I'm writing a formal, scholarly review of Civ VI at the moment, so I've been thinking a lot about this.

It's a terrible representation of history, but that's not really it's goal, of course. (Frankly I thought this was the most boring Civ game I've ever played, but that's a separate question, I guess.)

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out who you, the user, are supposed to be in Civ games. You're not a President or Leader or whatever — you live too long, and seem to exist entirely outside of politics (politics, in Civ VI and some of the others, are just groups of policies you can adopt that give you different modifiers — there is no actual politics in the game, except that people get somewhat mad if they don't get attended to, and that drops their productivity, the only thing you, the user, care about). You have control over cities and civs that frankly no leader could possibly have — you direct what kinds of scientific facts get discovered and invented, for example.

You're not "God" in any sense. (Religion similarly is just another game mechanic, and you only have control over your own Civ. Anyway you don't feel like a God, not in the sense of Black & White and other "God" games.)

So what are you? My conclusion: you are Hegel's Geist of History, the spirit of your age. You are the driving force behind this teleological conception of civilizational development. And it is this patently outdated approach to history (teleological, Geist-driven, great-mannish, tech-deterministic) that makes Civ a terrible way to think about history (and certainly not a "history simulator" — it's a board game where the dynamics have been named after historical variables, but it is not reflective at all about how those variables actually interacted or existed).

Anyway that is my favorite little part of the review, which is basically about the model of history that underlies the Civ games, and why it is so ahistorical. Peppering an ahistorical model with a few historical facts does not make it historically accurate.

Of course, it's not meant to be a literal description of history, or even a good representation of historical forces. It's meant to be a game. And many of the historically inaccurate aspects are, in part, a reflection of the fact that history would be a shitty game. It would be long and boring (well, they got that part right), it would be terribly unbalanced, and whoever got to the modern age first would basically be able to step on everyone pretty damned quickly. And when you exterminate barbarians in real life they tend to stay dead, for better and worse! (In Civ VI, barbarians respawn in fog of war space. It is SUPER ANNOYING to have to deal with barbarians at the same time you are trying to land people on the moon or whatever.) One very minor example: in Civ VI you can't get thermonuclear weapons until you get lasers, when in reality thermonuclear weapons were invented almost immediately after fission weapons and lasers weren't created until a decade after the H-bomb. The reason for this "error" is pretty clear — H-bombs are necessarily overpowered, so they've introduced additional hurdles to make it harder to acquire them. But real-life was overpowered (hence the Cold War being dominated by only two blocs — which would make for a totally different sort of game if you didn't happen to be one of those blocs).

I could go on and on (and will, in my review). But Civ is fundamentally Bad History of a particularly pernicious sort (because it wears the veneer of Good History). That doesn't mean it's a bad game (though I thought Civ VI was, again, pretty irritating to play — it adds some new gameplay dynamics, like the districts, that just ratcheted up the micromanagement requirements to no interesting end; this Geist of history is not interested in whether or not the Entertainment District is too close to the Industrial District in a given city, that's some stuff I'd prefer to just delegate to the local city council if they're unhappy about it).

(A game series that I think does a better job at actually capturing real dynamics is Tropico, which has a lot going on in it and gives a much better sense of how different sorts of scenarios can play out in a banana republic. Its version of domestic politics is wonderfully fleshed out as an essentially no-win situation playing blocs off each other.)

As for the general point — I think there are tremendous opportunities possible in teaching history through games, and they have not really begun to be tapped in a significant way by scholars. (No surprise there — we haven't tapped much when it comes to technology.) Games have tremendous ability to convey information and even historical empathy (I am thinking of This War of Mine as a game that transmits empathy). As for whether there should be more history games — well, I think it's worth a shot. I don't think game developers are under any more obligation than, say, filmmakers, to make explicitly educational content though. But I do think that if gamemakers who do "history games" of some sort integrated historians into an earlier phase of their development, and didn't just see them as "fact providers," you'd get new kinds of games and gameplay — and that might be worthwhile in and of itself, separate from how that would change the kind of history being performed. (I can, and do, say the same thing about filmmakers, showrunners, etc.) But if the use of historical consultants is just about people who write the little description boxes... they don't need historians for that. You don't need a PhD or deep understanding to look up facts. My perception (perhaps wrong) is that this is how historical consultants get used in most kinds of artistic/commercial productions, and it produces predictably bad results (accurate or mostly accurate infoboxes, embedded in a terrible framework for thinking about history).

