs Narrow Minded - Mercantilism vs Free Trade - Offensive vs Defensive - Land vs Naval - Quality vs Quantity

At the start of the game, each country had a set position on each of these 10 point sliders.

Each position on all 8 of these 10 point tracks had economic, political and diplomatic repercussions. Investing in Mercantilism, for example, allowed the nation to make more money from their own centers of trade, while weakening the nation’s ability to compete in a rival’s centers of trade. Players could only change a slider once every 20 years. Further, changing a slider almost always prompted a random event in reaction. Moving the slider towards “Naval” may have caused prominent generals to resign or may have upset the landed nobility, who feel their rights as protectors of the realm are being challenged. In addition, government types, too, limited how far sliders can be moved. A Feudal Monarchy, for example, could never be pushed beyond half way from Decentralization or half way from Aristocracy.

These mechanics made an interesting argument about how history unfolded. The timeframe of one change every 20 in-game years seemed to coincide with the average reign of monarchs during the game. As a result, the game seems to suggest that the government was changed only slowly and incrementally. However, more classically liberal ideological choices,

like Free Trade, Plutocracy, Innovation, and Free Subjects, all had stronger benefits than their conservative counterparts. In the math behind these mechanics, these ideologies offered long term gain in return for short term sacrifice. Embracing free trade, for example, offered a 40% increase in merchant accumulation, a 4% increase in trade range, and a 5% increase in “merchant

87 compete chance.” Mercantilism, on the other hand, lowered trade range and “merchant compete

88 chance” for a short term 5% gain in “province owner trade chance.” While mercantilist players would receive the short term benefits of making more money at their own centers of trade, they will steadily be out-competed by countries with 40% more merchants than them. The conflict between “Innovative” and “Narrow Minded” played out much the same way. Innovative players would enjoy 5% higher stability and 3% faster technology while Narrow Minded players only

89 received 2% higher conversion rates and 3% more papal influence, if Catholic.

Since strategies associated with classically liberal ideology were mechanically advantageous, and since change was a slow process over time, the game promoted a quintessentially Whiggish narrative of history as a beneficial, but necessarily slow march of progress, delivered by a benign and wisely cautious leadership. According to the game, each significant monarch or “great man” helped to push his nation towards classically liberal ideals.

The third edition made these movements feel like progress by deliberately limiting the frequency with which they would happen. Besides waiting for a new monarch, changing domestic policies was the slowest mechanic in the game. Even technological innovation, at least when it was

87 Europa Universalis III - Complete\common\policies.txt Merchant accumulation represents the rate at which players gain new merchants to send to foreign markets. If the merchants can out compete an opposing nation at that market, the player gains a merchant at the “Center of Trade” in question. Possessing a merchant in a center of trade returns trade income via the following formula: (trade efficiency + trade technology) (trade node value + trade tier) / number of merchants at center of trade 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid.

funded, was faster than changing a government’s ideology. Through a sense of incremental shift, the game espouses a preference for the Whiggish ideology of steady, top-down reformism. With a steady trajectory, players could weather the challenges of the reformation, colonization, and the

18th century revolutions.

Moreover, each game session clearly read as a narrative of how late medieval societies progressed to become modern. Each action built upon the last, always moving in the direction of the modern. Players rarely hit dead-ends in their development as they were rewarded for pursuing newer, more liberal government types and reforms. This anachronistic interpretation of history, facing from the present to the past, is at the core of Butterfield’s critique of Whiggish history. Butterfield argued that Whiggish stories reduce history to “what is important from our point of view” by focusing on factors or forces in the past that contributed to the creation of the

90 present, and neglecting any elements that did not. Europa Universalis III constructed a simulation of the past wherein every nation is moving towards its modern incarnation.

Liberalism, egalitarianism, and innovation push forward strong nations, while authoritarian and conservative nations fade into obscurity.

Outside of government, population similarly emphasized a bias for incremental change.

Since the game’s primary resource, Ducats, was derivative of population, players cared about seeing their population numbers increase. But population growth was a slow process that took decades to occur. Further, events like plague, war, and even immigration could directly impact a region’s population growth. One key mechanic at play here was “devastation.” During wars, standing armies pillaged the countryside of the provinces they occupied. This act of pillage did

90 Butterfield, 17.

more than just enrich the player in question. Pillaged provinces suffered “devastation” which in turn lowered population growth, decreased current population, and lowered the production of trade goods. Devastation, however, did not go away when the armies left or when the war ended.

Instead, devastation could take years or even decades to dissipate. Further, since population growth was so slow, provinces took even longer to actually recover to their pre-war standing.

Fighting land wars near your home, then, was a dangerous challenge. While winning a war could gain you new land, the land that you conquered would be devastated when you received it.

Further, you faced the risk of enemy armies entering any of your provinces and causing devastation there. In this way, the game mechanically made war a difficult decision with clear, tangible drawbacks. This system was clearly based on the numerous tales of countryside pillaging in the early modern era. Major conflicts of the Early Modern period ravaged the countrysides of Europe. Players who engaged in continent-spanning conflicts like the Thirty

Years War or the Franco-Spanish Wars could see the repercussions of their actions reverberate throughout Europe.

This punishing feature had the inverse consequence of promoting colonial conflict.

Players controlling European powers could mitigate the effects of “devastation” by fighting distant wars away from their economic centers. These conflicts served to secure useful resources which could then be used to deter war on the mainland. This mechanic constructed a gameplay loop wherein players were rewarded for colonizing the world while punished for engaging in unnecessary continental warfare. Small nations, in particular, were strongly encouraged to pursue expansion outside of Europe. A player controlling Holland or Portugal, for example, would suffer greatly in a continental war with their neighbors. Even if they could emerge victorious,

their lower number of provinces would mean that a higher proportion of their domestic economy could be toppled in one invasion. As a result, many smaller nations turn to their colonies as their best source of expansion. Smaller nations who steadily increased their colonial holdings while passing moderate reforms could emerge as major powers despite their diminutive continental presence.

The third edition’s sense of incremental change and lengthy consequences not only added gravity to players’ actions, it also constructed a sense of change over time. By stressing the long-reaching historical impact of policy decisions, the game is able to construct a nuanced historical narrative. This allowance for nuance forced players to consider how historic policies and institutions continued to impact the modern day. It also reinforced a Whiggish interpretation of the past by suggesting that the past was just a series of small steps towards progress. All of the game’s numbers: population, innovation, domestic policies, rose steadily over the course of the game. There was little room for deviation from the measured pace of progress. Those that failed to move forward were defeated, out-performed by their more progressive competitors while those who progressed too quickly were overrun by rebels or hindered by low stability.

The message that this game sent was a resounding endorsement of the British model of reformism in the early modern era. The game explicitly critiqued both political revolutions and autocracy through its mechanics. Players who adopted a French style of political revolution were severely punished with devastated provinces, unwieldy rebel factions, and diminished economic capabilities. Likewise, players who adopted a Russian style of political autocracy would enjoy a brief benefit in the early stages of the game, only to be outpaced by more progressive nations with better technology, trading capabilities, and governmental efficiency. Quite bluntly, almost

every new governmental system that players unlock over the course of the game is better than the last, but only if adopted steadily and at the right moment. Like Britain’s Glorious Revolution in

th the 17th century or parliamentary reforms in the 19 century, players are to adopt new governmental systems at the right moment to appease the populace and reap the benefits of new classically liberal ideals.

Europa Universalis IV: Shifting Ideologies through Design Philosophies

While these systems were nuanced, they are also complex. Many people who disliked

Europa Universalis III when it was first released in 2007 complained that the game felt too comfortable “playing itself.” They found that players could too-easily remove themselves from actually playing the game and instead let these complex, interlocking simulations do most of the work. Eurogamer’s Alec Meer complained that “Europa Universalis looks incredibly dreary, plays agonisingly slowly and is so unforgivingly complicated that I had a panic attack while

91 playing through the tutorial.” Even favorable reviews like that of IGN’s Steve Butts conceded that “there's a lot you have to understand in order to play this game well and it's not always easy

92 to see how the pieces fit together.” Both critics point to a single issue, that the high complexity required to convey a whiggish narrative is not conducive to player interactivity.

Since interaction dictates the moment-to-moment experiences of a game, poor interaction

93 can make for boring gameplay. The game’s complexity was so great that few new players actually understood how it worked. The mathematics behind calculating trade profit, in

91 Alec Meer, “Europa Universalis III” Eurogamer (February 2017). Accessed March 20, 2020. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=72769 92 Steve Butts, “Europa Universalis III” IGN (February 2017). Accessed March 20, 2020. http://pc.ign.com/articles/757/757888p1.html 93 Bates, 21.

particular, was arcane, relegated to the depths of the game’s code rather than in an accessible screen of the game. So, while the game was a fascinating simulation, it was not a popular game for gameplay’s sake. Instead, fans of the game engaged with the work because it acted as a recognizable simulation of the past. This was only bolstered by the game’s adherence to a traditionally popular historical paradigm. By closely adhering to a whiggish model, the game was able to strengthen its ethos as a plausible simulation.

But a small audience of amateur historians and armchair generals was not enough for

Paradox. The company instead wanted to tap into a larger audience of gamers by creating mechanics that were intuitive and engaging. After producing only a few more complex simulations, the company decided to update Europa Universalis with a new design philosophy. In 2013, with the release of Europa Universalis IV, the company first embraced this philosophy by placing the ease of gameplay above all else. After seeing the massive commercial success of other “historical” games, Paradox emulated similar, less complicated, historical simulations like

Civilization and Total War. Reviewers took note. Rowan Kaiser of IGN wrote “Easy to recommend to anyone interested in historical strategy – it’s the best game in the series, which can now take its place,

94 with no caveats, among the giants of the genre.” Players soon headed the calls of positive reviews and flocked to the game in droves. While EUIII only sold 350,000 copies, EUIV sold 95 1,500,000. The explosive success of EUIV cannot be overlooked. The radical difference in sales and reviews was a result of Paradox’s updated design philosophy. Altering philosophy mid-series presented a serious challenge, comparable to

94 Rowan Kaiser “Europa Universalis IV Review: The Bright Future of History” IGN (August, 2013) 95 A comparison of https://steamdb.info/app/236850/ and https://steamdb.info/app/25800/. All sources for game data can be found in Appendix A.

changing genres between successive books. Just removing features is easy, but that often comes at the price of the game’s essence, or its core feature of its constructed play space. In the case of

Europa Universalis, the essence of the game had been its historical authenticity. The play space that Paradox constructed was one of complex historicity where each rule of the game served to make events appear plausible. The act of including many features had meant that Paradox could include many different historical phenomena. Rather than remove some of these features,

Paradox instead opted to simplify each mechanic.

The most obvious change that Paradox adopted in the fourth edition was in their resource system. Whereas before everything centered around Ducats, now players had to manage multiple factors of Ducats, Military Power, Diplomatic Power, and Administrative Power. These new

“power” resources were abstractions of many of the game’s former features. Whenever a player wanted to take an action, they had to spend some of these power points. While there were three more resources to manage, the income of these new resources was mostly static, tied directly to the current ruler. One’s ability to research, improve provinces, or fight wars was now simply a derivative of the king’s aptitude, rather than the sum of the consequences of all previous actions.

Further, the mechanics behind this system were far easier than previous government decisions. Every month, players receive a number of each points equal to their ruler’s skill in that field, plus any bonuses from advisors they have hired. Then, whenever players want to perform an action, they spend power points from their stockpile. A king focused on efficient administration, for example, might yield 5 Military Power Points per month, while storming a castle may cost 75. This system clearly reversed the long-term focus of the previous game’s mechanics. Whereas before, players slowly worked towards goals, now players could spend

hundreds of points in a single day. Players with large stockpiles can radically overhaul their country in a moment, often without major consequences.

