This is a (quick and dirty) translation of my talk at the SAZ meeting in 2020.
The game „Troia“ by Thomas Fackler was awarded the until now unique prize „History in the Game“ by the jury „Spiel des Jahres“ in 2001. The tribute to the game said:
„A perfect simulation of the activity of an archaeologist and at the same time a stimulating, interesting game. […] With the special prize ‘History in Games’, the jury honours the successful and accurate implementation of serious scientific research in an easily accessible game. The discovery of our historical roots through the persistent, fiddly work of archaeologists who want to publish their research results and are in competition with each other in the process has been excellently achieved by this game. […]“.
If you take a look at movies or literature, you will find not only awards oriented to the genre or target group, such as the best short film, poetry awards or the award for the best book for young people, but also genre-oriented awards for fantasy, crime or horror films or books, for example. This latter is not (yet) the case for board games. There is an orientation towards target groups (for example, Spiel des Jahres), the number of players (for example, for 2 players: DuAli) or the material (for example, cards: the À-la-carte Card Game Award). These are formal, external criteria. Themes, on the other hand, seem less important. An award for the implementation of a theme, as in “Troia” above, is a rare exception. 20 years ago, a regular, genre-specific award in the games sector would have been difficult due to the low number of new releases. In a now globalised industry with well over a thousand new board and card games every year, awards based on thematic genres could provide important orientation, especially for players, but also for publishers and authors.
The introduction to the game „Ticket to Ride Germany“ (Days of Wonder 2012) by Alan R. Moon states:
„At the turn of the century in Germany … Amid autumnal drizzle, a cloud of smoke in Munich’s Central Station announces the arrival of the 4:15 p.m. train from Nuremberg […] bound for Berlin, the capital of the German Empire …“
The game is clearly located in time and space. If you look at the map of Germany on which the game is based, you will notice that the east, including Breslau, the fifth largest city in the German Empire around 1900, is missing, and that Alsace-Lorraine with Strasbourg, which was annexed after the war against France in 1871 and belonged to the German Empire until 1918, is marked as „France“ on the map. Further anachronisms can be spotted on the maps. This historical misrepresentation is probably due to the fact that the game uses the map of the Märklin edition (2006) of” Ticket to Ride”, which shows Germany in its present-day borders with the federal states, and takes over its map with few changes. Whether the uncorrected adoption of a modern map of Germany was poor research or disinterest cannot be decided. It is interesting that a search in various online player forums, including those for the “Ticket to ride”-series, yielded no indication that anyone had noticed this erroneous map and that it had been discussed publicly.
Thesis 1: History is not important in games.
Nevertheless, in the case of „Ticket to Ride Germany“, precisely this historical dressing was chosen and not simply for example a white board with some coloured lines. If you look at the top 100 games on BGG at the end of February 2020 (as of 24.02.2020), you will find a total of 46 games with a historical theme. If you look at the games for families and connoisseurs that have won the „Spiel des Jahres“ award, as well as the nominations and recommendation lists in the ten years from 2010 to 2019, you come up with around 60 games with a history theme. From this we can conclude: History sells! Analogue (as well as digital, by the way) games are part of a constantly growing range of everyday and pop-cultural representations of (hi)stories, which include so-called medieval markets, historical novels, numerous magazine titles, films and series on television. As early as 1993, the historian Klaus Bergmann wrote: „There has never been as much history as there is today“. The boom in history has continued unabated ever since. The interest of publishers in selling books, films or games meets with a broad interest of buyers in historical topics. Moreover, unlike current topics, historical topics do not seem to „become obsolete“ for games, but can be an important argument for publishers.
Thesis 2: History is important for games.
The importance of history can be seen, among other things, in the advertising of games. Excerpts from advertising texts for two games by Frosted Games (a publishing house that has one of its main focuses on publishing games with a historical theme) may serve as examples:
„Frosted Games is pleased to bring history to life. […] Revolution of 1828 is a brisk tactical duel by successful author Stefan Feld and authentically illustrated by Alexander Jung. 2 players can experience here in 30-45 minutes an exciting election campaign in a turbulent time.“
„With very catchy rules and completely different packs of cards for each of the two opponents in the game, Watergate manages to make history come alive again with every tense game. […] Watergate is a playful treat with tactical and strategic elements by successful author Matthias Cramer and authentically illustrated by Klemens Franz with real photographs from the time. 2 players can reenact a historical scandal or rewrite history here in 45 minutes.”