Not history per se, but a model that I think has value to video games as education: A year or so back there was a game called Never Alone, a.k.a. Kisima Inŋitchuŋa. It was an effort to use the medium specifically to teach about Iñupiat culture and stories. It was a fantastic effort and makes for a good template for people who might want to accomplish the same. That it was polished and well designed certainly helps.

I grew up on the Three Kingdoms games (minus Dynasty Warriors, which we shouldn't talk about) and I think it does have value for teaching history (a gamified alt-history version of a novelisation of what probably wasn't accurate history to begin with, but whatever) at least as a sort of gateway. I think had I not played ROTK growing up I wouldn't have connected with the stories as well, so I wouldn't have then gone on to learn about those topics or retain what I read. It's not my main time period by any means, and I'm hardly an expert, but it's given a good background to paint over with what I've learned later on.

Video games screw a lot up. Apparently getting Arabic text to not look ridiculous is the hardest thing ever, judging by most games with a Middle Eastern thematic connection. I think we can't ask devs to be historically accurate if they can't even bother to not put Chinese characters upside down, unless we just want a bunch more re-hashes of the same stuff that ignores everything that isn't Europe. I'd love historians to be included but I don't have high expectations. Like with many consultants already involved in feature film, I'm not sure they'd actually be consulted.

The lack of accuracy in settings is one interesting angle, but I can't help but wonder about the intersection of interactivity and history. It seems strangely incongruous to me, especially the more agency you allow the player. As an educational tool, I feel you almost always need a break in that interactivity to impart the information you selected as important. Even if you made a super accurate FPS set in the WWI, what would the player be able to learn? The way things looked, which would be great, but beyond that - you can't force them to use accurate tactics or gamify life in the trenches (possibly?). I feel like a well made walking simulator is the appropriate choice, but then the player is more of a witness than an agent and the definition of "game" is blurred.

Civ and grand strategies are a very interesting case as well, because they are basically intricate "what if" machines that make the player the hand behind major decisions. I feel like this allows for people to fall in love with the concept of history overall. There's a good reason you guys don't allow hypothetical questions on here, but tinkering with real events, historical figures and making anachronistic jumps in timelines, feels powerful. Or fun and silly. And probably more fun the more you know about those figures. So it's more the push to find the info outside and enrich the game, than making you dive into completely accurate historical scenarios, that I feel is the best educational contribution of these.

Having said that, developing a really comprehensive one sounds like a nightmare from the point of development and for the potential consulting historians. How do you determine how much breaking of the history is still plausible/allowed? How biased is your starting point anyway? And how do you break away from the easily gamified factors as warfare and economy, to simulate the part culture and social change play in history?

Excuse the somewhat incoherent rambling, but the topic really intrigues me thanks to having some background in educational psychology.

!!!!

This is something I think about all the time, pretty much every day. I'm working on a total overhaul mod for a popular strategy game, Europa Universalis 4, which replaces the world map with an incredibly detailed map of Mesoamerica. I've basically remade the game from the ground up to revolve around Mesoamerica and it's political structures and history. While one of the reasons I'm making the mod is because I enjoy modding and am very interested in pre-columbian American history, another major reason I'm working on it is the absolutely insane amount of misinformation and poorly sourced/outdated information that gets thrown around in grand strategy communities, especially when they try to discuss the prehispanic Americas. I want to combat this misinformation as much as I can and try to give people a new respect for the civilizations of the Americas and their complexity and depth of history which is too often criminally summed up into a few inaccurate paragraphs in most text books and leaves people with a lot of wrong ideas.