This is best shown in the game’s provincial development system. Whereas in edition III, development had been a slow progress over the course of the game, IV has players make almost instant gains as they invest power points into developing their provinces. Provinces may be improved in their production (diplomatic points), population (administrative points) and manpower (military points). The sum of these three numbers is the total development of the province. Spending these points results in instantaneous change within the province. Players can, for example, increase a province’s population from 1 to 10 in a single day by investing enough administrative points. Conversely, neglected provinces will never grow in any of these three resources. Importantly, there are rarely any unforeseen consequences to these radical changes.

Increasing a province’s population by a factor of 10 in a single day does not yield overcrowding,

96 poor sanitation, or any other negative effect. This was in stark contrast to the third edition’s consequence-heavy government sliders. Whereas before, making large changes could result in unforeseen consequences, now almost every decision’s results were laid out for the player to see.

Innovation received a similar treatment. Rather than investing money over time into different wings of the government, players pay a fee of power points to research diplomatic, military, or administrative technology. Although these technologies are very expensive, players who have saved up enough points can research two or more innovations in a single day, in effect pushing their country through 10 or more years of historical technological development in an instant. Players with an ample supply of government points, for example, skip from Government

96 Europa Universalis IV\common\static_modifiers\00_static_modifiers.txt.

Technology 21 to 23 on the same day. The three contained technologies: “Land Clearance,” “The

Constitution,” and “Measuring the World,” would take on the next day. This would represent a nation enacting and enforcing British-style enclosure, the drafting and ratification of a constitution, and the creation of early modern provincial maps happening overnight. This clearly anachronistic interpretation of progress hardly compares to the length of time each one of these actions would take in reality. But the suggestion that technological development is both linear and quick takes away from the long term focus of the previous edition.

Domestic policies have been removed as a mechanic. Now, players cannot impact the specific functions of their government outside of the random events which fire over the course of the game. In its place, rulers receive random traits, such as “lazy,” “studious,” or “corruptible”

97 over the course of their reign. They receive the first after one year of ruling, then another one after five years, and another yet after twenty years. The traits are chosen by random and impact the operation of the government for the length of the ruler’s life. They offer much of the same bonuses as the previous game’s domestic policies, but players have no choice over which policies they receive with each ruler.

The accelerated paces of change over time impacts the ideology of this iteration of the game by placing competition right in the center of politics. Whereas the earlier game emphasized steady progress over time, now the game emphasizes constant competition with instant rewards and punishments. Without progress, the gameplay at the start of the game is nearly identical to the gameplay at the game’s end. In a sense, this game replicates Tory history, portraying society as largely an unchanging organism characterized mainly by tradition and stability, decorated by a

97 Europa Universalis IV\common\leader_personalities\00_core.txt.

superficial surface of political and military spheres of constant competition, driven by the innate rivalries and violence of individual men (in this case, the player). Rather than seeing the triumph of a progressive ideology, Tory history views ideology as a power tool utilized by politicians in their struggle with one another for influence and advantage. Crowcroft best described this phenomenon, explaining:

In high politics, the speeches and pronouncements of politicians, in their employment of ideological rhetoric and romantic causes, were in reality merely an attempt to attract support and capture strategically-valuable ground relative to one another by utilising appealing slogans. Such rhetoric, far from indicating the ideological basis of modern politics, in fact simply amounted to a useful instrument in the constant struggle to accrue 98 personal authority and trump one’s rivals that was the real concern of all politicians.

In Europa Universalis IV every political decision is a calculated, cynical, short-term choice by the player. In effect, players take on the role of politicians within an identifiably Tory vision of how history operates. Since mechanics are reduced to simple calculations over a handful of resources, players are no longer pushed to stick to one ideology for any length of time. When presented with decisions and events, players can skip reading the event’s text and instead just look at the associated short term resources changes. Since these events are supposed to represent major historical decisions, the ability to just look at the immediate statistical consequences rather than long-term consequences presents a strikingly utilitarian interpretation of the decision making of the past. Moreover, with the exception of a select few “event-chains” few events have long term consequences on the future of the player’s nation. Some events will even occur multiple times over the course of the campaign and players can still freely choose between the options, regardless of their previous choices.

98 Crowcroft, 280.

“Cultural Conversion” in Europa Universalis IV is an outstanding example of this. Since nations are in a constant struggle for resources and land, players will often find themselves conquering new regions both through war and colonization. When a player takes a new region, it is possible that the new region will not be of the same “culture.” When this happens, the region is automatically less productive for your nation. The implication that the game offers is that the newly occupied people are actively resisting the transfer from one empire to another. In some cases, this resistance can be so great that the income players gain from the region is less than the administrative cost of governing the region. This malus to the player’s production persists until the player naturalizes that culture within their nation, expending a hefty sum of valuable diplomatic points, or until the player “converts” these people to the dominant culture.

The game never specifies what this conversion looks like on the ground, but it requires a sum of administrative points far lower than tolerating the continued existence of a different culture in the midst of the player’s state. However, at the end of the process, no signs of the previous culture remain. Culturally converted provinces then become indistinguishable from a nation’s home provinces. Regardless of what the game is portraying, it takes only around 10 years, and the effects are permanent. Particularly unfortunate provinces may be switched back and forth between cultures several times over the course of a century. With such quick effects and such a low cost, the invariably violent act of cultural assimilation in actual history becomes a short-term economic decision in the history game.

When the player starts the conversion process, the subject people in the process gain

“rebellion chance.” In the third edition of the game, rebellion chance was a percentage possibility that rebel forces would rise in the area. In the fourth game, by contrast, it is a ticking percentage

that moves towards 100%. Once 100% is reached, all of the provinces with that type of rebel will rise up. Players are given two options when dealing with rebels: “harsh treatment” or “accept demands.” Harsh treatment entails spending a small sum of military power to lower the rebellion

99 chance by 30%. Accepting demands means that the rebels get everything that they asked for.

When viewed from the actual historical context of imperial conquest and expansion in the period covered in the game, this version of the game suggests that the only practical course for an imperial government dealing with a conquered minority population was to use military force.

The only other, and clearly unrealistic option, would have been to allow that minority to join another country. In fact, the game suggests that accepting the demands of dissident subjects always meant allowing these rebels to join another country wherein their culture was in the majority. Players cannot negotiate with the “rebels;” they cannot domestically appease them.

They must either put them down by force and eradicate their difference through assimilation, or see them to leave and lose their province to a rival nation.

This holds true for any minority in the game’s representation of history, not just in terms of culture. Religion, too, is similarly modeled. Toleration of religious diversity is never an option, since possession of a province with a religious minority will always ensure a small rebellion chance, lower productivity, and lowered tax income. Players can spend diplomatic points to send missionaries to convert these regions, but doing so just increases the rebellion chance. As a result, players then have to use military points to send in soldiers to kill the minorities in question to lower the chances of rebellion. The obvious history lesson is that, like cultural minorities, religious dissenters are best eradicated from the beginning.

99 Europa Universalis IV\common\revolt_triggers\00_revolt_triggers.txt

This violent twist on domestic and imperial policies serves to simplify the mechanics of the game. By making all domestic decisions short-term and relatively obvious resource trade-offs, the game becomes far more accessible to new players. A player can easily understand that they are trading a sum of one type of points for a boost in another. A moderately clever player can easily work out an optimal solution to any situation, one which will benefit them without needing any ideological consistency.

This short term focus is demonstrated by the game’s radical transformation of declaring wars. In EUIII, wars were a rare occurrence that were rarely started without losses in stability and legitimacy. Only when a player had a casus belli, could a player start a war without serious drawbacks. Casus belli were especially hard to come by. Some nations, like France, started the game with a casus belli against England over the ownership of Aquitaine and Normandy. Others might develop claims on land or titles through marriages, deaths, or intrigue. Still, land-hungry players often had to start wars without pretense, and then suffered serious long-term consequences.

In EUIV, by contrast, such long term consequences no longer fit the design philosophy. Still, Paradox had no interest in just removing the feature. The need for casus belli remains in the game, but they are far easier to stockpile. Players can send diplomats to “fabricate claims” on any adjacent or coastal province. After an average duration of between 3 months and 1 year, players can create a casus belli and start a war with no negative consequences. Even “devastation” from war had been toned down in this iteration of the game. Whereas in edition three “devastation” from war could take decades to wear off, now devastation lasts between 8 and 10 years only. Moreover, the effects of devastation are far less significant. In

EUIII, devastation crucially reduced the total number of population in a province. This number was a central variable in the calculations of tax income, trade income, production efficiency, and more. EUIV does not have population. Instead, it has the aforementioned development points. Devastation never reduces the total development of a province. Instead, it places a temporary percentage negative on the bonus that these development points provide. After the negative wears off, the province is returned to its exact state before the war. In fact, players can invest monarch points into development points while the province is devastated, leaving the province better off after the devastation than it was before the war. In short, the effects of devastation are short and calculable. Players can easily weigh the risks of a short-term percentage loss against the potential gains of territorial expansion. Whereas edition three’s devastation from war pushed players to expand overseas, edition four was much more favorable

Mechanically, these two changes were empowering to the player. Moving from edition

III to IV, players were suddenly given the power to radically define their own paths to success.

Given the right opportunities, militaristic nations can swallow up smaller kingdoms, foreign powers, and swathes of enemy provinces with little to no negative consequences. Conversely, small nations can pick the perfect time to strike, quickly securing a casus belli and starting a war with a more powerful rival at their weakest moment. Suddenly, a player leading Savoy can fight a surprise war against France, dramatically altering the course of history. This kind of mechanical change felt good for players because it contributed to their sense of agency while still maintaining a veneer of historical plausibility. By keeping all of the original mechanics in place, but simply reducing them to conscious short-term decisions, Paradox protected the sense of

historical authenticity. Savoy defeating France feels plausible because of all of the systems at play, even if those systems had been reduced to short term calculations.

While these mechanical considerations were made with the agency of the player in mind, they had a profound impact on the historiographical alignment of the series. Paradox’s desire to elicit a historical essence while altering the game’s moment-to-moment experience necessarily changed the historiographical narrative in the series. This shift from Whiggish to Tory history had profound implications in the game’s treatment of contentious historical issues and questions of how history happened, such as treating imperialist destruction of subject cultures as an obvious choice and the starting of wars as a decision with few negative consequences.

This ideological shift was commercially prescient, given the impressive marketplace performance of Europa Universalis IV. The game’s impressive breadth often means that it may be the first and last resource that a player has on many key historical themes. From the in-fighting of the Russian princes to the politics of the Holy Roman Empire, this game has the immense potential to be the final source on these obscure topics. Moreover, the game has the potential to firmly impact how people view major institutional changes. The world view put forward by this game is a brutally self-serving interpretation of the past that provides a convenient alibi for many of the evils of the early-modern period. Wars, imperialism, and even cultural genocide are all endorsed as part of the dynamics of permanent international competition. The game suggests that the early-modern world was ruled by ruthless winners, who rightly acted with short-term selfishness and disdain for others.

CHAPTER 3: Victoria II and the Mechanics of Conquest

In 2010, Paradox Interactive released what was to be the last of their successful complex historical simulations. As we have seen, the company would transition shortly thereafter to creating easier, less complex simulations in an attempt to reach a broader audience. This transition marked a shift in the types of historical interpretations contained within the series. But even beyond this shift, certain limitations of the medium construct ideology at a more basic level. Unlike Europa Universalis, Victoria II has no less-complex counterpart. Paradox Interactive has refrained from creating a new edition of the game, for fear that the game’s very base mechanics are too complex. Victoria II, then, represents a high-water mark of Paradox Interactive’s complex historical simulations. This makes the game an excellent case study for the ideological alignments present in even the most complex of historical simulations.

