By Shu Wan (University of Buffalo)
In light of the persistence and prevalence of the exploitative perception of human-nature relations in RTS games, there is an urgent need to address how games model and convey this relationship. While the RTS game is becoming somewhat niche, there is still substantial potential to redesign it on ecofeminist grounds. The integration of non-Western civilizations and societies into Age of Empires II pose an opportunity for such a redesign and resonates with Souvik Mukherjees’ critique on the legacy of imperialism and colonialism in the game. Likewise, the integration of ecofeminist consideration into the game design could advocate inclusiveness and diversity.
In the setting of Age of Empires II, resource-gathering is vital for gameplay. Collecting the utmost resources is not the criteria for victory, but it is critically important for winning a game in most modes. These resources allow players to recruit and train military units, including warriors and weapons to defeat the computer or other human players, or to construct a Wonder as a more direct way to win the game. Whether the goal is defeating the enemy’s military or building a splendid structure, the player must collect adequate natural resources.
Gathering and spending resources are an important component of Age of Empires II. According to its manual, players need to “manage four different resources,” all gathered from nature: stone dug from stone mines, gold dug from gold mines, wood obtained from jungle and forest, and food harvested from specific plants and animals. The natural environment is reduced to resources in the game setting.
Animals may appear as useful natural resources or harmful entities in the game. The official guide of differentiates animals in accordance with the amount of food they supply: “Deer contain 140 foods, and wild boars contain 340 foods.” Some of these food providing animals may pose a threat to the player’s units. Termed “Aggressive Hunt” on the game webpage: “those animals can be hunted for large amounts of food but will fight back against the unit hunting it … examples of Aggressive Hunt are Boars, Rhinos, and Elephants which contain a large amount of food and are gathered quickly.” Likewise, plants are merely perceived as sources of wood. As shown on the official website: “Wood is gathered by Villagers from trees found across the map and dropped off at Lumber Camps or the Town Center. Different types of trees contain different amounts of wood.”
The technology tree in Age of Empires II also reflects game developers’ conception of man’s relationship with the environment. The design of Age of Empires II is primarily embedded in the Eurocentric view of human history, in which technology was defined on the ground of instructional rationality and evolutionary theory. According to Tuur Ghys, “the tech tree model can embody technological determinist assumptions in (at least) three ways: by forcing a set sequence, by influencing social changes in history and by characterizing (thus determining) eras and civilizations.” In Age of Empire II, most economic technologies are featured with the transformation from raw materials into products, as follows.
| Name | Description |
| Wheelbarrow | Villagers work more efficiently by moving 10% faster and carrying 25% more resources. |
| Hand Cart | Villagers work more efficiently by moving 10% faster and carrying 50% more resources. |
| Gold Mining | Villagers mine gold 15% faster. |
| Gold Shaft Mining | Villagers mine gold 15% faster. |
| Stone Mining | Villagers mine stone 15% faster. |
| Stone Shaft Mining | Villagers mine stone 15% faster. |
| Double-Bit Axe | Villagers chop wood 20% faster. |
| Two-Man Saw | Villagers chop wood 20% faster. |
| Bow Saw | Villagers chop wood 10% faster. |
| Horse Collar | Farms produce +75 food so they last longer before you must rebuild them. |
| Heavy Plow | Farms produce +125 food so they last longer before you must rebuild them. Farmers carry +1 food each trip. |
| Crop Rotation | Farms produce +175 food so they last longer before you must rebuild them. |
All the technologies in the chart above represent ‘progress’ as increasing efficiency of exploiting nature. In other words, technology is all about obtaining raw materials and natural resources: the central aspect of gameplay. This model is to some extent connected to medieval and early modern European history, but the underlying criterion for selection of these technologies and their mechanics is based on the game developers’ predisposition to understand humans-nature relations from the ground instructional rationality. Although the temporal setting in Age of Empires II was in advance of the emergence of biotechnology in the 20th century, the one-directional and progressive narrative about the trajectory of these technologies throughout human history is the consequence of the perception of the contemporary world as the apex of human civilisation.
The representation of nature in Age of Empire II foregrounds the need for reassessing the nature-human relationship in games. However, an ecofeminist approach to the representation of nature in video games is possible, and I intend to demonstrate alternative approaches within an extended version of this paper in the Conference Proceedings.
Thanks so much for this, Shu, I think this is a really significant problem with game models that definitely warrants more attention in the scholarship, especially as there are Indigenous game designers offering other models that don’t get talked about enough!
I wonder about how much we will ever really be able to change and redesign a game like Age of Empires to not be based in imperialist logic – even the genre being called ‘strategy’ games I think shapes the way we think about engaging with the world in these texts through that logistical, strategic schema. I think your use of the ecofeminist lens here is valuable for critiquing this text, but could you expand more on what you meant about integrating that view into the game? And also on the benefits of redesigning a game like this, rather than creating a new model that is, from the start, rooted in the alternate epistemologies, e.g. Indigenous Ways of Knowing?
Thank you for this, Shu! Really interesting approach. However, could you possibly expand more on how an ecofeminist perspective could be used in this game and, possibly, on other (neo)medievalist games? I am interested to hear how this might alter or redefine gender dynamics in those same games, and what it could bring in terms of new scholarly approaches. Thank you!
Hello Shu!
Thanks for this great paper which makes some very important and interesting points. I’m very much looking forward to reading – and learning – from your proposals for alternate models, and different ways of looking at human – nature interactions. Do you think that the better approach would be to replace the exploitative model entirely, or to bring multiple models into a game setting, so the contrasts and conflicts (ethical, pragmatic, etc.) between them can be foregrounded and illuminated?
Thanks for this paper. I was wondering what your thoughts were on how we build and reflect the medieval mental space within these discussions. Building alternative logics into games to reflect our sense of a broader (ecological, ethnocultural, gender) sense of the medieval period is a really interesting area and one which I’ve thought about at points in my own game design. One thing that is worth discussing, though, is how we think about the problem space presented to the player, in that medieval cultures (western and non-western alike) often had a very different set of thought-tools for dealing with these challenges, which differ both from imperialist logics but also from our own post-imperial sense of how the cultures worked in hindsight. How do we deliver these sorts of design critiques and redevelop strategic logics in ways that still give space to represent medieval thought?
Eager to read your full thoughts in the proceedings!
In the meanwhile, could you perhaps point us toward authors which, in your opinion, can help us explore the alternatives ways of framing human/non-human relationships? By ecofeminism, do you mean scholars like Barad, Haraway, Iovino & Oppermann, etc?