Reading these advertising texts, the question arises: What is history actually? First of all, it should be noted that history is not identical with „past“. The past is over and not directly accessible to us. History is a selection of aspects of the past that a) we can remember because sources (including letters, laws, architectural remains, bone finds) have been handed down and that b) we want to remember, i.e. where we ask questions about the past out of interest, which we try to answer with the help of the interpretation of existing sources. This means that history does not show „how it was“, but is a construction and history is – contrary to popular dictum – “alive” because it is constantly changing. Each generation asks new questions and reinterprets the available sources from its own horizon of experience and knowledge. History consists of narratives that describe change in time and its effects on one’s own present and future. Thus, history has an orientation function and is part of one’s own identity construction. However, these historical narratives are not arbitrary, but bound to the available sources.
From sources and representations, conditions of historical situations or developments can be worked out and then „played through“: therefore, one can tell „history“, represent it, thus also „play“ it. What happens in the play is always reduced to a few points and at the same time highly abstracted. An „experience“ of history, or even a „bringing to life of the past“ or the „experiencing of the past“ is therefore not possible.
Thesis 3: One can „play history“ but not „experience“ it.
An important distinction between the representation of history in games and other cultural assets such as books, comics or films is that players become agents in the game. They make decisions. This raises the question of what roles players take on in history games: Rarely are they individuals, if then only particularly powerful ones who are ascribed great agency for action and play, or they are directly abstracts that are personalised by the players: a country, state or company. Ordinary people or less influential social groups (for example beggars in a medieval town) rarely appear in games. At first glance, these seem to have less agency in the game and thus make for less interesting decisions. Whereas there are also quite successful counter-examples, for example, with „Agricola“ (Uwe Rosenberg, 2007), in which the players take on the role of farmers in „Central Europe, 17th century“. Games also contain one or more game objectives that define winners and losers at the end. It follows that history in games is usually depicted through competition and confrontation. Thus, there is a narrowing down not only of the player roles, but also of the selection of themes, which seem to be highly repetitive. For example, there are numerous board and card games thematically oriented towards the economy in the Middle Ages and early modern times, conquests and trade in antiquity, the Middle Ages, colonialism and, especially popular for 2-player games, the power struggle between the USA and the USSR in the so-called „Cold War“.
In the last issue of Spielbox magazine 2019, Harald Schrapers, currently also chairman of the „Spiel des Jahres“ jury, writes in a note on the game „Watergate“:
„Is it a documentary or a fictional contribution? […] The material used seems documentary, and is committed to the facts. But in fact the outcome of the Watergate affair can be turned upside down. […] The outcome is not a game result that depends on randomly drawn cards. Rather, the players are guided by a more or less pronounced moral framework or stand for certain interests. Watergate could only work as a game if it refrained from giving the appearance of a realistic historical account whose outcome is uncertain. Here it failed to make a minimum of abstraction.“
Obviously this is such a contentious position that editor-in-chief Matthias Hardel felt compelled to comment on it in the editorial, writing:
„A game is never a documentary, but it is allowed, I think, to look like one. Nothing can be simulated with paper and cardboard, even if an entire game genre may claim this for itself.“
Of course, historical processes are completed: winners and losers are certain, the Titanic sank and Germany lost the First and Second World War. Therefore, history is apparently not suitable for games, because games must necessarily have an open outcome with different (game) courses, otherwise they would not be games.
If one „plays“ history, this means that history in the game can proceed differently than it is historically documented in the sources. This is called „counterfactual“, a word not to be confused with „alternative facts“. It is not about other facts, but about a sort of hypothetical mind game. One knows that history did not happen in this way, but through other decisions or events it could possibly have happened in this way under certain conditions that are to be disclosed and thus comprehensible. This is precisely the essence of what a model is. Models are simplified representations of our ideas of reality characterised by a reference to something else, for example to the respective current ideas of the Punic Wars, the Cold War or trade in the Middle Ages.
Models are necessarily abbreviations: Only relevant aspects are picked out and considered in the model. They always fulfil a certain function, for example as entertainment, as illustration for visitors in a museum or for learning history in school. It is not a matter of supposed authenticity. In terms of the model character of games, it is not decisive whether historical details such as clothing, weapons or buildings are accurately depicted in the game, for example through photos or illustrations, but whether the core mechanisms aim to depict a plausible model of a historical system or process. This is precisely where Watergate fails: the realism in the representation contrasts with game mechanics that have nothing to do with decision-making possibilities of individual persons. But it is precisely these decisions that make up the core of the affair.
Players, however, have the possibility to do this. Therefore, if core mechanisms can be used to depict historical conditions and processes in a shortened and simplified way, then games can also represent history as a model. Paper and cardboard even have an advantage over digital games: the conditions defined by the authors are open and can thus also be the subject of criticism. It is therefore possible and rather easy to check whether the relevant aspects have been taken into account in a model, or whether important aspects are missing that limit the scope of the model or call it into question altogether.