Victoria II brings an unsurpassed level of complexity to the Victorian period by simulating everything from the rise of class consciousness to the global market. Spanning from

1836 to 1936, players guide any nation on the globe through the turbulent decade. Being historically focused, the game represents a form of popular history which still possesses a broad audience despite its 2010 release date. The popular history narratives contained within the game provide insight into the popular interpretations of the Victorian period.

Victoria II is one of Paradox’s most popular games. It boasts an exceptional user review 100 score at 85.43% and sold over 750,000 copies on the distribution site Steam alone. Further, it commands a Reddit community of 207,000 users, a YouTube presence of 120,000 videos, and at

100 This data is based off of Steam information accessible via steamspy.com. A complete list of sales data can be found in Appendix A.

101 least 53 user created “mods” or edits to the game. This represented a notable increase in popularity from Paradox’s Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, which sold only 150,000 copies 102 and had a user rating of 63.81%.

When Victoria II was released, Paradox was enjoying a major peak in company performance. Advances in their in-house game engine had allowed Paradox to produce increasingly complex iterations of their flagship games. Rather than appeal to a broad audience,

Paradox hoped to dominate the niche market of historical simulation gamers who sought complex and “historically accurate” games. Victoria II would be the last financial success for Paradox before this bubble failed. Sengoku, Paradox’s next flagship game after Victoria II, attempted to be even more nuanced and detailed but severely underperformed, earning a 62.3% and selling only 150,000 copies. Perhaps more telling, Sengoku never exceed 174 concurrent 103 players on steam. In part due to this financial failure, Paradox resorted to rolling back their games’ complexity in favor of appealing to a broader audience. As the last of Paradox’s successful but complex historical simulations, Victoria II is worthy of scrutiny as it marked the introduction of many social and political institutions which would be later simplified in future games.

As the most complex of Paradox Interactive’s historical simulations, Victoria II is an excellent example of the role which heritage history plays in controlling the narratives which appear in games. The narratives which are put forward in historical simulations almost

101 Mods are modifications created by users for free. They include anything from completely re-programming the game to editing events, starting years, or art. 102 Again, this information is from steamspy.com. Please note that the total number of copies sold may be higher than 150,000, since the game was distributed both physically and digitally via steam. The above number only accounts for the number of copies sold on steam. 103 Ibid.

unanimously pull from heritage history. This is because people who consume these games for recreation rarely desire to be challenged in their understanding of the historical record.

Developers respond to this by creating non-critical interpretations of the past that replicate and reinforce their user-base’s beliefs of the past. Games, which are ultimately produced to make profit, respond to their consumers’ preferences. Paradox had produced dozens of games before

Victoria II, and had a clear understanding of what its audience would and would not accept in the game. The historical narratives presented in the game are therefore representations of the kinds of beliefs that its consumers wanted to be told.

Through its mechanics, Victoria II reinforced many heritage myths about the legacy and nature of imperialism. While the game is willing to admit that imperialism had negative consequences, the game’s mechanics suggest that colonial expansion was both justified and inevitable. Despite the complexity and nuance of the game’s design, the limitations of the medium force the game to adapt a geopolitical interpretation of the past which plays on long-held myths of imperialism. The need for interactivity, player agency, competition, and progression all force the game into adopting an interpretation of the past as a series of rival powers locked in continuous competition. This interpretation is then adorned with familiar historical aesthetics, narratives, and icons to construct a sense of historical authenticity. Even when the game textually critiques the results of imperialism, the underlying mechanics of the game promote a geopolitical interpretation of the past, which is then supported by the game’s constructed sense of historical authenticity. The result is a compelling argument, playing upon the audience's collective memory of the 19th century, which suggests that imperialism was a necessary evil that was justifiable given the nature of politics during the period. This

contradiction between mechanics and text highlights the limitations of historical simulations as a medium. To discuss these contradictions, this paper will assess the game’s depiction of British society, empire, and politics.

Geopolitics and the Victorian Period

The underlying mechanics of Victoria II promote an explicitly geopolitical interpretation of the past. Codified in political and academic perspectives late in the Victorian period, the geopolitical paradigm was used to justify the political actions of numerous imperial powers in the early 20th century. The articulation of the paradigm is most often attributed to geographer and politician Halford Mackinder. Starting in 1904 with The Geographical Pivot of History, Mackinder’s ideology laid out a neo-mercantilist worldview wherein all major powers were locked in a continuous struggle for domination. Mackinder’s thinking, which emphasized the vital importance of strategic resources - from landmass and raw materials to manpower - came to shape the behavior of numerous imperial powers. Historian Gerard Toal described the prominence of Mackinder’s ideology well into the 20th century:

Certainly among some post-war Western security intellectuals the texts of Halford Mackinder were required reading. Within this community, Mackinder was read as a Cold War geopolitican, an intellectual prophet who first saw the geographical realities of international politics and first recognized the great geopolitical significance of control of 104 the heartland.

At the core of Mackinder’s ideology is the “world organism” which represents a closed system of global politics wherein all political decisions have world-wide ramifications.

Mackinder argued:

104 Gearoid O Tuathail, "Putting Mackinder in his place: Material Transformation and Myth" Political Geography, Vol 11 No 1, 1992, 101.

Every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be 105 shattered in consequence.

At the center of his work, Mackinder laid out his theory of the “heartland.” He first developed the “correlation between natural environment and political organization” by

106 suggesting that the availability of resources dictates the construction of a society. Mackinder then lays out the relationship between resource access and means of transportation, working

107 through ancient history to the modern day. Whereas in the past, water-based transportation had been the only viable mode to transport resources, now railways were superseding their utility.

Assessing the world on the criteria of access to resources and ease of transportation, Mackinder identified “Euro-Asia” as the most strategic holding. Mackinder concluded that

“trans-continental railways are now transmuting the conditions of land-power, and nowhere can

108 they have such effect as in the closed heart-land of Euro-Asia.” Any Empire which could successfully wield the resources of this region, Mackinder argued, would come to dominate the world.

This assessment of the heartland brought Mackinder to his conclusion on the nature of politics in the early 20th century. Mackinder argued that in this closed organic world:

The actual balance of political power at any given time is, of course, on the one hand, of geographical conditions, both economic and strategic, and, on the other hand, or the 109 relative number, virility, equipment, and organization of the competing people.

105 Halford Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History” The Geographical Journal: Including the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society Vol 23 January 1904, 422. 106 Ibid, 423. 107 Ibid, 424-33. 108 Ibid, 434 109 Ibid, 437.

This interpretation of politics reduced the world to a series of political actors in constant competitions for political power through the acquisition of tangible resources. As a conservative imperialist, Mackinder’s ideology served to justify the British Empire as a tool to protect the world position of Britain in the midst of constant European competition. Historian Gerry Kearns summarized this interpretation, stating that “For Mackinder, international relations were also defined by ‘the whole conception of permanent struggle’, a struggle, moreover, which his own

110 country could neither evade nor afford to lose.”

This interpretation set the foundations of Mackinder’s later thinking which he laid out in

1905 in Man-Power as a Measure of National and Imperial Strength and Geography and History. In these two works, Mackinder expanded on the specific resources of consideration that contributed to political power. He divided power into two categories, “money power and man power,” the former being the sum of physical resources and the latter being the sum of human

111 capital. He then contextualized power within a four-pointed circle of politics, namely “Power,

112 Trade, Wages, and Labour.” The interaction of these four forces constituted the power status of each major state, and interactions in one were set to have implications across the globe.

Military power, in particular, was at the center of Mackinder’s ideology. Kearns summarized Mackinder’s interpretation of military power, explaining that Mackinder believed

“international relations are primarily based upon force and to suggest otherwise is foolish

113 idealism.” This competition of power was expressed as “a kind of mathematical balancing of

110 Gerry Kearns, "Geography, Geopolitics and Empire" Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. NS 35 2010, 193. 111 Halford Mackinder, Money-Power and Man-Power (1905), 21. 112 Ibid, 13. 113 Kearns, 188.

114 nations, each expressed as the product of its population, military, virility and strategy.”

Mackinder succinctly summarized the new role that the military would take in the 20th century, stating that:

the ships and troops, which cruise and drill in preparation for war, really perform by far the greater portion of their services to the country in times of peace... Nothing stands out more clearly from the facts of recent history that our power has in almost every instance been exerted in connection with some substantial market of our commerce, where wages 115 to the extent of millions of pounds annually were at stake.

The necessary outcome of this interpretation is the justification of a scramble for resources within the context of a global struggle for dominance. This late-Victorian interpretation of the world as a stage for constant rivalry and conflict bears a striking resemblance to many historical simulations today. Because competition is at the core of many interactive games, Mackinder’s emphasis on competition interfaces perfectly with the norms of the medium. Even the most complex of simulations rely on competition to construct a viable feedback loop that keeps players engaged and, as an effect, immersed. As a simulation of the

Victorian period and as a complex historical simulation, Victoria II exposes the underlying ideological alignments between Mackinder’s paradigm of geopolitics and historical simulations.

Expansion, Colonialism, and Famine

Victoria II is at its core a game about expansion. Players are encouraged to expand industrially, economically, diplomatically, and militarily. While there is no victory condition for the game, players are rewarded for expanding with prestige, higher scores, and more features to engage with. Further, players who fail to expand will be out-competed by their computer rivals.

114 Ibid, 193. 115 Mackinder, Money-Power and Man-Power, 5.

Like Mackinder’s ideology , Victoria II divides the world into “great” and lesser powers. These great powers are locked in a struggle for limited resources. Failure to conquer nations, create colonies, build factories, and spread national influence all can cost a player their position as a

“great power.” Through these mechanics, the game aligns with Mackinder’s thinking and suggests that British colonialism was justified, for if they had not created a colonial empire, then another nation would have done so. Failure to expand, according to this interpretation, would have left the British vulnerable to greedy opponents who would have used their newfound influence to dominate the British.

This mechanical argument is an example of a game’s text and mechanics contradicting themselves. While Victoria’s text discusses the negatives of colonialism, the mechanics encourage players to settle colonies. At the same time, the game laments the effects of colonization, while refusing to challenge the institutions which created colonial projects.

116 This is demonstrated in several events, including an event chain describing the colonization of the Congo. The event “Rubber from the Congo” reads, in part:

… sadly, much of this wild but verdant land lies dormant, unexplored and unused, in the smothering grip of barbarism and backwardness. Powerful economic interests within $COUNTRY$ wish nothing more than to be given the opportunity to develop and exploit the natural wealth of the dark cornucopia that is The Congo Free State, and, besides, not 117 doing so might give the natives dangerous ideas…

This interpretation is explicitly Eurocentric, as it aligns with the resource-driven interpretation of imperialists during the scramble for Africa. Adam Hochschild, in his work King

116 Event chains are series of events which fire depending on previous choices in earlier events. 117 victoria2/localization/1.2.csv This quote and all subsequent quotes from Victoria II are pulled directly from the game code, and will therefore contain variable names like $FROMCOUNTRY$, since these events can be applied to and experienced by many different countries in the game. In all cases, the game would replace these variables with a string containing the actual country in question’s name. Further, this code is available to anyone who purchases Victoria II and can be found at the install directory in the folder specified above. All subsequent citations of game events will follow the same convention.

