10 Methods Video Games Have Rewritten the Middle Ages

For thousands and thousands of individuals as we speak, the Middle Ages are first encountered not in books or lecture rooms however via video video games. Titles like Assassin’s Creed, Crusader Kings, and Age of Empires enable gamers to discover castles, lead armies, and rule kingdoms in digital variations of the medieval world.

These video games have change into probably the most influential methods trendy audiences think about medieval historical past. As a outcome, historians have begun paying nearer consideration to how video games painting the interval and the way these portrayals form public perceptions of the previous.

One of the students main this dialogue is Robert Houghton, whose e book The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism examines how digital video games symbolize medieval historical past. Houghton argues that video video games create a particular type of medievalism that differs from the portrayals present in movies, novels, or tv.

To describe this phenomenon, he makes use of the time period “ludic medievalism.” In easy phrases, this refers back to the illustration of the Middle Ages inside video games and the methods these representations are formed by gameplay mechanics. Because video games should translate historical past into methods that gamers can work together with—fight, diplomacy, expertise, or rulership—they inevitably reshape the previous in distinctive methods. The result’s a playable Middle Ages that usually seems to be very totally different from the historic actuality. Here are ten methods video video games have rewritten the Middle Ages.

1. Warfare Dominates the Medieval World

Perhaps the obvious approach video video games have reshaped our understanding of the Middle Ages is by presenting the interval as one outlined by fixed violence. From large-scale technique titles to motion video games centered on particular person fighters, fight typically turns into the central exercise via which gamers work together with the medieval world.

Houghton observes that this emphasis on violence is unusually robust in video games set in the course of the medieval interval. He notes that, “while there are plenty of examples of violent games set within other periods, and handful of medievalist games that eschew, limit, or discourage violent behaviour, few periods are presented as so excessively or consistently focused on combat and warfare.”

While warfare definitely performed an necessary function in medieval historical past, video games often amplify it far past its historic proportions.

Part of the explanation lies in how video games perform as interactive methods. Players should be given clear targets and interesting mechanics with a purpose to progress. Combat gives each. As a outcome, many medieval video games steer gamers towards violence as their solely actual possibility.

This design alternative may be seen throughout a variety of video games. Strategy titles comparable to Medieval: Total War revolve round constructing armies and conquering rival factions. In Assassin’s Creed, gamers remove enemies via stealth and close-quarters fight whereas navigating medieval cities. Fighting video games like For Honor push this even additional, putting gamers straight into intense one-on-one duels between closely armed warriors.

Another characteristic that shapes perceptions of the interval is the visceral nature of the violence. Unlike many trendy warfare video games that target ranged weapons or large-scale battles, medieval video games often emphasize hand-to-hand fight. Players battle at shut vary with swords, axes, and spears, typically from a first-person or shut third-person perspective that retains the motion instant and private. The result’s a type of violence that feels extra bodily and intimate than the distant gunfire typical of recent struggle video games.

Over time, Houghton finds these repeated encounters simply reinforce a strong picture of the Middle Ages as a world dominated by battle and violence at each nook.

2. History Is Driven by Kings and Great Individuals

Another approach video video games reshape our understanding of the Middle Ages is by putting extraordinary people on the centre of historic change. Many video games encourage gamers to consider that the course of medieval historical past was decided primarily by {powerful} rulers or heroic figures reasonably than by broader social forces.

This tendency displays each the construction of video games and widespread concepts in regards to the medieval previous. Strategy video games typically place the participant within the function of a king, emperor, or lord chargeable for directing the destiny of a complete realm. Meanwhile, motion and role-playing video games often observe the story of a single hero whose actions can reshape the political or army panorama.

Houghton writes:

Ludic medievalism typically locations a better emphasis on the function of pivotal people as drivers of historical past, usually privileging the function of those ‘Great People’ over structural explanations, than historic video games set in later intervals.

This method may be seen clearly in technique video games comparable to Crusader Kings. In this collection, gamers information a ruling dynasty via generations of political intrigue, warfare, and diplomacy. The destiny of total kingdoms typically hinges on the character, skills, and selections of particular person rulers. Marriages, assassinations, alliances, and succession crises can dramatically reshape the map of medieval Europe.

Action video games supply an analogous perspective, although on a extra private scale. In Assassin’s Creed, gamers management particular person characters who transfer via key historic moments, influencing occasions via stealth, fight, and political intrigue. The participant’s character turns into a central actor in occasions that seem to find out the destiny of cities and even total areas.

Of course, actual medieval historical past was formed by way over the actions of particular person rulers or heroes. Economic change, non secular establishments, social buildings, and environmental elements all performed main roles in shaping the medieval world. Yet the construction of video video games tends to privilege the actions of a single player-controlled determine.

As a outcome, video games typically reinforce a simplified model of historical past by which {powerful} people dominate occasions. Kings, warriors, and heroic adventurers take centre stage, whereas the complicated social forces that formed medieval societies stay largely within the background.

3. Medieval Kings Appear More Powerful Than They Really Were

Closely associated to the concentrate on nice people is the best way video video games painting medieval rulers. In many video games, kings, emperors, and nobles seem to wield nearly limitless authority over their realms. Players who tackle these roles can command armies, handle economies, conduct diplomacy, and form the destiny of total kingdoms with relative ease.