Thesis 4: Games can model historical processes.
In addition to games as models or games for learning history, two other functions of history in board games can be named:
1) History can serve as a scenery: The historical reference on names and in the design of packaging and game material is intended to sell the game. For example, „Dominion“ (Rio Grande Games, 2008), Spiel des Jahres 2009, clearly refers to the European Middle Ages. However, this reference remains purely optical. Although „Dominion“ makes use of the European Middle Ages conceptually and visually, the game could just as well have a completely different theme, without this changing the rules or the course of the game.
2) History provides the story for the game: Not only the packaging, but also the story and possibly the characters or roles of the players have a historical reference. However, the rules and the course of the game should not represent historical processes or facts. The information on the historical background appears, for example, on role cards, in the instructions or in additional materials. For example, the game „Plus Ultra“ (Meridiano6, 2016) set in the time of Charles V or the game „Schinderhannes“ (Clicker-Spiele 2009) could be mentioned here.
A green square can represent a marketplace in the game. With the attribution „marketplace“ in the rulebook, it is directly clear to the players what is to be done here in the game: It is a place where goods can be bought or exchanged. If a grey figure in the game represents a knight, abstracted, clichéd associations are also immediately activated here: A knight, because he has a horse, moves faster than other figures and probably he can fight, otherwise the figure would more likely have been called a „mounted messenger“ or something similar.
Games are always abstractions. If you link the game material to a theme, for example a historical one, the ideas associated with it can be used to concretise abstract rules in a narrative. Therefore, in many games, the mechanisms have nothing to do with the representation of history in the game, but the theme – and this does not only apply to history – serves to make rules easier to understand and to remember. In addition, a theme usually makes a game more interesting and attractive.
Historical settings have several advantages from the point of view of authors and publishers: On the one hand, no new worlds, names and stories have to be invented, but the historical references already provide a setting for the game as well as an orientation for the design of the materials, possibly even for the design of the rules to make the game „narratively“ coherent. On the other hand, history offers an inexhaustible reservoir of coherent elements that provide plausible, believable game worlds.
Thesis 5: History offers countless, already existing and plausible game worlds.
In order to create a historical world for the players, various elements are available in board and card games. Each of these elements can be used to create a historical reference. Some games use only one, others combine several of the following elements:
Texts: They can be found, for example, on event cards in a board game, in the rules of the game or through additional explanatory texts on the ‚historical background‘. Extracts from sources are sometimes found in the form of quotations as so-called „flavour“ texts to give the game more „authenticity“. These texts are only illustrative and have no significance for the course of the game.
Pictures and maps: Games also depict ideas of history graphically. Places, people, objects, buildings, rooms, landscapes, borderlines, etc. are depicted. This is done more or less in historically accurate reconstruction, with the help of photos, through simplifications or caricature-like exaggerations. The board can give a spatial idea of a certain place, a building, a city or region. For example, a map usually reduced to a few elements can serve as a game board.
Time: Board games can depict time sequences through the duration of the game, through the course of rounds, through bars, scoreboards, clocks or cards. Different time models can be distinguished: among others, the time experience of the players, the narrative time or time as part of the game mechanisms.
Mechanisms: They make up the core of games and distinguish games from other cultural products. Mechanisms give players agency: they make decisions that change the further course of the game and the narrative that emerges as a result, and which – if the game is well made – reveal historical dependencies and connections to them. Different causes and factors are taken into account to varying degrees depending on the type of game and the target audience. Simulations, for example, claim to take into account as many relevant factors as possible and to depict interrelationships as precisely as possible. The authors of conflict simulations (CoSims for short) usually use scientific literature in the development of the games in order to translate their findings into game mechanics. Simulations are therefore comparatively complex, with an extensive set of rules, and require a correspondingly long playing time, so that they reach only a few people. They show the extent to which games, as model-like reconstructions, can provide insight into decision-making possibilities and interdependencies in the economy, society, politics and the military.
The history boom, which has been going on for about 40 years and ranges from medieval markets to novels and films to digital and analogue games, is often explained by the desire for distraction, relaxation and entertainment, the possibility of diving into foreign, often pre-industrial worlds, i.e. forms of escapism and exoticism. This explains the recurring themes and relatively narrow selection of historical places and times. At the same time, history is always part of identity constructions, both personal and group-related. So history is always also about orientation and identity formation. The closer in time and space, the more we know about history and the more it plays a role in shaping identity. The closer in time a topic is and the more relevant it is for the identity construction of groups that are particularly present in the media, the higher the probability that conflicts or criticism of the historical representation in the game will occur. Conversely, this could lead to the following thesis:
Thesis 6: The more distant the topic is in space and time, the more „exotic“ it appears and the more „leeway“ seems to be available.