Leopold’s Ghost, explained that the goal of European settlement of Africa was “the hope that Africa would be a source of raw materials to feed the industrial revolution, just as the search for raw materials -- slaves -- for the colonial plantation economy had driven most of Europe's earlier

118 dealings with Africa." The description of Congo as “unexplored and unused” is consistent with

King Leopold’s own interpretation of the region “as if it were just a piece of uninhabited real

119 estate to be disposed of by its owner.” Hochschild argued that most colonial powers “talked of

Africa as if it were without Africans: an expanse of empty space waiting to be filled by the cities

120 and railway lines constructed through the magic of European industry." Here, the problem with the game is not that they are misrepresenting history, as their language is almost directly lifted from 19th century imperialists. The issue is that they have chosen to represent this past uncritically. By using this language in isolation, especially in the same place where the game presents actual historical information on events, the game validates the legitimacy of this interpretation. While people who are educated in history can pick up that the game is simply using the language of the past, this game is the first exposure to the Victorian period for many of its players.

If players choose to invest in occupying the Congo, they are later faced with several events discussing the mistreatment of the native population. This event chain concludes with the event “Congo Reform Association” which comes with a major loss to national prestige and reads:

Several witness reports over the past few years have spoken of the ongoing mistreatment of $COUNTRY_ADJ$ colonial subjects in The Congo Free State. Widespread brutality, mutilation and even massacres have been reported as often used tools of colonial

118 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost : A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. 1st Mariner Books ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1999, 27. 119 Hochschild, 101. 120 Ibid.

subjugation, and these reports have begun to cast the $COUNTRY_ADJ$ colonial policy in a very poor light. An international organization -- The Congo Reform Association -- has now been founded with the stated goal of restoring human dignity to $COUNTRY$'s colonial subjects, and several well renowned authors and international humanitarians 121 have rallied to the cause.

Here, the game is keen to tell the players in its text that colonialism has disastrously negative consequences. But its mechanics still insist that failing to colonize will result in an inability to compete on the world stage. Players who do not colonize parts of Africa, for example, will have lower prestige, military, and economic power. This will contribute to them having a lower rank, and therefore losing access to features in the game. Victoria II is designed in a way that it is more engaging to play if you join the geopolitical competition. Failure to do so denies you features and, in turn, engagement.

But this is not the only shortcoming of the game’s depiction of imperialism. The game takes a similar stand in its depiction of settler colonialism. Paradox’s depiction of native responses to settler colonialism rejects the most recent academic discussions of the native populations. Scholars like Zoë Laidlaw and Alan Lester have argued that the traditional historiography of native-settler relations has been overly western focussed. In these discussions, the agency of the native people have been reduced to two choices: integration into western

122 society or conflict with the settlers.

Victoria II takes this exact approach in its depiction of native populations through both mechanics and text. Mechanically, native populations in colonized regions are either absorbed into the settler society or rebel violently against western rule. Native populations either become

121 victoria2/localization/1.2.csv 122 Zoë Laidlaw and Alan Lester, Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism : Land Holding, Loss and Survival in an Interconnected World, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan,, 2015), 7.

citizens of the colonizing empire, working in western industries, paying western taxes, and operating in a western political system, or they rise up as enemy units which the player must violently put down. Players may not negotiate with these rebels, and lose prestige for each province that they lose to native resistance.

This is contrary to the most recent scholarship of native populations. Laidlaw and Adam argue that the native experience expanded beyond assimilation or resistance. By looking at “the everyday encounters through which Indigenous peoples continued to shape specific locales”

Laidlaw and Adam argued that the “dominant theme that emerges is tenacious adaptation that

123 carries with it its own, more subtle form of resistance." Native populations created “hybrid identities,” integrating aspects of settler society while resisting westernization. These identities

124 served as a subtle form of resistance” to western rule.

Events in Victoria II, however, make no room for such nuance. Events like “New Zealand and the Maori Population” and “the First Maori War” emphasize conflict over integration or adaptation, reading:

Disenchanted with British attitudes, Maori Chief Hone Heke had the flagstaff in Kororareka repeatedly chopped down in protest leading to what is known as the First Maori War… The British maintained their sovereignty over New Zealand, but rebellious Maori chiefs raised their position higher than it ever was, gaining substantial amounts of 125 respect among all tribes”

This dichotomy is even further emphasized in events depicting native African populations. The event “The Natives are Restless” epitomizes this ideological stance, reading:

A situation has presented itself in one of our colonies, where several prominent $CAPITAL$ capitalists have controlling interests in local trade. One of their ventures, a small, local machine shop, run by $COUNTRY_ADJ$ specialists, works on western industrial standards well into the small hours of the morning. The sound from the

123 Ibid, 11 124 Ibid, 11 125 victoria2/localization/event_news.csv

machine shop is preventing anyone and everyone in the immediate vicinity of the shop from getting much sleep at night, and the issue has become a symbol for many, broader, 126 pent up frustrations with our colonial rule.

In this event, the native populations are depicted as being upset not at the arrival of settler colonists or the occupation of their land, but rather because the industrious westerners are not letting them get enough sleep. This event is a blatant trivialization of the effects of settler colonialism. The mechanical effects of this event are increases in the local population’s

“militancy,” which in turn makes them more likely to rebel.

The game similarly trivializes the occupation of India by the British Empire. Here, similar mechanics are in place, through greater agency is given to the Indian populations. While

Indian princedoms are given their own states, these have limited access to diplomacy, technology, and industry. Essentially, they have fewer features, and are therefore less engaging to play because they are non-western.

Indian resistance to British rule is discussed exclusively from a British point of view. The plight of the occupied people is sequestered, while events and mechanics only stress the negative effects of unrest on the colonizing countries. For example, the event “Lord Dalhousie and India” describes British imperial governance positively, emphasizing the “development of the infrastructure, expansion of railroads, metalled bridges and roads, and telegraph lines, military

127 and medical reforms.” When resistance is discussed, it denies the agency of the occupied population. The event “Indian Mutiny!” presents the frustration with British occupation being primarily religious, stating:

… A long list of abuses and grievances by the Company's administrators against all parts of Indian society caused a series of smaller incidents in the recent past but neither

126 victoria2/localization/newtext.csv 127 victoria2/localization/event_news.csv

escalated as much and as quickly as the mutiny of soldiers refusing to rip off with their 128 teeth rifle cartridges greased with animal fat, which was against their religious beliefs

Here, the game argues that Indian people were less concerned with British occupation than they were frustrated at being asked to break a superstitious taboo by consuming the fat of forbidden animals. The event in question spawns several rebellious armies which cannot be negotiated with. These armies must be attacked by British soldiers or the entire subcontinent may become independent.

Holding on to and exploiting colonies is crucial for success in Victoria II. Colonies provide income, access to resources, captive markets for exports, and manpower to support the player’s armies. This exploitation falls directly in line with the justifications offered by

Mackinder for the maintenance of the empire in the early 20th century. His geopolitical argument was twofold: that the resources of the colonies would deter foreign powers and uplift the standards of living at home. He opened his 1905 Money-Power and Man-Power by arguing that the colonial system could provide the resources, both economic and logistical, to facilitate an

129 “ increase of the sum paid in wages, both here and in our colonies” if utilized appropriately.

More importantly, the appropriate exploitation of a global empire was necessary to preserve the

130 dominance of power enjoyed by the British Empire.

The geopolitical paradigm offers a stark view of international politics. Mackinder felt that power, derivative of the sum of resources utilized by the nation, was the determining factor in negotiations. Of this he said:

128 victoria2/localization/event_news.csv 129 Mackinder, Money-Power and Man-Power, 2. 130 Ibid, 9.

We must regard the exercise of Power in foreign affairs, in the present conditions of the world, as a normal and peaceful function of the national life, to be steadily provided for, 131 not as a spasmodic war-call to be insured against grudgingly.

Rather than a simple measure of wartime capability, military power was elevated to a tool of diplomatic negotiation wherein the overwhelming capacity to fight a war superseded the need for actual conflict. Mackinder felt that a nation’s use of power was inseparably tied to its economic success, explaining:

Thus the ships and troops, which cruise and drill in preparation for war, really perform by far the greater portion of their services to the country in times of peace... Nothing stands out more clearly from the facts of recent history that our power has in almost every instance been exerted in connection with some substantial market of our commerce, 132 where wages to the extent of millions of pounds annually were at stake.

Mackinder’s exact interpretation of international politics is directly emulated by two features in Victoria II: diplomacy and power projection. Throughout each campaign, players may engage in diplomatic negotiations with any other nation. They may enact alliances, establish protectorates, and guarantee the independence of other states, among other options. Each time a player engages in diplomacy with a computer-controlled nation, the simulation calculates a number of factors to determine the computer-controlled nation’s response. While the exact equation for calculating responses is arcane, the variables that are considered are of interest.

Chief among those variables, outpacing even long-term diplomatic attitudes, is relative power.

Relative power is a factor of the nation’s total land and navy forces plus their economic capacity.

The larger the gap in relative power, the more the negotiations will trend in favor of the stronger nation.

131 Ibid, 5. 132 Ibid.

Through this feature, players are able to utilize their power in peacetime just as

Mackinder had suggested. Moreover, players are explicitly rewarded for maintaining powerful armies and navies for the sake of favorable negotiations. Even players who have no interest in starting wars need to produce sizable armies that are capable of keeping pace with their diplomatice peers.

The second of the two mechanics that align with Mackinder’s view on international politics is power projection. Mackinder saw control of international markets as a byproduct of a

133 nation’s potential military power. Victoria II specifically allows players to control the markets of lesser powers through “power projection.” The great powers of the world are able to use their military might to construct a “sphere of influence” whereby countries become economically subservient to “great powers.” Mechanically, players spend “power points” each in-game month to align other countries within their sphere. These countries must be economically and militarily weaker than the player in question. After successfully adding a country to a great power’s sphere, the country in question must import at least 50% of its finished goods and export at least

50% of raw materials to the great power. Players who can add key countries with strategic resources or high demand for finished goods can come to economically dominate through this exertion of force. Notably players do not have to actually use their armies to fight in a war. As

Mackinder insinuated, it is rather the potential military capability, and not the use of force, which forces other countries into submission. These two mechanics directly align Victoria II with Mackinder’s understanding of international politics.

133 Mackinder, Money-Power and Man-Power, 7.

The last point of note in Victoria II’s treatment of expansion and imperialism is in its treatment of the subject of colonial famines. Here, both textual Eurocentricity and mechanical adherence to the doctrines of classical political economy simultaneously shift the blame for famine onto the oppressed, while only emphasizing the negative effects of famine in terms of the colonial nation.

In the game, “pops” die from starvation when they are unable to buy food on the market.

The in-game market is a simulation of classical political economy, where people become more successful the harder they work. More money allows pops to mature into more sophisticated professions, while a lack of money can drop pops to less prestigious jobs. Pops that do not make enough money cannot buy the supplies they need to feed themselves. Here, the mechanics of the game emulate a classical liberal interpretation of famine. Those who starve, do so because they did not work hard enough, did not save enough money, or reproduced beyond their means.

Mechanically, the game presents a clearly Malthusian interpretation that follows British attitudes

134 during the Irish Famine, blaming the victims for their own misery.

