I have changed the beginning of this piece several times by now. Events keep unfolding that matter when thinking about what is possible. At home a large and popular mobilization managed to deter a right-wing government from allowing to freely sell land to rich foreigners. This very unpopular bill would have allowed any foreign national to just build their own little fortress and carry out any social experiment or simply (is any of this simple) use to set up large nature consuming tech plantations. The implications of losing stolen land to this is a much larger conversation to be had than in this small space.
On the other hand, there is the continued news about academia imploding in different points of the so-called central countries (again to short space for a proper discussion) in order to make these spaces aligned to its dehumanizing aspects. And no, this is not a reference (solely) to the US, we don’t do US-centric stories. From precarity to closing down spaces to persecution (now you are asking yourself if I am speaking about academia or the game industry. Honestly pick and choose) the definition of what knowledge is and needs to be crosses these actions and alignment with the same actors that wish to appropriate lands.
You may be thinking what does this have to do with Medieval times and videogames. Hopefully you are not, and you understand where I am coming from. This is, in the end, what influences how we think about what the Medieval world meant and needs to be, as well as what games need to do and for whom they are built. Public discourse on when universities were funded as a legitimizing tool, alongside the continuous referencing of medieval origins of European countries continue to be important lenses through which Medievally inspired games are thought of.
I want to present these lines as a proposal to think together some of these points. Many of which will most likely appear in the coming papers and I am looking forward to reading and engaging with them.
Thinking about possible worlds seems like an imperative in the current context. That has been the case for several peoples and different context across the world. Let me be less cryptic. Indigenous peoples, so called peripherical countries (also known as 3rd world countries among many other hierarchical distinctions), and gender and sexually diverse communities across the world have been facing colonial, heteronormative and imperial world impositions for a while. Possible worlds and possible pasts are key to engage in practices of survival and resistance. Building these possibilities is key for projecting relations and connections into the future beyond the imposition of individualistic and segmented relations that colonial impositions continue to promote through videogames. I am speaking of the colonialities following Lugones (2008,2011), Lander (2001), Maldonado-Torres (2007) and Quijano (1992).
The question that can emerge, and probably is rounding around in your head, is why bring all these issues to the study of Middle Ages in modern games. You probably have guessed it, and most likely were already thinking it; and are wondering about my poor attempt at suspense. Games, videogames further so, are made in our times. Colonial influences are a key aspect repeated across most games, games set or closely connected to the Middle Ages are not the exception. I am thinking the importance of understanding how the Middle Ages is crossed by colonial influences beyond the extremism of right wing recalls of a nation. The national recalling of a constructed past is also present and can build on these distinctions that create ideas of human and non-human groups. It is the othering created by the colonial invasion to Abya Yala, that marks the historical end of the Middle Ages that then gets applied retroactively to representations in games.
Scriptorium is a good example. It gives way to how we need to navigate the colonial influences that we bring. Writing was not a colonial argument used to distinguish others. While it has a history or a level of separating that can be traced back to Roman expansion in antiquity, it is our own colonial production of the other by discerning the existence of written record that needs to be checked. Consider also who gets to be played in these games; who were those that could read and write and how representative of power structures where they. Are we engaging in possible pasts that are expansive? What are we unconsciously reproducing about our own views of the past?
This is not a pessimistic reading of what the Middle Ages in videogames can do. I believe that bringing the complexity of the time into games is the key to avoid colonial impositions. As a historian I am aware of the hierarchical differences that existed socially. I am not oblivious to that. However, we can still show and disseminate complexity that existed. I would propose that recovering the diversity of peoples and experiences across these structures is something that can be done and explored through games.
The possibility in the examples from the call for papers to this conference shows a good space to do so. I want to further push you to think how to avoid falling into colonial pressure, very present in academic and game development spaces. Exploring these possibilities is important in several aspects. Mainly, it allows for certain past worlds to be recovered. Considering peoples’ lives beyond the power struggles around social structures. To be able to play as a peasant and experience town life can recover navigations of the world that, while including negotiations and conflict, it does not mean to chase after a crown, an inheritance or even simply banging metal with metal.