In my observation, however, this is not true. I would like to demonstrate this with two examples that have caused particularly heated controversy in recent years.
The game „Mombasa“ by Alexander Pfister (Eggert-Spiele 2015) was accused of trivialising the exploitation of Africa by Europeans during colonialism by omitting central aspects. In the game „Five Tribes“ by Bruno Cathala (Days of Wonder 2014), the „slave“ cards were replaced by „fakirs“ after protests, especially in the USA. The exoticism is obvious in both cover pictures, by the way, just like in „Istanbul“ by Rüdiger Dorn (Pegasus Spiele 2014), which was awarded the award „Kennerspiel des Jahres“ in 2014. „Five Tribes“ and „Istanbul“ are part of the phenomenon known as „Orientalism“, which describes a Eurocentric, strongly romanticised view of the societies of the Middle East and the Arab world in a long tradition since the 19th century.
It seems at first that a historical setting, with its often spatial but always temporal remote, can expand the moral boundaries of what is accepted in the “magic circle“ of the game by a majority of players. Actions in the game that stand for waging war, murdering, cheating, plundering or robbing would be difficult for many players in games that are thematically set in their own present and might even lead them to reject the game. Many would probably have problems playing a warlord in today’s Afghanistan or Congo, unlike in a historical setting, such as in one of the many games with references to the Viking Age. There, these action options are usually accepted because the players seem to assume that this is “how it was back then“ and that it has nothing to do with us today.
The first two games mentioned are relatively far removed in time and space – yet there were fierce controversies here: What is the reason for this?
There are two main reasons: Firstly, there is the globalisation of the games industry. Games have been produced for a national market for a long time, but are increasingly distributed on a worldwide scale. The criticism of „Five Tribes“ came mainly from the USA. There, slavery is still a central identity-forming theme today – both for large parts of the population and also for the self-image as a nation. It is important to note that in a globalised world, it is not only one’s own group but also other group-related identities that need to be taken into account when choosing a theme and implementing it. On the other hand, in the specific case of „Mombasa“, Germany’s colonial past, which seemed to have been largely forgotten for a long time, has become a social issue again through numerous postcolonial projects in larger cities, the complaint by Herero and Nama about German colonial crimes and the discussion about „reparations“ as well as the social debates about the return of art and cultural objects from museums. „Colonialism“ and its consequences have always been highly relevant for the people and states of the former colonial territories, and now the crimes associated with it also affect the self-image of Germans, most of whom had long ignored this part of history.
Thesis 7: Games with a historical theme always convey images of history.
There are always a personal as collective conceptions and views of history which are bound to a specific location, group and/or person. This cannot be prevented, but we as authors should reflect on it by investing a minimum of research in the chosen themes and including this work in the game proposals to the publishers. To illustrate what is meant by this, the Stone Age may serve as a final example. The Stone Age provides a popular setting for games („Stone Age“, „Paleo“, „Tribes“, „Honga“, „Hunters and Gatherers“, …). For the Stone Age, there is a popular idea, often reproduced in the media, that there was already a separation of the sexes for certain fields of activity. There is no evidence for this. The current state of research is that women and men took on the same work and tasks in the Stone Age.
A game that graphically and/or game mechanically depicts women exclusively doing tasks such as cooking, caring for children and gathering berries while men go hunting would rightly be criticised today, because this is also about identity, namely gender identity. Like other media, games can reproduce clichés and stereotypes that are retroactively projected into historical settings, thus being repeated, reinforced and permanently anchored in many minds. It must be added, however, that research on whether and how historical representations in games are absorbed, processed and retained by players, is still in its infancy. The first studies have now been conducted on history in computer games. In general, research on digital games is more advanced in many areas and is being conducted more intensively – whereby some of the findings there, especially for the representation of history – also apply to board and card games.
Games are abstractions, work with abbreviations and clichéd ideas. They are not, do not want to be and should not be scientific papers. As a medium, games have their own specific forms of expression and limits. Nevertheless, we as authors, as well as the publishers, should keep an eye on and critically examine what conceptions and view we convey through the topic and its implementation in the game.
Since, as briefly shown by the example of gender roles in games about the Stone Age, a simple division into “easy“ and potentially “problematic“ historical topics is not possible. It would also be desirable in the sense of recognising analogue games as cultural assets if authors and publishers dared to work more on supposedly difficult historical topics in games. In the field of digital rather than analogue games, there are already exciting and very different examples from recent years, such as „This War of Mine“ (which has already been implemented as a board game based on the video game), „Valiant Hearts“ or „Through the Darkest of Times“, which show that games as a comparatively new form of representation of history still offer potential for innovative developments.