The game takes a similarly partisan stance in its representation of economic policy, using

135 classical political economy as a model for its mechanics. The game’s international markets are strikingly free, with players only able to pass tariffs on a broad, nationwide level. Players, for

134 On British views of the Irish Famine, see Tim Pat Coogan, The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy (St. Martin’s, 2012); Patrick Braitlinger, “The Irish Famine,” in P. Braitlinger, Dark Vanishings (2003), 94-116; Peter Gray, Famine Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-50 (Irish Academic Press, 1998); Jim MacLaughlin, "‘Pestilence on their backs, famine in their stomachs’: the Racial Construction of Irishness and the Irish in Victorian Britain." in Graham, Colin, Kirkland, Richard, Ireland and Cultural Theory, pp. 50-76 (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1999). 135 The market mechanics of this game are the most complex that Paradox had ever created. The game simulates over 40 global commodities, with each one of the game’s over 10,000 regions producing at least one commodity. The number of goods on the market is a factor of the number of centers of production times the number of labourers working in that industry. Goods are sold by pops onto a domestic market first, then within the nation’s empire, then on the global market. Players make money through tax income or by passing tariffs on goods entering the country.

example, cannot pass tariffs on specific goods like grain or machine parts. Instead, players have a single tariffs slider, which represents tariffs on all goods coming into the country. In general, passing tariffs is bad for a nation, and is only used by players when they are in desperate need for money. Since there is no way to pass tariffs on a specific good, tariffs cannot be used as tools to protect specific domestic markets, like, in the case of the Corn Laws, the protection of domestic agriculture. As a result, the majority of nations never pass tariffs. Further, at the start of the game, all nations start with zero tariffs. The game essentially argues that in 1836, the majority of the world was a free market capitalist society.

When famine does occur, players are rarely informed and rarely feel the effects of the loss of population. The only event which discusses famine by name, “Potato Famine Debated,” even goes so far as to argue for the use of force against the victims of the famine, suggesting that

“if the liberals become too strong, they may very well conspire again to ferment revolution” so the government “should also consider dispatching troops to provinces where we see Liberal

136 Agitation.” Not only does this event itself blame the famine victims for their plight, but the language of the event clearly misinterprets the ideology of liberalism which the game’s mechanics seem to be replicating.

th The game thus inadvertently reproduces the 19 -century British apologia for famines in their empire. Historians like Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley shows that, under “the influence of classical political economy,” Britain “employed a decidedly noninterventionist famine policy”

137 during famines in the Victorian empire. British officials held that, despite mass starvation,

“strict adherence to free trade would liberate Ireland from both famine and economic

136 victoria2/localization/newtext.csv 137 Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, “Tough Choices: Grappling with Famine in Qing China, the British Empire, and Beyond..,” Journal of World History 24, no. 1 (March 2013): 153.

138 backwardness." Similarly, Maurice Bric held that Irish MP’s like Daniel O'Connell criticized the implementation of laissez faire economics in Ireland as a chief cause of the famine. Bric explained that O’Connell felt that “ whether in Ireland or in India, a land of apparent fertility

139 should never want for food.” Using Indian policy as a metaphor for the plight of the Irish,

O’Connell argued that liberal trade policies of the East India Company made them “murderers by

140 starvation.”

Amartya Sen, the nobel prize-winning economist, may be said to have settled the question of culpability for famines in the British empire. He agreed that “classical political economy did play a major role in providing justification for non-interventionist policies in many of the… famines in the 19th century” and challenged the idea that either the Irish or Indian

141 famine was the result of what he cals “food availability decline (FAD).” Contemporary policy makers often attributed the cause of the famines to FAD, in line with Malthusian anxiety about population-growth exceeding food supplies. Sen challenges this assumption, presenting an interpretation of famine that sees starvation as arising from poverty, or what he calls “failure on

142 the part of groups of people to establish entitlement over a requisite amount of food.” Both of these famines, he argues, were the result of a population losing access to food due to changes in

143 legal, political, economic, or social conditions, and not because of FAD.

Victoria II, however, simultaneously argues that the Irish were themselves to blame for their condition of poverty, and that Irish agitation for aid was only a pretext for a revolution. This

138 Ibid. 139 Maurice J. Bric, “Debating Empire and Slavery: Ireland and British India, 1820–1845,” Slavery & Abolition 37, no. 3 (September 2016): 565. 140 Ibid. 141 Amartya Sen, “Famines,” World Development 8 (1980), 614. 142 Sen, 615. 143 Ibid.

is another clear example of a contradiction between the argument of the text and the argument of the mechanics. This also highlights how the limitations of the gaming mode prevent authentic representations of history. The developers of Victoria II are probably not modern-day Malthuasians. Instead, they likely chose to base their economic system on free market capitalism because the absence of state economic regulation makes the game easier both to code and to play. Attempting to capture the intricacies of each separate state-run market in an engaging way would be far more challenging, and would add a lot of development time for little return in engagement. This factor is similar in the game’s treatment of natives, which is deeply lacking, but would be far more difficult to code and play if it was more robust.

Justification of Imperialism: Honor and Prestige

As a work of popular history, Victoria II takes a clear stance in several other historiographical debates on the nature of imperialism in British society. One of its most obvious interventions is on the primary motivations of the British government in pursuing the imperialist project. Contemporary scholars of imperialism have debated whether capitalist economics or honor and status were the primary motivations of British officials. Historian Glenn Melancon divides the two parties in this historiographical debate as the “free trade imperialists” and the

144 “honor and shame imperialists.”

“Free trade imperialists” among historians believe that the imperial project was carried out to protect the economic domination of the British Empire in foreign markets. They view conflicts like the Opium War and the Anglo-Egyptian War and the occupation of colonial

144 Glenn Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis : Balancing Drugs, Violence, and National Honor, 1833-1840 (Ashgate: Burlington, 2003), 4-5.

holdings as tools to bolster British interests. In this interpretation, British holdings in Asia and

Africa provided both raw materials to strengthen Britain’s domestic industrial sector and served as bases to open further markets to absorb British exports. By enforcing free trade upon these regions, Britain was able to undermine local industries and increase demand for its goods

145 internationally, thereby supporting the national economy.

Bernard Semmel discussed this ideology in his The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism. He argued against earlier historians who suggested that the late 19th century was a period of peace and middle-class anti-imperialism due to fervent support for open markets as per political

146 economy. To Semmel, free trade was a tool used by the British to avoid the failures of past maritime empires by ensuring the economic and political dominance of the empire in the global

147 marketplace. Semmel explained that middle class “Radicals united in seeking not only to erect a trading system in Britain, content with its technological superiority and immense productive

148 capacities... but also to establish formal colonies which they regarded as a necessity." Far from reluctant colonizers, these political radicalists called for an “ a system of free trade as essential to

149 Britain's maintaining her position as the Workshop of the World."

Semmel’s position on the nature of imperialism was challenged by Melancon.

Melancon’s “honor and shame” explanation of imperialism instead suggests that the decisions guiding expansion were not based on economic interests but rather the private interests of a small oligarchy within the ruling elite. These individuals used policy successes as tools to elevate their

145 Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis 4-5. 146 Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism : Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism, 1750-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2. 147 Semmel, 9. 148 Semmel, 204. 149 Semmel, 204.

career and reputation. As such, defending the honor of their nation became the primary interest of British politicians. Melancon suggested that the principle of “honour required public officials

150 to act with honesty and consistency and to carry a policy into effect even in the face of defeat."

Failure to do so, Melancon argued, would weaken the “moral power” of Britain, thereby diminishing Britain’s authority in influencing other states, “thus inviting challenges to British

151 interests" through a loss in legitimacy.

Victoria II presents an extreme version of the “honor and shame” thesis of imperialism, wherein almost all of a player’s diplomatic choices are guided by their reputation. The mechanics of the game encourage players to carry out honorable diplomacy and severely punish players who fail to uphold their word, protect their interests in other countries, or appear powerful on the world stage. Beyond mechanics, the text-based events, which occur conditionally and require a player to make a decision between two or more responses, similarly reinforce this outlook. This system at times even supersedes economic considerations, as “honor” is tied to a vital in-game resource, prestige.

In Victoria II, every country in the game is ranked from greatest to weakest. The top eight countries in the world are denoted “great powers,” the next eight are “secondary powers,” and the remaining nations are divided between “civilized powers” and “primitive powers.” There are three metrics with which countries are ranked, and a sum of these three scores determines a country’s rank. The first score is military power, which is a sum of the nation’s land and sea forces. The second score is industrial power, which is a sum of the nation’s factories and infrastructure. Both of these variables are tangible summations of pieces on the game board.

150 Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis 5. 151 Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis 6.

Each factory, army, and section of rail is modeled in the game but for the calculation of “great powers” these pieces become abstracted. The final score is prestige, which is an abstracted sum of the nation’s “honor,” achievements, and reputation, with no clear on-board representation.

Once again, these categorizations of a nation’s relative power strongly resemble

Mackinder’s neo-mercantillist interpretation of power as the sum of “money-power and man-power,” which constituted the total economic and military power of a nation. Like

Mackinder’s ideology, power in Victoria II is measured on a relative scale. Mackinder’s theory of power in international relations held that “the one thing, however, which is essential for such

152 ends is that the power available shall be adequate, for power is relative.” Reminding the readers of the recent Russo-Japanese War, he explained “Power is not adequate for peaceful utilisation unless there be a margin beyond the probable requirement. ... Of the miserable and utter waste of power whis is just less than adequate, let the splendid Russian fleet bear witness

153 that now rusts at the bottom of the Japan Sea.” In declaring the great powers of the world,

Victoria II assesses the relative powers of the nations. This relative consideration impacts everything from diplomacy to economics, with more powerful nations being able to exact their will over lesser nations.

Whereas the economic and military scores most closely align with the thinking of

Mackinder, the “prestige” score is where Victoria II makes its argument for the “honor and shame” interpretation of imperialism. Compared to industry and military, prestige is the most dynamic score. Players have limited control over how many factories are built in their country and players cannot train more troops than they have willing volunteers, unless they enforce a

152 Mackinder, Money-Power and Man-Power, 7. 153 Ibid, 8.

draft. These two variables are tied to the nation’s starting conditions. A user playing as Belgium, for example, will tend to have fewer factories and lower populations than a user playing as

Russia. While these numbers are dynamic, they tend to grow in a linear fashion relative to all other nations in the game.

Prestige, on the other hand, comes and goes with every diplomatic action and almost every event. Defending an ally, settling a colony, winning a war, and demanding concessions all give the player prestige. Conversely, placating native populations, pulling forces out of a country, refusing to fight a war, or abandoning a colony all cost players prestige. Failing to act honorably, then, costs the player both in prestige and national rank. This makes prestige the most dynamic of the three variables. Smaller countries like Belgium could invest greatly into prestigious endeavors and bridge the material gap between their more affluent rivals. Further, since this variable is more dynamic, players tend to be more aware of changes in prestige.

Whereas a one point increase in industrial or military power may take in-game months, players can see several points of prestige come and go within the same week or even day.

While you do not win the game by achieving the top rank, losing ranks in the game affects the kind of features a player has access to. The top eight “great powers” have access to an entire subset of features which other players do not. In terms of game design, losing out on features has a negative impact on a player’s engagement with the game. The more “verbs” a player may perform, the more agency they have over the game world and the more engaged they will be with the game. When players know that some features exist, but they do not have access

154 to them, this can lead to frustration and a lack of engagement. In Victoria II, the game’s

154 Bates, Game Design, 21.

prestige and rank system make the players afraid of losing rank by denying them features if they do not perform well enough. This act of denial is an example of a game mechanic simultaneously making an argument about how the past worked and reinforcing that argument through the emotions its implementation can elicit. Here, Victoria II is both encouraging and pressuring players into conquest and colonization. Failure to expand means losing features, and in turn, having a worse time.

But the punishment for loss of prestige is not limited to a loss of features. Players who fail to uphold their national honor will face backlash at home from angry citizens who see the government as inept. If left unchecked, this backlash can grow into a reactionary uprising which

155 will attempt to enforce a pro-military government into office. Consistent failure to uphold a nation’s honor, the game suggests, had catastrophic effects on domestic politics.