Building these possible pasts in game can also help in our understandings of ourselves and our motivations of engaging with the past, as players and as researchers. What are the expectations we have for these characters in these settings? Without falling into some type of ideal village life of communal connection that can be made universal. It is bringing to (digital/board) life other stories, different perspectives. This is not only a distinction of status but also of gender. Highlighting, playing or even watching stories that enlarge and bring over these stories from different spaces and perspectives.
Speaking of spaces, the elephant in the room has become big enough to address it. Middle Ages is place specific. Applying such a temporal and spatial denomination to any other context in the world runs the risk of being Eurocentric. I am sure that others are much better versed in this discussion than I am, but it is an element to consider when applying it to videogames. It is also in the character of academia to create such distinction. This makes it all the more important to consider the relevance of carrying out our critical reflections about our relationship to the period and to the experiences we want to see and play.
Furthermore, there are effects and affects in playing certain expectations. Playing a female lead, for example, even if this is based in caring mechanics or dying to rats, does not necessarily build on complex understanding of female experiences in the particular context of Medieval France. If we can play as a medieval pig, we can play stories that vary a bit from a dubious historically accurate claim. Or even building more complex interactions and relations can create a different starting point that does not leave the human relations of the time outside of gameplay possibilities. Moving away from detached playable characters that are moved by intentions of lightly veiled profit and that emerge from power structures, can create those possibilities. The question to be posed is why we consider it so important that our characters have a high social standing background, even in games that only deal with horse trading. Why are these characters background so important, and yet the responsibilities are not relevant. Is it then that what matters is the power provided by that background?
Through gameplay those of us who are just players may be able to take stories and relationships by a different pathway than the intended. We may be able to reflect different actions and intentions than those intended by developers. Or, at times, even push those pathways further. Without wanting to dig too deep into the discussion on the level of agency of players, there is a meaning that we all give to our gameplay that is beyond the reach of developers and even our own research. The variations that can occur between playing sessions build further divergences of how our own world impacts the medieval in the game. What does it mean to explore gender diversity in this historical space? Can we build on from only creating characters that are a placeholder for hypermasculine expressions? Or simply repeat the essentializing idea of care as an inherently feminine practice? Doesn’t the Middle Ages provide several examples of ways that agency has been enacted to provide for more expansive practices and game mechanics?
What can be achieved by further exploring gameplay that focuses on community such as Medieval Dynasty? Beyond highlighting the importance of dynasty building, it is at the core of the gameplay the effort in creating a community under medieval worldbuilding. It would be an interesting approach to think what can be achieved in focusing the historical inspired relationships that were built. Centring these relations can also create further critical reflections on our own time’s influence of how they are represented and what meaning we give to these social structures of the past. Is it always necessary to build dynasties? Are we creating a projection of futures into the past to assure our own projections to our futures?
As closing lines, I want to return to an often-discussed subject around naming conventions. I have taken these points considering the Middle Ages to correspond with the time and space of what is now known as Europe. My critiques and propositions emerge and apply to that context as placing it to other spaces cannot evade eurocentrism and its corresponding issues. Shogunate Japan is usually used as an extension (or better said exotization) of medieval videogames. It is also used as the other in the line of Eurocentric settings. Following, with some variation of, the order of Ancient Greece/Rome-Middle Ages/Vikings Age, Japan usually follows, the Expeditions series being the latest example. It is even more problematic to use when engaging with Indigenous communities of Abya Yala in the moment of invasion and colonization (I am looking at you Total War). Engaging with these spaces around this denomination brings further problems that go well beyond the connection between the Middle Ages and videogames. Maybe a compromise is to make use of the years around it, or not. Either way this issue does not go away by this ringing the bell on the issue, it goes through our reflection on our own standing across these issues.
My proposition is then to think on why we play the Middle Ages. What are we expecting and wanting from it? We will encounter many answers in the coming days through the different contributions. I am looking forward to thinking with them and continue the conversation further, and maybe deeper into our own positioning and standing with our relationship with the Middle Ages.
Ludography
Asobo Studio. (2019). A plague tale. Innocence. [PC].