This may be seen clearly in video games comparable to Age of Empires II, the place the participant directs the event of total civilizations, setting up buildings, elevating armies, and managing assets. The participant acts as an omnipotent strategist overseeing each side of the realm’s growth.

In actuality, medieval rulers hardly ever possessed such absolute management. Their energy was constrained by {powerful} nobles, native legal guidelines, non secular authorities, and the sensible limitations of governing territories with restricted communication and administration. Even robust kings typically struggled to implement their will past their very own capital metropolis.

4. The Middle Ages Become a Strategic Game

Many video video games encourage gamers to consider historical past as one thing that may be managed, optimized, and directed towards success. Strategy video games specifically current the medieval world as a stage in a bigger means of growth, planning, and growth. Players collect assets, construct cities, increase armies, and information their societies via a sequence of calculated selections designed to maximise energy.

Robert Houghton notes that this method displays a standard design characteristic in technique video games:

Many pc video games symbolize historical past as a protracted march of technological progress, however that is most seen inside the technique style via the virtually ubiquitous ‘technology trees’: visualisations of the interconnectivity and hierarchy of the varied scientific discoveries represented inside the recreation.

In video games comparable to Civilization and Age of Empires your participant will unlock new applied sciences that enable them to assemble stronger buildings, practice extra superior army models, and transfer into new historic eras. The medieval interval due to this fact turns into a part of a rigorously organized development system the place every growth results in the subsequent.

This construction turns historical past right into a strategic puzzle. Players determine which applied sciences to pursue, when to increase their territories, and the right way to stability army power with financial progress. Success will depend on selecting the simplest path via the sport’s methods.

Yet actual medieval societies didn’t develop in line with such orderly plans. Technological change typically unfold inconsistently throughout areas, older strategies continued alongside new improvements, and historic change was formed by unpredictable occasions as a lot as deliberate planning. By turning the medieval previous right into a system that may be optimized, video video games current a much more managed and predictable imaginative and prescient of historical past than the messy actuality of the Middle Ages.

5. Medieval Technology Appears to Advance in a Straight Line

Closely related to the strategic construction of many video games is the best way they painting technological growth. In historic actuality, technological change in the course of the Middle Ages was uneven and unpredictable. Innovations unfold slowly, older applied sciences remained in use for hundreds of years, and totally different areas adopted new methods at totally different occasions.

Video video games, nevertheless, typically current technological growth as a transparent and orderly development. Players transfer step-by-step via a sequence of discoveries, unlocking new buildings, weapons, and talents alongside the best way. Each innovation leads neatly to the subsequent, creating a way that historic progress follows a hard and fast and predictable path.

For Houghton, “scientific progress in these games is inevitable, as players must advance to triumph. It is irreversible as players cannot lose the technology they have acquired.” He provides that these new applied sciences are at all times introduced in a optimistic mild.

The result’s a model of historical past that emphasizes fixed progress. Civilizations transfer steadily from less complicated types of expertise towards more and more superior methods, hardly ever experiencing setbacks or reversals. Older strategies rapidly disappear as new ones change into accessible.

In actuality, the technological historical past of the Middle Ages was much more sophisticated. Medieval societies experimented with improvements in agriculture, structure, warfare, and commerce, however these developments didn’t at all times observe a straight path. By presenting technological change as inevitable and irreversible, video video games simplify a way more complicated historic course of.

6. Religion: Both “Prominent and Shallow”

Religion was probably the most {powerful} forces shaping medieval societies. It influenced politics, regulation, schooling, warfare, and every day life. Yet in lots of video video games, faith is introduced in a lot less complicated phrases, typically diminished to a set of mechanics that gamers can handle with a purpose to achieve benefits.

Robert Houghton explains why faith seems so prominently in video games set within the medieval world:

Religion is constantly extra seen inside medievalist video games than inside these set in different intervals. This tendency is partially a consequence of widespread perceptions of the medieval interval and an embracing of the widespread medievalist tropes surrounding faith by many recreation builders. Alongside widespread violence and the signs of the Dark Ages, the seen and endemic presence of the Church gives a simple technique by which creators might sign the chronological location of their recreation to their viewers.

Because faith is such a recognizable image of the Middle Ages, recreation builders often use church buildings, monks, monks, and crusading orders to ascertain a medieval environment. This is sort of at all times primarily based on the Catholic Church, even when the world is fictional.

The approach the faith will get introduced typically aligns with tropes you may discover in motion pictures or reveals set within the medieval previous, most notably that the church is nefarious and all {powerful}. In different methods they go in opposition to these tropes – for instance, in lots of video games the church, being keepers of information, is a supply of science and expertise.

In different methods, the interactions with faith are very superficial. A hero knight may go right into a church solely to get therapeutic, whereas these taking part in a medieval ruler will management the church like every other useful resource. The result’s a model of medieval faith that’s far simpler to handle than the complicated and deeply rooted perception methods that formed actual medieval societies.