While there is still academic debate between honor and shame and free trade imperialism, there is a growing consensus that the working class was largely uninvested in the imperial project. Victoria II’s suggestion that the working class would rise against an inept government is thus contrary to most contemporary scholarship on the subject. In “Empire, What Empire,”

Bernard Porter argued that “British society certainly did not need, however, the Empire as an object of pride. Even among the middle classes pride in the Empire was highly ambivalent before

156 the 1880s." Similarly, Alex Middleton in “The Second Reform Act and the Politics of Empire” argued that despite repeated failures of policy in the Empire, “none of these developments

155 The code behind this calculation is arcane, but essentially some events which give players choices between expanding militarily or standing down can add to the “militancy” of all pro-army citizens in the game. Revolts occur on a percent change which is the result of several variables multiplied by the militancy of the citizens in question. Higher militancy, therefore, makes populations more likely to revolt and magnifies the effects of future issues since it is factored multiplicatively and not additively into the equation. 156 Bernard Porter, “‘Empire, What Empire?’ Or, Why 80% of Early-and Mid-Victorians Were Deliberately Kept in Ignorance of It.” Victorian Studies 46, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 258.

attracted much sustained public discussion in Britain – and what discussion there was did not

157 tend to highlight connections between imperial developments and domestic politics.”

Discussions of the empire, he explained, were limited to intellectual publications and “largely

158 dwelt on the problem of the empire’s costs and benefits.” Outrage over colonial policy failures seemed absent from the domestic political sphere. Both of these claims are directly opposed to the interpretation of popular support for imperialism presented in Victoria II. Perhaps the largest reason for this ambivalence towards the empire was the prevalence of the British class structure. Porter suggested that “the main reason” for this division was “the structure of British society, which was built in such a way that it would not work if the working

159 classes became imperially proud, or even aware.” Likewise, Middleton argued that for most

160 people “the empire was not a front-rank political issue.” This stratification was magnified by class-based interpretations of patriotism, citizenship, and prestige. He explained that while “Most people had a notion of what it meant to be a ‘Briton,’ or an ‘Englishman,’... that notion varied

161 widely according to class." Between these disparate classes, people did not share an equal relation to their empire.

Undeniably, members of the middle and upper classes were aware of the benefits of the

Empire. David Killingray argued that market changes like the availability of tropical fruit and exhibitions on sailing and shipping were used to spread pride in the empire to the middle and

157 Alex Middleton, “The Second Reform Act and the Politics of Empire: The Second Reform Act and the Politics of Empire,” Parliamentary History 36, no. 1 (February 2017): 87. 158 Ibid. 159 Porter, “‘Empire, What Empire?’ Or, Why 80% of Early-and Mid-Victorians Were Deliberately Kept in Ignorance of It.”, 258. 160 Middleton, “The Second Reform Act and the Politics of Empire.” 87 161 Porter, “‘Empire, What Empire?’ Or, Why 80% of Early-and Mid-Victorians Were Deliberately Kept in Ignorance of It.”, 260

162 upper classes. Even the language of travel books shifted throughout the century from

163 discussing economic opportunities to “pleasurable, educational experiences.” These books were aimed primarily at a middle class audience for “travellers, administrators, technical

164 officers, missionaries, educationalists, settlers, and businessmen.” Both of these changes represent an awareness of empire that would be inaccessible to the average working class.

By the 1900’s, the relationship between the working class and the empire was beginning to change, in large part due to the struggles of the British in the Boer War. Historians like

Richard Price and Iain Sharpe have debated the extent to which the working class was invested in the conflict. The 1900 election saw the Conservative party adopt a strong pro-war ideology which arguably carried them to victory. Whereas Price suggested that the working class was more focussed on local issues than the empire or the war, Sharp held that few prominent anti-war officials were elected. Those who were, namely John Burns of Battersea, were anomalies rather

165 than the norm who faced significant opposition when holding anti-war rallies. Neither side of this debate, however, suggests that the working class was so invested in the empire that the working class would be willing to rise in rebellion against the government as Victoria II suggests. Certainly, changing working class sentiment on the empire may cause a shift from the

Liberal to Conservative party. But the implication that the working class would unite under a reactionary rebellious movement against the government seems unsubstantiated.

162 David Killingray, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby, Maritime Empires : British Imperial Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2004), 116-8. 163 Ibid, 115. 164 Ibid, 116 165 Iain Sharpe, “Empire, Patriotism and the Working-Class Electorate: The 1900 General Election in the Battersea Constituency,” Parliamentary History (Wiley-Blackwell) 28, no. 3 (October 2009), 393, 401.

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Overall, Victoria II’s mechanics and text present a strong justification of imperialism. They argue that nations like Britain carried out their imperial project not for financial gain, but rather to protect the honor of their nation in the international community. Moreover, the game suggests that there was widespread popular enthusiasm for the imperialist project, and statesmen faced the risk of internal revolts should they fail to uphold their interests in the colonies. While the former of these arguments is up for intellectual debate, the latter seems to challenge a growing academic consensus that the working class was detached from events in the empire.

Politics, Social Movements, and Political Economy

Victoria II’s depiction of radical and working-class political movements during the period portrays such movements as an impediment to a state’s progress. The game’s politics are deeply conservative, suggesting that the majority of the population was united on policy until working class movements and liberal agitators created divisions in society, causing mass turmoil.

Further, it neglects to represent major working class movements that should be present in both of the campaigns start dates, 1836 and 1860, further suggesting that left-wing movements were unnatural agitators.

This argument is best seen in the starting political situation in the game. In Victoria II, the politics of each of the player’s nation is modeled through 1000 person units called “pops,” short for populations. These “pops” possess demographic information including class, occupation, ethnicity, religion, political party, and dominant political issues. At the start of a Victoria II campaign playing as Britain in 1836, 71% of pops are conservative, while 19% are liberal and

10% are reactionary. Notably, no pops are working-class socialist or Chartist. Further, factory

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workers, farmers, and wage labourers are 62.6%, 71.7%, and 64.8% conservative respectively.

Finally, the three most pressing political issues for the population of the British Empire,

166 including all colonial populations, are Free Trade, Laissez Faire Economics, and Pro-Military.

The odd suggestion that the majority of the population was conservative in 1836 directly challenges the historical interpretation of Chartist historian Dorothy Thompson. Her work, The Dignity of Chartism, explains that class consciousness was at an all time high during this period. Specifically, after the 1832 Reform Act, the working class had been alienated from their middle-class coalition partners. As a result, they developed a unique reform movement, pulling

167 from a “strong-surviving tradition of lower-class radicalism." At its peak between 1836-1848, the Chartist movement was repeatedly able to organize petitions with millions of signatures, was represented by the largest circulation national newspaper of the day, the Northern Star, and regularly assembled mass demonstrations with 100,000s in attendance. Thompson argues that the

Chartists represented a significant articulation of class consciousness since the movement’s

“language at all levels was class language: the components of manhood suffrage, the rights of

168 man, and the equality of citizenship were only held by the lower orders, the working class.”

Victoria II, however, ignores this working class movement by not even mentioning the Chartists.

166 This data can be found by strating Victoria II under the “Population” tab. It could also be located in the Victoria2\history\countries\ENG-UnitedKingdom.txt file for owners of the game. This folder contains all data on the starting popularity of all countries in the game. A brief survey of all countries will find that the game suggests that every nation started 1836 with a strong conservative majority, a small liberal minority, and a minute but growing reactionary movement. This political unity is likely a gameplay choice since, from a gameplay point of view, this makes starting a game as a new country easier and more accessible. 167 Dorothy Thompson and Stephen Roberts, The Dignity of Chartism : Essays by Dorothy Thompson (Verso, 2015), 49. 168 Thompson, 19.

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The game includes socialism in the list of possible political ideologies only in the middle of the its chronology. The ideology enters the game when the event “Founding of the Socialist

Movement” fires. This event reads:

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have published The Communist Manifesto, a short but influential document discussing the history of the society and the class struggle in various countries, which has led to workers in $COUNTRY$ to found a party dedicated to advancing the agenda laid out therein. They call themselves socialists and believe in a land ruled by the workers, where the workers not the bourgeois control the means of production. Equality, justice, solidarity and democracy are other vital points in the 169 socialists ideology.

This event fires semi-randomly, with only nations of a certain level of industrialization capable of receiving the event. Whichever country receives the event then has their “pops” begin to become more supportive of socialism. Socialism then spreads to neighboring countries, almost like an infection, as pops become more militant, and in turn more likely to rebel violently against the government.

From the gameplay point of view, socialism is a problem which the players must defeat.

Players with socialist pops in their country are more likely to face rebellions which could greatly decrease the prestige of their nation. Worse yet, if the socialists do take over the government, players lose all of their earlier alliances and indirect colonies. British players, for example, would lose control over all of their Indian tributaries. This represents a major setback in terms of military, industrial, and prestige points. In one revolution, a player could be demoted from the premier world power to a “secondary power.” This loss of power would result in a loss of features and the instant setback of hours of real-time gameplay. For the sake of avoiding this frustration, players are encouraged to stop socialist movements.

169 victoria2/localization/event_news.csv

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By appearing mid-way through the century, and by posing such a threat to the player, socialists appear less as a genuine political movement and more as an externally-inspired insurgency to be defeated. Although Marx developed his critique of capitalism by studying existing British socialist thought, the actual political motives, ideology, or goals of the socialists

170 are rarely discussed in the game. Events that do discuss socialist motivations tend to focus not on the working-class case for reform, but rather on the dangers generated by small-scale frustrations of workers against their management. The event “Sabotage!” for example, reads:

A factory in one of our states has become the target of a mild, but costly, sabotage campaign… and local management suspects that a known socialist agitator in the area is responsible for this development, as the gentleman in question is known by management to have taken issue with a decision they recently took regarding company internal 171 division of labour.

Here, the motivations for the workers’ discontent are not frustrations with the systemic disempowerment of the working class, but rather a labour dispute which escalated to “sabotage” under the influence of a “known socialist agitator,” whose motivation is attributed to having been passed over for promotion. Even when discussing strikes, the game takes a similarly small-scale approach to socialist politics. The event “Bloody Strike!” reads:

A strike today in one of our states, initiated by communist troublemakers and revolutionaries, was swiftly put down by local police. The event has caused a massive backlash against the socialist movement in the state, as local farmers & peasants perceive the red ideology as being vehemently opposed to the traditions and histories of 172 civilization in general, and , $COUNTRY$, more importantly.

Here, the game seems to suggest that socialism was not a movement of workers with popular support, but rather an ideology pushed by agitators despite the resistance of the general

170 On Marx in Britain, see Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion (Harvard, 2016); Gregory Claeys, Marx and Marxism (Bold Type Books, 2018); Rolf Hosfeld, Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography (Berghahen, 2012). 171 victoria2/localization/event_news.csv 172 victoria2/localization/newtext.csv

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populace. The suggestion that socialism aimed to undermine a contented traditional society works in tandem with the argument that the majority of the population was conservative in 1836.

These two events appear contrary to the kind of working-class movement that historians have described for this period. At the center of the Chartist movement, Dorothy Thompson suggested, was not violent impulse or outside provocateurs, but organized working-class consciousness. While the movement did erupt into riots in 1842, Thompson held that the core of the movement was about securing tangible goals for the working class, not indiscriminate violence as Victoria II suggests. Universal suffrage, popular smallholding, “fair day’s wage,” protection of workers faced with technological displacement, and worker-controlled industry were the aims of the movement. Its appeal was to long-established standards of fairness and

173 justice, not the destruction of “traditions and histories of civilization in general.”