Creative Assembly. (2007). Medival II Total War. [PC].
Logic Artists. (2013-2026). Expeditions Series. [PC].
Medieva Pig Studio. (TBR). Medieval Pig. [PC]
Render Cube. (2021). Medieval Dynasty. [PC].
Yaza Games. (2026). Scriptorium. Master of Manuscripts. [PC].
References
Lander, E. (2001). Pensamiento crítico Latinoamericano: Impugnación del eurocentrismo. Revista de Sociología, 15, 13–25. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-529x.2001.27766
Lugones, M. (2008). Colonialidad y género. Tabula Rasa, 9(9), 73–101. https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.340
Lugones, M. (2011). Hacia un feminismo descolonial. La manzana de la discordia, 6(2), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.25100/lmd.v6i2.1504
Maldonado Torres, N. (2007). Sobre la colonialidad del ser: contribuciones al desarrollo de un concepto. In S. Castro-Gómez & R. Grosofoguel (Eds.), El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global (pp. 127–168). Siglo del Hombre Editores.
Quijano, A. (1992). Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad. Perú Indígena, 13(29).
Author Bio
Leandro Wallace (él/he/him) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Critical Indigenous Studies Macquarie University, working across Critical Indigenous Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, History and Game Studies. His thesis works on queer Indigenous practices to counter colonial influences in and around video games and screen media more generally, through a rights-based approach. It focuses on working around and through issues of representation, gameplay and enjoyment, and anticolonial development practices through Indigenous futurism. He is a member of En-Gender! as editor, conference organizer and cohost and coproducer of the “EnGender Conversations” podcast.
Thank you so much Leandro for this piece, you’ve touched on so many different things here that I’d love to chat to you about more but to start off – I’m curious about Scriptorium as an example, I think we have a tendency to see anything that allows for anachronistic play as being inherently subversive in terms of ‘traditional’ or stereotypical medievalisms, but I know that I found while playing it that I really did automatically try to make designs match what I know medieval manuscripts to look like even though the mechanics of the game don’t technically force me to do that! I was wondering if you could expand a little more on what you’re suggesting here that writing (or illustrating) as a mode actually comes with some built-in dynamics that we don’t always think about when playing, e.g. thinking too about the use of books or text as ways to learn/collect/share lore in fantasy games. What do you see as ways around this for game design and telling these stories? Are there ways that writing/illustrating could be done that would be able to be subversive of colonialist assumptions about history and legitimacy (either hypothetically or in any games you’re familiar with!)?
Thank you Tess, for your question and for the possibility of having my thoughts down!
What I was trying to open up with the Scriptorium example was for us to think about this inherent idea that anything in writing and in some physical form that can be connected to books, is presented as a way of valid knowledge. Even most of the times the only valid knowledge.
At the time I wrote this I was even reading “In the Name of the Rose” once again, so I had this idea of written knowledge as the way to achieve proper transmission of knowledge going around in my head. It is a complex argument to build on. Our own fields demand and revolve around written (and publish) knowledge as the only valid and usable one. I think the mechanic that illustrates this best is how learning new spells and progress your skills is reading a book in “Skyrim”.
Yet we know of knowledge surviving, in the Middle Ages and beyond, through stories and songs. Now this are usually represented as “religious” believes or even hearsay; and while they can be included as starter for quests, they are not given this idea of valid or proper knowledge.
Now I am not saying that writing is wrong and should be deleted as a way of recording history and knowledge. I do think that if we continue to paint it as the only one, and the most recurrent one, we are continuing this idea of it being the only valid way to do it.
I was recently watching the LOTR series and the harfoots present a good way of representing a mix of having a complex interchange of knowledge reproduction happen. They do have the one person leading the way for the whole group as the migrate per seasons, this harfoot is the carrier of a book that has the recorder pathway for a safe migration. Yet they also have songs (and in the interest of being vague for spoiler reasons) that express the knowledge of a safe pathway through lands that are not necessarily in the traditional path.
I think this is a part of the key to constructing more complex representations of knowledge and history reproduction that is building contexts and even mechanics that do not centre writing as the knowledge producer.