Thus, I like to think that video games are a great tool for getting people interested in history, especially areas that they might not have really thought about before. They're obviously not good for teaching a chronological order of events and are forced to simplify a lot of things to make their gameplay work, but what they are amazing at is giving players a personal connection to history, which is great for getting people to learn about things the right way out of personal interest.

So, I do think that a video game can be accurate in it's representation of a culture and the way of life of a civilization, even if it can't get the events exactly right and probably doesn't want to because of how much fun alt-history can be. (Despite it being academic trash, pretty much) I also believe that it is crucial that video games make more of an effort to not stereotype civilizations, like the Civilization series does, and to give their best at making an accurate portrayal of the background. The "background" information should be as detailed as possible but players should be given agency over the events, if that makes any sense.

How can we use video games as a medium to teach / impart history to the public?

The gamification and warping of history in Civilization II, to my 11 year old self, was definitely a catalyst to my interest in further reading regarding all things historical. I was a 5th grader looking up Copernicus and Marco Polo in on an Encyclopedia Brittanica CD-ROM at school (haha).

"Those Pyramids helped me win games!" "What do you mean they werent meant for storing grain?" "Woah, I guess pottery really was a big deal!"

More things 'clicked' for me when I read about, say, the importance of spice trade. I found those 'click' or 'aha' moments gave me a shot of oxytocin and made me want to read more.

A very similar subject was covered about 8 months ago. As a historian working for a video game company (and I admit a raritity), I wrote a long answer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/472ua0/monday_methodsvideo_games_as_a_tool_for_teaching/d0bhjoj/?st=iv8tzyez&sh=1ac5cbf7

The short version is.

1. Commerical video games are made to be enjoyable and fair. In real life, folks try to be as unfair as possible. This inherently means 'accuracy is not fun'.

2. In the battle between 'gameplay' and 'historical reality', gameplay will win. We're trying to make money, after all. This means we want to make a fun, popular game, which sells.

3. Insofar as 'historical accuracy' can be allowed without affecting gameplay, we will do so.

4. If a company wishes to do so (and the one I work for does), they can leverage the inherent interest in the subject matter, and teach real history. So, in my case, World of Tanks makes millions of dollars. With this money, one of the things the company does is fly me and a camera crew around the world to make videos about real tanks which have nothing to do with, and never even mention the game. But the players of the game watch the videos because if they weren't interested in tanks in the first place, they wouldn't be playing the game, and if they're watching the videos, they get real history.

5. Non-commercial video games (i.e. those designed purely for education) can be accurate, but generally will not be a commercial success. Because of this, less money is thrown into their development, making them even less appealing (usually poor graphics, dodgy AI etc), and making them even less commercially viable. It's something of a vicious circle. However, if sufficient funding can be obtained to make them viable, these "Serious games" will do the job.

What an era we live in. My parents probably would not believe that something as frivolous as video games be considered a legitimate area of study for a "serious" field like history.

I do not think that video games need to be historically accurate to the T - for example, there have been some "controversy" about having Africans in the latest Battlefield video game, set in WW1. Even if there are no black people in that war at all (I don't think it's true, but let's make that assumption, for the sake of this thought experiment), who cares? I dare say a lot of people play video game characters that they can relate to, so total historical accuracy should take a back seat to "fun". Americans and Europeans have been inserting themselves into media set in Asia and Africa for decades, yet the same thing in the opposite direction is suddenly controversial?

As an aside, I can't wait for GamerGate to finally pass the 20-year mark; the discussions ought to be... interesting.

I think it can. It wouldn't be 100% accurate if you want to give the player any control. However, the outcome is already set. The battle will be won or lost as it's already been decided. Being a part of that battle is where the player has the control. It won't matter in the grande scheme of things, but it'll be fun to be that one guy in the middle of a historical battle.