Perhaps more alarming is how the game encourages players to deal with these movements. To prevent rebellions, players can either buy time by passing pro-worker legislation, such as limits on the work day, or players can turn to violence to put down the movements.

Players gain “suppression” points based on the tax revenue which they allocate to administrative

174 funding. These points can be used to suppress specific movements in specific provinces by pressing a single “suppress movement” button. This button is a clear abstraction of the violent process of suppression, as the means or effects of government suppression are never addressed.

Rather, players simply see the percentage chance of a rebellion and the total population of a movement decrease over time.

173 Thompson, 19. See also Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1984); Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism (Cambridge, 1989); E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Gollanz, 1963). 174 This calculation is a result of a formula containing several variables including total population size, technology level, and administrative funding.

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When suppression fails and pops rise against the government, players cannot negotiate with the movement. Instead, they may either put down the rebellion violently or they may allow the rebels to take over the region and enforce their demands. Failing to attack the rebels results in a major prestige loss, and a rebel victory can spawn new nations, cause colonial rebellions, and break diplomatic treaties. The game therefore suggests that reform movements are illegitimate, and then encourages players to use extreme violence to ensure that all rebellions are defeated.

Conveniently, the game even has a “hunt rebels” button, which tells an army to find and kill political dissenters who rise against the government. When the armies meet with rebels, they engage in a battle identical to fighting a foreign army. The game makes no distinction between rebels who have been killed, wounded, or arrested. Rather, each hit that the rebel army takes counts casualties identically to a military engagement. In a single day, thousands of rebels can become casualties to the government’s army. With no clear distinction between arrests and murders, government soldiers appear to be killing thousands of working-class people for rising against the government. With no other options, the game suggests that military suppression of popular resistance was not only justified, but necessary en masse.

The events discussing political suppression similarly promote violence. “Sympathy

Strike” for example, reads:

...What is infinitely worse than a few redbeards taking a few days off, however, is that many other workers from all across the state have joined them in a state-wide sympathy strike, causing the productive engine of the state to grind to a more or less immediate 175 halt. Harsh methods might have to be employed to resolve this little situation

Players are then tasked with deciding if they will send in the police to break the strike, adding to the militancy of all pops effected, or take a loss to prestige and tax efficiency in the

175 victoria2/localization/newtext.csv

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affected provinces. The game contains over ten similar decisions which force the player to choose between turning to violence or losing prestige and money. When players do turn to violence, they are often rewarded. After successfully putting down a rebellion, players may receive the event “Agitation Suppressed” which explains that “The presence of a sizable army contingent in $PROVINCENAME$ has caused… revolutionary talk, which could just up until

176 now be heard on almost every street corner, to die down.” Oddly, this event can fire for suppression of all political parties or movements, including movements like women’s suffrage, calls for pensions, or shorter work weeks. This is likely a result of lazy coding, but leads to a strange argument that all civic movements had the potential to become violent revolutionary movements, and it may be best that they be suppressed through military action. The game then rewards players by lowering the militancy of the people living in the affected region, in turn making them less likely to rebel in favor of reform.

Ultimately, the game seems to strongly condone and reward the use of violence against

th the working class. The game portrays 19 -century socialism as a movement aimed at destroying a contented conservative society which could only be stopped through military might. This interpretation is deeply reactionary, and ignores entirely the rich historiography on the genuine grievances and aspirations of Victorian working-class movements.

176 victoria2/localization/newtext.csv Oddly, this event can fire for suppression of all political parties or movements, including movements like women’s suffrage, calls for pensions, or shorter work weeks. This is likely a result of lazy coding, but leads to a strange argument that civic movements would be best suppressed through the military and that all civic movements had the potential to become violent revolutionary movements. [USE THIS IN THE TEXT]

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Limitations of the Medium

Victoria II is an ambitious game which aims to cover a broad period of human history and geography. Attempting to create an authentic representation of every nation, political party, and ideology of the world between 1836 and 1936 is an incredibly ambitious undertaking. The developers’ decisions in depicting these elements mechanically were undeniably influenced by the principles of game design more than available historical literature or the historical method itself. This does not make the game a bad game, but rather this causes the game to endorse many heritage myths about how the past happened. Still, despite these historical issues, Victoria II is one of Paradox Interactive’s most historically authentic games. It, as any other game, will never be historically accurate. To be accurate would be to remove all agency from the player for history only happened one way.

Even at the apex of complexity, the limitations of historical simulations as a medium had profound implications on the game’s historiographical alignment. In the end, the need for competition outweighed any other ideological impulse. Victoria II simply could not engage or entertain its players if there was not a constant incentive to expand. Victoria II’s nations must be locked in constant competition for limited resources, just as Mackinder insisted, because that creates the core feedback loop of the game. Every action in the game’s moment-to-moment experience is built around gaining more land, acquiring more resources, and becoming more powerful. This, as the designers’ many other interpretive choices, turns out to constitute a deeply reactionary worldview, but it is a choice driven by the commercial dynamics of medium.

Changing this core feedback loop would go beyond the bounds of the genre as it is known.

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This game would be the last of Paradox Interactive’s complex simulations to be a financial success. After releasing several more complex simulations to underwhelming receptions, Paradox would go on to reduce the complexity of almost every system in its games.

These new, less complex iterations would propel Paradox Interactive into one of the most profitable game companies in the industry. Interestingly, many of the historical institutions which Victoria II introduced are still present in the later iterations, just in a more accessible and less nuanced format. Ultimately, Victoria II serves as an exceptional game and a mediocre work of popular history.

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CONCLUSION

So what does all of this tell us about Imperator: Rome? As one of Paradox Interactive's most recent games, it continues the legacy of Europa Universalis IV’s design philosophy. The game is simple, the user interface is slick, and the rules are easily understood. Why, then, did

Imperator fail? The core of a game designer's mission is to create an essence of an experience, be it historically based or fantastical. Through audio, video, text, and gameplay, a designer crafts a game space for their players to enter. Once the final polygons are textured, the musical score is processed, and the last lines of code are compiled, the game is shipped to thousands, if not millions of players. While the game designers may have created this work, it is between the player and the game that the art takes place. Absent is the designer, the coder, the modeler, and the musician.

Players who willingly enter into this constructed game space, who suspend their disbelief and allow themselves to enter into a state of genuine play, will enjoy an artistic experience wholly unique to them. As their mind turns images on a screen into a constructed world, they catch a glimpse at the genuine experience that the game designer once envisioned. Author Eric

Geissinger captured the intimacy of this experience, explaining that “play generates a reality distinct from our everyday reality…. Anything occurring in the play world is bounded by the

177 fictional sphere of the play area.” This phenomena, which is only achievable through games, is one of the only ways to genuinely share an experience between people.

177 Geissinger, 14.

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Certainly not all games hope to achieve this level of artistic connection, but those that do are equipped to have a profound impact on their players. A game’s ability to share an experience may well be unmatched against other mediums. The medium is well-adorned with emotional, paradigm-shifting experiences. From Final Fantasy VI to Undertale, Night in the Woods to Spec Ops: The Line, games can capture emotions, lived realities, and the fantastical as well as any other medium.

Historical simulations, while they may lack the narrative cohesion of their role playing game counterparts, are no different. I, like many others, have suspended my disbelief and entered into the constructed play space of many historical simulations. In this space, I can approach an essence of history. But just like any representation of the past, this essence of history is wholly distinct from the past itself. Here, within the constructed game space, the designer’s interpretation of the past comes through. It is this interpretation that the player experiences between themselves and the game.

In a successful game, the designer's interpretation of the past aligns with their audience's collective memory. Heritage myths are confirmed and comfortable lies are re-told. Failure to do so, without the proper care, would bring the player out of the constructed game space by suddenly breaking their sense of immersion. Certainly games could be used to bridge the gap between the academic consensus and heritage history, but great efforts would have to be made to keep the player immersed while doing so. Players, then, expect their historical simulations to reflect the historical knowledge that they bring with them into the game.

This is where Imperator: Rome went astray. As it continued Europa Universalis IV’s philosophy of simplification, it took the process to the extreme. For the sake of ease, Rome,

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Carthage, Numidia, Gaul, and every other nation of the world played in a nearly identical manner. The distinctions between each culture were so minute, as to create a balanced experience, that every culture seemed the same. Carthage had no great elephants, Gaul no painted warriors, and Rome no glistening legionaries. Every country, from Iberia to India, raced to conquer the world just as Rome had done.

The dissonance between the player’s expectations and the delivered product represents the triumph of heritage history over the commercial imperative. In an effort to keep people immersed through ease of play, Paradox had broken player’s immersion by neglecting to capture their audience's collective memory. Despite being a more accessible and better balanced game,

Imperator:Rome failed to deliver the historical authenticity that its audience demanded. The financial failure of Imperator: Rome speaks to the role that historical simulations play in reinforcing heritage myths.

The relationship between these heritage myths and the political messages embedded in the mechanics of these games is of particular interest. Although they do not constitute the majority of the audience, it is not a coincidence that the emergent alt-right seems to flock to these games in droves. Within these historical simulations, right-wing world views are reinforced and political fantasies can be played out. This is by no means to say that these games are tools of radicalization, but rather that these games can potentially serve as powerful reinforcements of existing prejudice. Moreover, to those who play these games without a pre-existing political outlook, the compelling arguments within the mechanics of these games can certainly inform some thought about the modern political climate.

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Like any form of art, video games are innately political. Historical simulations, especially, convey messages about society, the past, and one’s place in history. As these games grow in prominence, it will be increasingly important to understand the types of politics that these games impart on their audience. Future studies could work to penetrate the secretive world of game design to better understand design decisions and the politics going into the games.

Likewise, an analysis that focuses on the audience of historical simulations could reveal a great deal about how these games inform their player’s world views.

With historical simulations at the height of their popularity, now more than ever it is important to understand the power this genre plays in shaping the public’s understanding of the past. For many topics, these games will be the first point of exposure that people will have to topics. In their 2007 call to action, speaking of film history, Wineburg et al. offered a powerful statement, urging historians that:

Rather than pretending that we can do away with popular culture, we might try instead to understand how its forces can be harnessed — rather than spurned or simply ignored — 178 to advance students’ historical understanding.

Games are accelerating as a medium. In a 2016 study, Americans reported spending an

179 average of 2.6 hours per day playing games. This rise in popularity, paired with the unique power of games to capture the essence of an experience makes them a force of public history that cannot be ignored by academia. Historical simulations are here to stay.