I think I might have gone off track a bit but I am happy to have another go, if I did not answer what you wanted me to address.
Once again thank you very much!
On that, note, Leandro, in the latest Fire Emblem (Fortune’s Weave) there’s a people called the Saraminians who forbid the use of writing of any kind. I haven’t progressed enough in the game to have a clear picture of that their deal is, but I’ve already come across more than a few scenes in which questions like the ones you just posed, re: the legitimacy of oral vs. written knowledge, is discussed by the characters.
Would love to hear more on that once you reach that point!
I will be a little party breaker, but I think this is the other most usual solution to this issue. We create a direct opposite situation, where writing is prohibited. I think this falls into building another total world in a binary sense, one or the other.
This in itself has some colonial implications, as many of the oppressed communities have been pictured as fearing or not allowing writing in a sense of fearing what the truth brings.
Now I am not saying that is the case for Fire Emblem, but I am a bit weary of prohibitions of writing and recording as an absolute.
I think this is a really interesting point too – something I’ve been looking at a little bit is how games present ‘doing history’ in player and character activity, including with a view to gender. There often is a real tendency to valorise ‘knowledge’ as something that comes through writing – like a lot of the codex entries for the Dragon Age series that come through bits of paper; but it’s also possible to see interesting alternative models operating (e.g. learning from the bard’s songs in the tavern in Haven/Skyhold, or from the gossip circle in Pentiment’s Tassing, which is totally oral). But of course once that knowledge is “learned” by the player and protagonist, it immediately gets recorded and/or reproduced in the form of written text, so the player doesn’t forget it during their playthrough (or so they can use it later)! I think it would be great to see more games recognising different methods for knowledge storage and reuse (as it were) than just writing, including forms of oral transmission, but I wonder if there are mechanical limits to how far that can go…
At TIPC last year there was a really interesting paper on folklore/folk memory (among other things) as history-making in Kentucky Route Zero that I seem to recall talked a lot about setting up bits of visual scenes (including signs, but not only using signs) as a way of discovering history, and I suppose the Plague Tale Resonance quest to find the previous carrier starts with written records but then moves beyond them especially to make use of visual tableaux – but then, again, these things often then get inscribed in writing as part of the game record!
(Could we imagine a game that makes you listen to a little song or a conversation to ‘remember’ information, rather than reading it? Would players find this wildly annoying, or interesting?)
(PS: Don’t worry, I am about to start an afternoon of meetings and teaching so I won’t be chatting quite so much here all afternoon…)
What a keynote!
Thank you for not pulling any punches, Leandro.
Your remark on the lack of focus on peasants brought to my mind a passage in MolleIndustria’s recent game Future? No Thanks!, in which the main character finds a jousting lance from a larp being given for free at a thrift shop. The owner says that, after all the larps started ‘centering the peasant experience’, nobody wanted to play knights anymore. It’s played for laughs, like most things in that game, but underlines the issue you too talked about.
More to the core of your argument, I agree with your critique of the inherent Eurocentrism behind the concept of the Middle Ages. Yet, as some of the critics have themselves noticed, this push to ‘medievalize’ the whole of world history doesn’t always come from an earnest belief that peoples around the globe between 500 – 1500 CE were comparable, but from a pragmatic need to secure academic positions in a context of increasing precarity. I.e. the more ‘global’ medieval history becomes, the more resilient the field gets against pressures to extinguish it, merge it, etc, and the more likely its practitioners are of remaining employed.
So there seems to be a conection between old-school colonialist beliefs (positing that European ‘civilization’ is a blueprint for all societies), and lingering colonial issues in our very knowledge economy. I know this is too big a problem for any of us individually to deal with but I wonder if you have any thoughts on the matter?
Thank you Vinicius for your comment, this opportunity and the insight into the game!
I agree with what you are saying and the perspective you present! For me this colonial issue (to simplify for space sake) is at the core in trying not to lose what is a very important aspect of all of our lives, the possibility of doing what we love and be able to eat while doing it.