7. The Medieval World Becomes Almost Entirely European

Houghton finds that video video games have additionally helped slender the geography of the Middle Ages. Although medieval societies stretched throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and far of Asia, many video games current the interval via a a lot smaller map—one centred overwhelmingly on Europe, and particularly northwestern Europe.

That bias shapes not solely which locations seem in video games, but in addition which peoples and tales are handled as central to the medieval previous.

This may be seen in video games comparable to Age of Empires II, whose unique factions leaned closely towards western and central Eurasian powers, with southern and japanese Europe solely gaining broader illustration over time via expansions. Houghton notes an analogous sample within the Civilization collection, the place some elements of Europe have been underrepresented in its medieval materials, even whereas northwestern Europe remained the dominant body.

The identical sample additionally seems in video games that mix the fantasy with the medieval. Even when the setting is fictional, the visible language is commonly recognizably western European: castles, knights, monasteries, and feudal kingdoms dominate the panorama. This encourages gamers to affiliate “the medieval world” primarily with Northwest Europe reasonably than with locations comparable to Byzantium, China or japanese Africa.

This narrowing of the medieval world does greater than simplify geography. As Houghton argues, medieval-themed video games typically current the interval as “overwhelmingly white” with characters of color “omitted, marginalised, or included as an afterthought.”

That may be insidious, as a result of it doesn’t simply push different peoples to the margins — it will possibly additionally reinforce the concept the medieval previous correctly belongs to white Europe alone.

8. Fantasy and History Become Harder to Separate

Video video games don’t simply recreate the Middle Ages — they typically merge medieval historical past with fantasy so completely that the 2 can change into tough to separate. Castles, knights, monasteries, and feudal politics are repeatedly positioned alongside dragons, magic, and monsters, creating worlds that really feel medieval even when they’re fully fictional.

Robert Houghton factors out that fantasy doesn’t merely borrow from medieval imagery at random. He writes:

As a number of students have noticed, fantasy medievalism usually depends on a detailed adherence to viewers expectations of the Middle Ages: authors should create worlds that enchantment to their viewers’s notion of an genuine medieval world. This typically manifests as a priority for historic accuracy inside medievalist fantasy worlds, even when these worlds are clearly unreal. While an viewers will (nearly at all times) recognise the presence of dragons, magic, or elves as fiction, they’re significantly extra prone to settle for the extra mundane components of the fantasy world as traditionally genuine.

This mixing of fantasy and historical past can simply confuse gamers about what the medieval interval truly was. A participant is aware of that the dragons in Skyrim or the monsters in The Witcher are fictional, however the cities, armour, church buildings, guilds, and social buildings surrounding them can nonetheless really feel traditionally believable. As a outcome, fantasy video games typically reinforce widespread assumptions about medieval life even whereas departing from historical past, encouraging gamers to think about the Middle Ages as a world sharply separate from the trendy one — extra magical, extra primitive, and extra self-contained than it actually was.

9. The Middle Ages Become Worlds to Explore

One of probably the most distinctive issues video video games do is flip the Middle Ages into locations gamers can transfer via for themselves. Instead of merely watching medieval settings in a movie or studying about them in a e book, gamers can stroll via streets, climb towers, and journey throughout landscapes, making the previous really feel extra instant and inhabitable.

This is particularly clear in video games comparable to Assassin’s Creed, the place historic cities change into areas to navigate, and in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the place gamers journey throughout villages, forests, and cities impressed by historic Bohemia. That form of exploration could make the medieval world really feel vivid and genuine, although these environments are nonetheless rigorously designed for gameplay. The result’s an immersive however selective model of the Middle Ages, formed as a lot by what makes a very good recreation world as by historic actuality.

10. The Middle Ages Become a Past Players Can Rewrite

Perhaps probably the most putting approach video video games have reshaped our notion of the Middle Ages is by turning the previous into one thing gamers can actively affect. In books, movies, or tv, medieval historical past unfolds in a hard and fast narrative. In video games, nevertheless, gamers make selections that may redirect occasions and produce outcomes very totally different from the historic file.

This is particularly seen in technique and role-playing video games. In Crusader Kings III, gamers information dynasties via wars, marriages, and succession crises, typically producing fully different histories. In Mount & Blade, gamers can rise from obscurity to change into {powerful} rulers inside a medieval-inspired political world. Even video games with extra fastened narratives nonetheless enable gamers to form how occasions unfold.

The result’s a model of the Middle Ages that feels versatile and open-ended. Rather than encountering a previous that’s already written, gamers expertise a medieval world the place their selections matter. In that sense, video video games do one thing no different medium can: they permit folks not simply to see the Middle Ages, however to experiment with them.

Video video games have change into probably the most influential methods trendy audiences think about the Middle Ages. Robert Houghton’s e book is an particularly worthwhile research of how this medium reshapes perceptions of the interval, whether or not by making medieval society appear extra violent, rulers extra {powerful}, or faith extra easy than it actually was. Historians ought to be extra conscious of those biases, particularly when educating others in regards to the medieval previous.

The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism, is printed by Boydell & Brewer. You can even purchase a duplicate via Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk

Robert Houghton is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History on the University of Winchester.