178 Wineburg et al., 175. 179 Maguth et al., 70.

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APPENDIX A: Historical Simulations from 2000 to 2019

Game Name Publisher Initial # of Copies # of Peak Steam Rating Release Sold DLC / Players Date Expansi Playing ons

Age of Civilizations II Łukasz Jakowski 2018 150,000 0 2206 77.89 Games

Men of War: Red Tide 1C Entertainment 2009 350,000 0 77 75.55

Men of War: Assault Squad 1C Entertainment 2011 750,000 5 1490 84.12

Men of War: Vietnam 1C Entertainment 2011 150,000 1 456 60.23

Unity of Command 2X2 Games 2012 150,000 1 358 76.8

The Guild 2 4 Head Studios 2010 350,000 0 1249 77.24

Supreme Ruler Ultimate BattleGoat Studios 2014 75,000 2 302 69.34

Battle of Empires: 1914-1918 Best Way Soft 2015 75,000 11 210 64.03

Rise of Nations Big Huge Games 2003 750,000 1 977 88.45

The Entente Buka 2014 75,000 0 213 43.96 Entertainment

Call of War Bytro Labs GmbH 2017 350,000 10 773 50.68

Predynastic Egypt Clarus Victoria 2016 35,000 0 295 86.51

Civil War: Battle of Petersburg Cult Software 2017 10,000 0 1738 65.74

Bounty Train Daedalic 2017 75,000 3 602 67.82 Entertainment

Death Trader: Cold War Dreambakers 2018 10,000 0 10 55.77

Making History: The Calm and the Factus Games 2007 10,000 0 99 75.67 Storm

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Making History II The War of the Factus Games 2010 35,000 0 346 72.28 World

Making History: The Great War Factus Games 2015 35,000 1 114 70.23

Making History: The Second World Factus Games 2018 10,000 0 68 68.49 War

Sid Meier's Pirates Firaxis Games / 2K 2006 750,000 0 1,342 89.18

CivCity: Rome Firaxis Games / 2K 2007 75,000 0 118 69.42

Sid Meier's Railroads Firaxis Games / 2K 2007 750,000 0 1,008 64.47

Civilization 3 Firaxis Games / 2K 2001 3,500,000 2 4,600 83.21

Civilization 4 Firaxis Games / 2K 2005 1,500,000 2 2,314 86.99

Civilization 4: Colonization Firaxis Games / 2K 2008 1,500,000 0 729 73.29

Civilization 5 Firaxis Games / 2K 2010 7,500,000 15 91,363 94.59

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol Firaxis Games / 2K 2013 750,000 0 415 65.85

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol: Pacific Firaxis Games / 2K 2013 750,000 0 240 60.5 Skies

Civilization 6 Firaxis Games / 2K 2016 3,500,000 8 162,657 67.36

Nantucket Fish Eagle 2018 35,000 1 1261 73.77

City Life 2008 Focus Home 2008 35,000 0 41 61.87 Interactive

Cities XL Focus Home 2013 350,000 0 33 56.05 Interactive

Cities XXL Focus Home 2015 150,000 0 2092 32.84 Interactive

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Wargame: European Escalation Focus Home 2012 750,000 4 3,588 74.13 Interactive

Wargame: Airland Battle Focus Home 2013 750,000 2 4,439 85.55 Interactive

Wargame: Red Dragon Focus Home 2014 750,000 7 4,779 85.13 Interactive

Ultimate General: Gettysburg Game-Labs 2014 350,000 0 910 78.75

Evil Bank Manager Hamsters Gaming 2018 35,000 0 351 73.75

Oreintal Empires Iceberg Interactive 2017 75,000 1 689 75.64

Caesar 3 Impressions Games 1998 150,000 0 184 80.02

Sudden Strike Kalypso Media 2000 75,000 0 89 76.92

Sudden Strike II Kalypso Media 2002 75,000 0 45 73.32

Imperium Romanum Gold Edition Kalypso Media 2008 150,000 1 219 74.95

Sudden Strike III Kalypso Media 2008 75,000 0 63 60.35

Grand Ages: Rome Kalypso Media 2009 350,000 2 308 68.87

Tropico 3 Kalypso Media 2009 1,500,000 1 5,784 84.01

Tropico Reloaded Kalypso Media 2009 350,000 2 111 81.37

Partician III Kalypso Media 2010 150,000 0 107 72.47

Partician IV Kalypso Media 2010 150,000 1 140 53.84

Tropico 4 Kalypso Media 2011 3,500,000 14 10,892 88.76

Port Roayle 3 Kalypso Media 2012 35,000 5 614 66.72

Rise of Venice Kalypso Media 2013 75,000 3 587 55.45

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Tropico 5 Kalypso Media 2014 1,500,000 20 13,483 75.09

Grand Ages Medieval Kalypso Media 2015 75,000 2 4,274 44.47

Sudden Strike IV Kalypso Media 2017 150,000 4 2,476 68.44

Railway Empire Kalypso Media 2018 150,000 7 5,446 78.5

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 Koei Tecmo 2016 350,000 37 11,909 46.86 Games

Nobunaga's Ambition: Taishi Koei Tecmo 2017 75,000 24 5626 36.73 Games

Hegemony Gold: War of Ancient Longbow Games 2012 35,000 0 42 85.7 Greece

Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Longbow Games 2014 75,000 0 250 58.6 Caesar

Hegemony III Longbow Games 2015 35,000 1 251 70.06

Dawn of Man Madruga Works 2019 150,000 0 23,864 78.97

Blitzkrieg 3 Nival 2017 75,000 1 1,149 57.88

Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun Paradox Interactive 2003 150,000 1 47 63.81

Crusader Kings Complete Paradox Interactive 2004 75,000 1 58 59.53

Hearts of Iron II Complete Paradox Interactive 2005 75,000 3 115 76.69

Europa Universalis III Complete Paradox Interactive 2007 350,000 4 1,315 79.34

Europa Universalis: Rome - Gold Paradox Interactive 2008 75,000 1 117 65.92 Edition

For The Glory Paradox Interactive 2009 35,000 0 20 65.3

Hearts of Iron III Paradox Interactive 2009 750,000 19 1,551 74.79

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Arsenal of Democracy Paradox Interactive 2010 75,000 0 97 78.25

Ship Simulator: Extremes Paradox Interactive 2010 150,000 6 229 46.56

The King's Crusade Paradox Interactive 2010 75,000 3 22 39.58

Victoria II Paradox Interactive 2010 750,000 2 1,700 85.43

Cities in Motion Paradox Interactive 2011 350,000 14 1,170 73.55

Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Paradox Interactive 2011 150,000 0 502 83.81 Game

Sengoku Paradox Interactive 2011 150,000 0 174 62.3

Crusader Kings II Paradox Interactive 2012 3,500,000 30 141,439 86.66

Cities in Motion 2 Paradox Interactive 2013 750,000 12 1,783 55.72

Europa Universalis IV Paradox Interactive 2013 1,500,000 32 28,449 81.77

March of the Eagles Paradox Interactive 2013 75,000 0 1,286 64.74

Cities Skylines Paradox Interactive 2015 3,500,000 19 60,386 90.5

Hearts of Iron IV Paradox Interactive 2016 1,500,000 8 46,806 85.35

Steel Division: Normandy 44 Paradox Interactive 2017 350,000 3 4,678 70.33

Knights of Honor Paradox Interactive 2004 150,000 0 550 86.84

Crusaders: Thy Kingdom Come Paradox Interactive 2008 10,000 0 7 52.59

Medieval Kingdom Wars Reverie World 2019 75,000 1 549 75.1 Studios

Total War: Rome SEGA 2004 1,500,000 2 4,413 90.41

Total War: Medieval II SEGA 2006 3,500,000 4 5,917 91.8

Total War: Empire SEGA 2009 3,500,000 5 27,559 87.66

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Total War: Napoleon SEGA 2010 3,500,000 4 9,935 87.79

Total War: Shogun II SEGA 2011 3,500,000 8 38,517 89

Total War: Rome II SEGA 2013 3,500,000 14 118,240 69.46

Total War: Attila SEGA 2015 1,500,000 8 26,346 72.13

Total War Saga: Thrones of SEGA 2018 150,000 1 22,797 56.42 Britannia

Company of Heroes SEGA 2006 150,000 2 5,906 86.26

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor SEGA 2009 3,500,000 0 2,945 88.41

Company of Heroes 2 SEGA 2013 3,500,000 7 164,688 72.21

Total War Battles: Kingdom SEGA 2015 750,000 0 2,448 50.58

Pride of Nations Slitherine 2011 35,000 4 56 46.75

ALEA JACTA EST Slitherine 2014 35,000 5 35 65.73

Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 461 75.32 Manager

Civil War II Slitherine 2014 35,000 1 107 70.13

Command: Modern Air/Naval Slitherine 2014 35,000 0 179 79.27 Operations

Commander: The Great War Slitherine 2014 35,000 0 264 70.52

Rise of Prussia Gold Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 16 65.51

Time of Fury Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 39 55.86

To End All Wars Slitherine 2014 10,000 1 125 62.17

Command: Northern Inferno Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 32 70.68

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Revolution Under Siege Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 25 65.59

Scourge of War: Waterloo Slitherine 2015 10,000 3 43 71.44

Vietnam '65 Slitherine 2015 35,000 0 127 75.12

Wars of Napeolon Slitherine 2016 10,000 0 55 49.49

Afghanistan '11 Slitherine 2017 10,000 1 250 69.9

Command: The Silent Service Slitherine 2018 10,000 0 21 65.42

Wars of Succession Slitherine 2018 10,000 0 12 68.15

QVADRIGA Slitherine 2014 35,000 0 100 75.14

Close Combat: Gateway to Caen Slitherine 2014 35,000 0 254 61.04

Panzer Corps Slitherine 2011 150,000 17 991 87.12

Advanced Tactics: Gold Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 41 76.91

Battle Academey Slitherine 2014 35,000 6 56 77.2

Battle Academey 2: Eastern Front Slitherine 2014 10,000 1 64 78.99

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 92 82.28 Player's Edition

Frontline: Road to Moscow Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 49 49.34

Frontline: The Longest Day Slitherine 2014 10,000 0 16 33.02

Battle of the Bulge Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 86 62.61

Close Combat: Panthers in the Fog Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 71 57.23

Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 19 75.86

Decisive Campaigns: The Blitzkrieg Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 52 76.37 From Warsaw to Paris

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Gary Grigsby's War in the East Slitherine 2015 10,000 2 143 84.85

Heroes of Normandie Slitherine 2015 10,000 2 235 66.35

Order of Battle: World War II Slitherine 2015 350,000 11 888 67.06

Pike and Shot: Campaigns Slitherine 2015 10,000 0 133 70.28

Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Slitherine 2016 10,000 2 12 51.44 Bear

Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa Slitherine 2016 10,000 0 129 81.9

Drive on Moscow Slitherine 2016 10,000 0 26 72.93

Sengoku Jidai: Shadows of the Slitherine 2016 10,000 8 60 68.03 Shogun

Thirty Years's War Slitherine 2016 10,000 0 16 59.4

Victory and Glory: Napoleon Slitherine 2016 10,000 0 111 69.94

Field of Glory II Slitherine 2017 35,000 5 309 82.74

Gary Grigsby's War in the West Slitherine 2017 10,000 1 48 80.17

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns Slitherine 2017 10,000 0 49 58.36

Mare Nostrvm Slitherine 2017 10,000 0 13 73.89

Strategic Command WWII: War In Slitherine 2017 10,000 1 103 76.01 Europe

Aggressors: Ancient Rome Slitherine 2018 10,000 0 139 73.03

Check Your 6! Slitherine 2018 10,000 0 30 56.25

March to Glory Slitherine 2018 10,000 0 42 51.34

Panzer Strategy Starni Games 2018 10,000 0 195 69.04

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The Guild 3 THQ Nordic 2017 75,000 0 3,513 48.43

Caesar 4 Tilted Mill 2006 150,000 0 110 54.13 Entertainment

Children of the Nile Tilted Mill 2008 75,000 0 35 76.66 Entertainment

Strategic War In Europe Wastelands 2014 35,000 0 131 44.39 Interactive

From Village to Empire Witch Laboratory 2018 10,000 0 7 76.9

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Files Accessed

Europa Universalis III - Complete\common\event_effects.txt Europa Universalis III - Complete\common\governments.txt Europa Universalis III - Complete\common\policies.txt Europa Universalis IV\common\leader_personalities\00_core.txt. Europa Universalis IV\common\revolt_triggers\00_revolt_triggers.txt Europa Universalis IV\common\static_modifiers\00_static_modifiers.txt. Hearts of Iron IV\common\ideologies\00_ideologies.txt (PAGE 15) Victoria2\history\countries\ENG-UnitedKingdom.txt Victoria2/localization/1.2.csv Victoria2/localization/event_news.csv Victoria2/localization/newtext.csv

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