I am not against that, on the contrary, I think opening the processes and being more open about how colonial influences shorten and make our perspectives smaller will bring more space for more people. I am very much for people doing what they love (as long as it doesn’t mean destroying somebody else’s).
My question in those sense would be who gets to benefit from “medievalizing” the “rest of the world”. I don’t think anybody in South America doing pre-colonial (I am aware of the Eurocentrism in this denomination) history, would get a job in a Medieval Studies Department.
Would love to hear more of your thoughts on this too and your experience in Brazilian academia!
Thank you again!
Well, Brazilian academia might be in for a rough time, since it looks like we’ll elect a Trump puppet as our next president. Anything I say now might be proven obsolete a few months from now.
But, political factors aside, up until now Brazil has taken a different approach to medieval history compared to Europe. Rather than trying to expand medieval chairs to include global history, there has been a push to found new chairs in Asian, African, and Indigenous history. Because austerity is the rule of the land in academia, this has sometimes come at the expense of medieval history, as resources for the new disciplines need to come from somewhere.
I’m not unsympathetic to the imperative of provincializing European history. But the issue with our current push is that it’s often paired with the push to do away with European history entirely – which is not, I think, something that will help us build a post-colonial knowledge regime. After all, we cannot critique Eurocentrism if we don’t know what ‘Europe’ is (or was) to begin with.
So there’s a balance to be found between renewing our academic traditions and avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water, I’d say.
I was wondering whether I should add a comment with and addenda of the further changes that happen since those first paragraphs I wrote.
I agree 100% with you. I don’t believe that closing down spaces is the solution for anything. As a trained historian of Ancient Rome myself I see a lot of the benefits of having that education in being critical of our own perspectives and the need of thinking critically of them. Which came from studying a very European period of history.
I don’t think anybody would disagree that the solution here is putting more money in. I also know that is a bit of an ideal world, specially right now as you point out. But it doesn’t cease to be true.
Thanks for this Leandro, it’s really interesting. As you know, I also think that the failure of games to take up the possibilities of more inclusive representation is a real lack. It’s not just a social/cultural problem (which is a big issue) but it closes down so many possible stories or ideas that they could be exploring – so even if we just thought about novelty of experience and entertainment, they constantly reject something that could be a huge improvement. But, of course, as you say, the bigger issue is what kinds of limited views of the past they are adding to or reinforcing in our own cultural context.
Absolutely second this – there are so many weird and wonderful ways of thinking about and interacting with the world in medieval stories that would simultaneously be more ‘accurate’ to the history and more thoughtfully inclusive in the present, and yet! But thrilled about indie devs and all kinds of storytellers that are offering more and more of these kinds of approaches lately – anyone reading this comment, let this be your sign that if you want more weird and cool games and you’re bored of the same old stuff in AAA games, then start playing more weird small games and supporting more indie devs!
100% second this!
I am a victim of this myself. Of being a little too mainstream at times.
But there is plenty of people already doing expansive games and stories, they deserve your support a lot more!
Thank you Kate!
I am very happy that you found this interesting! I won’t lie I kept thinking about many of our exchanges in the different channels we share and have shared in the hopes of doing them honour.
I do fear that the biggest danger that repeating and going on about the same story structures, characters and the background things that are taken for granted, only help in cementing that that is the way of things.
I think that beyond challenging mechanics, stories and character can be challenging as well. Not in the sense of edgy, but more of expanding our worldviews.
Yes I agree. And as Tess says, there *is* stuff along those lines starting to happen (I will continue to shout out Abbess’ Garden here as a really lovely little game that breaks a lot of the ‘historical gaming’ moulds) – but definitely we could be seeing a lot more of it. I was really struck when I ran my recent focus groups that a lot of the participants who played Astrologaster loved how it was teaching them history they didn’t know much about, but when we sat down and talked about gender half of them kept saying why couldn’t they also have a story from a midwife along similar lines, to let them learn about and enjoy playing with women’s ‘medical practice’ in the time period? After the discussion, one or two players who’d thought it was expected and usual to see a male protagonist for this game had really come around to being open to seeing a women’s perspective there as well; and I think if the game had already had that option or even part of the game had had that option, that would’ve done the challenging of their expectations that, in this case, the discussion with me and other players effectively did. It has the potential to open people up to new ideas quite quickly! As you say, more variety and inclusiveness in all of these areas stops things being just ‘taken for granted’ (e.g. taking for granted that of course if it’s a medical history game, it must be about a man), which is hugely important.