I think it's great. My son has played games for a long time. He loves the historical based ones. He knows they aren't accurate enough to learn from. But, it gives him a start. "That sounds interesting...." and he'll go and read about it and queue up some YouTube videos from History Channel or elsewhere.

I'd love to see more. It may not be completely accurate, but it might get a few people interested in the history. BF1 is a good example. Very few people have heard of the battle of the Somme. Now, people are looking it up and kind of have an idea of what it was. Even if they don't look it up, they'll have heard of it.

I'd love to see a historically accurate game, even a FPS or strategy game, that you could play within the rules (cannot change the final outcome of the battle/war, but you can play as a single character within that battle).

Not only am I a WWI historian, I'm a Canadian Army infantry veteran and I enjoy FPS games.

I have often thought it might be an addition to game play in military shooters to create a bit of realism vis-a-vis stoppages (that is, weapons jams) requiring the player to clear the action before continuing and programmed based upon the historic reliability of the weapon being used. Or, such a thing might be annoying.

The other bugaboo I've had with FPS shooters is that so few are designed for the left-handed shooter in mind. (sigh)

That being said, here's my take on the release of BF1. First, a caveat, I haven't played it. I don't own a system that could run it by any stretch of the imagination, and there are few games I've wanted to play more.

From what I understand, the developers have inserted historical aspects into certain elements of the game, which is a very good thing, in my opinion. I don't know how realistic one could make a WWI FPS and still have it fun to play, so I'm certain a fair amount of license is taken in the gameplay elements to make it an enjoyable experience.

However, Battlefield has a large fan base and following. There are going to be a decent amount of people playing this game, some of them presumably in a younger demographic. If the game is engaging and fun, but also leads the players to ask questions about the actuality of the war, I'm all for it. Appealing to the interests of a potential audience is a very good way to inspire learning.

Without going to far into "kids, these days" thinking, the rate at which digital media is consumed as opposed to physical media indicates to me that educators risk ignoring film and video games as possible springboards to advancing knowledge at their own peril. It is a method, I think, of playing to one's audience.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing to set up an /r/askhistorians type sub for gamers playing BF1 to put questions about the war to people qualified to give substantiated answers.

Yes, no, that's a really complex question for a Reddit comment, and yes.

I feel like the context of this question is more like "can AAA games represent history accurately?". In which case, I'd say it's theoretically possible but incredibly unlikely, for the same reasons that it is unlikely for film or books.

Otherwise, it is like asking "can books represent history accurately" or "can films represent history accurately". Hugely successful movies and books tend to butcher history out of a simple lack of caring, because accuracy is completely tangential to the goals of producers of the film/book: maximizing return on investment. Giving the appearance of accuracy to laypeople is more important, hence all the "inspired by a true story" disclaimers at the beginnings of movies. Hence why known to be incorrect tropes are repeated endlessly; the average consumer expects them.

Frankly, the question seems to be assuming that video games are not art, or are perhaps some lesser form of art. Otherwise, why even bother asking?

/u/keyilan provided some nice examples, so I have to ask the other experts - in the realms of videogames with a historical setting, what made you go "How could they get THAT wrong?"

Can video games represent history accurately?

I can vouch that My Summer Car is pretty much spot on 100% accurate simulation of life in 1995 rural Finland. :D

I'm a First World War historian that also does a side line in examining how the war is represented in computer games.

From the developers that I've spoken to over the last few years, they've always been really excited to discuss their work in an academic sense. I'm always left with the feeling that historians & academics need to be doing more to reach out to these groups.

Battlefield 1 is likely to result in the biggest audience interaction with the First World War, so far in the centenary. We need to be doing a better job at understanding and examining this medium.

If anyone desperately wants to look at my stuff you can see my book on First World War computer games here: http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137491756

And also here's free access to an article I wrote on soldiers in First World War games: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2015.1096665