Thanks for the introduction! You mention that you’re “sure that others are much better versed in this discussion” when it comes to chronologies – I think it’s helpful to remember that some of our readers might well be game developers not historians who won’t be! One of my concerns in that regard with simply treating the medieval as Eurocentric is what alternatives we actually offer and whether they are in fact better. There are a lot of people around the world whose “historical” pre-colonial chronological system was not in any sense a local construction, it was just imposed by a slightly closer, older Imperial centre.
I guess the question that comes from this is – when we’re trying to write medieval or premodern game contexts that deal with past people who have been marginalised in historical writing and had their cultures warped or destroyed in more recent centuries, how do you think we best balance the need to recognise the legacy of what happened and the need to not impose modern and colonial expectations without losing sight of the fact that these societies had their own power hierarchies and other issues?
Thank you James for your question and for rising an important point about my own assumptions.
Absolutely agree on your point about the diversity of power centres and stories of conquest and empire building that exist around the globe and history.
I think the point you raise is the way to go. To think and construct historically marginalized groups as a-problematic and without hierarchies or conflict is part of the problem. The way to build on complex stories for these groups and communities is to treat them as complex societies. It means that they had conflict, they had ambitious members and power struggles. But we need to create stories that showcase their worldviews and not in a way that stories do not reproduce the same story structures.
I am not sure I have the answer on how to do this, but I think is important to try and go on different pathways to explore on bringing these complexities into representation.
As I mention in the keynote, for this to take form we need to question our own perspectives to see what we are trying to say and how.
Hopefully I address what you wanted me to.
Thank you!
Yes absolutely. It’s something I’ve been thinking about more as some of my own game development has been dealing more with cultures that have some of the visual and cultural trappings of identities that may read as inherently marginalised to a modern western audience but absolutely aren’t in the setting or (pseudo-)historical context. Also absolutely agree that worldview exploration is vital, and deconstructing ideas of “accuracy” the way that we curate kinda-accurate material culture into games so much more easily than attempting to curate medieval/premodern thought into games is something it’d be good for all of us in the history and games space to do more with.
I am glad I did!
I think that way of going for it is the best.
Like I said, there is a limit to how much you can influence the players way of approaching the game. But if they find a complex world of its own then it is a lot more difficult for them to tie it up with Eurocentric contexts.
I am very much for having more of these stories so looking forward to them!
One thing I will say, if these contexts and communities have living cultures (as most do) a first approach needs to be to make them part of the conversation of how the stories develop, and I would even say as active participants of the development of the stories and mechanics.
Thank you for this thought-provoking keynote, Leandro! I particularly appreciated your discussion of Eurocentrism and the need to move beyond the usual focus on characters with political power or high social status.
This is actually something I struggled with myself while preparing my paper on The Elder Scrolls. I tried at times to adopt a broader perspective, including by looking at medieval trade routes connecting Asia and Europe, but given that my own research focuses heavily on Iberian and Western European history, it was difficult to completely move away from that perspective. My own academic background inevitably shaped the questions I asked and the examples I chose.
I also found your point about moving beyond the usual power structures particularly interesting. Games such as Pentiment, for example, show how the past can be approached through everyday life and local communities, rather than primarily through dynastic or military narratives. It makes me wonder how many other aspects of medieval life could be explored through games if we moved further away from the usual focus on political and military power.
Perhaps this is also something we need to keep in mind as researchers, I believe. Even when we consciously try to move beyond Eurocentric perspectives, our own academic backgrounds can still shape the way we approach the past. Really looking forward to the discussions that follow!
[…] – Opening Address– Vinicius Marino Carvalho and Tess Watterson10h – Keynote Lecture‘Why we play the Middle Ages? A proposition for engaged thinking’– Leandro […]