Narrative Representation and Ludic Rhetoric

of Imperialism in Civilization 5

Masterarbeitim Fach English and American Literatures, Cultures, and Media

der Philosophischen Fakultät

der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

vorgelegt von

Malte Wendt

Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck

Zweitgutachter: Tristan Emmanuel Kugland

Kiel im März 2018

Table of contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Hypothesis 4

3 Methodology 5

3.1 Inclusions and exclusions 5

3.2 Structure 7

4 Relevant postcolonial concepts 10

5 Overview and categorization of Civilization 5 18

5.1 Premise and paths to victory 19

5.2 Basics on rules, mechanics, and interface 20

5.3 Categorization 23

6 Narratology: surface design 24

6.1 Paratexts and priming 25

6.1.1 Announcement trailer 25

6.1.2 Developer interview 26

6.1.3 Review and marketing 29

6.2 Civilizations and leaders 30

6.3 Universal terminology and visualizations 33

6.4 Natural, National, and World Wonders 36

6.5 Universal history and progress 39

6.6 User interface 40

7 Ludology: procedural rhetoric 43

7.1 Defining ludological terminology 43

7.2 Progress and the player element: the emperor's new toys 44

7.3 Unity and territory: the worth of a nation 48

7.4 Religion, Policies, and Ideology: one nation under God 51

7.5 Exploration and barbarians: into the heart of darkness 56

7.6 Resources, expansion, and exploitation: for gold, God, and glory 58

7.7 Collective memory and culture: look on my works 62

7.8 Cultural Victory and non-violent relations: the ballot 66

7.9 Domination Victory and war: the bullet 71

7.10 The Ex Nihilo Paradox: build like an Egyptian 73

7.11 The Designed Evolution Dilemma: me, the people 77

8 Conclusion and evaluation 79

Deutsche Zusammenfassung 83

Bibliography 87

1 Introduction

  “[V]ideo games – an important part of popular culture – mediate ideology, whether

by default or design.” (Hayse, 2016:442) This thesis aims to uncover the imperialist and

colonialist ideologies relayed in the video game Sid Meier's Civilization V (2K Games,

2010) (abbrev. Civ 5) by Firaxis Games, including its two expansions Gods and Kings

(2012) and Brave New World (2013), and the visual and ludic means through which they

are communicated. In doing so, it will also seek to aid in closing the rift between

narratology and ludology and offer a solution to their ongoing divide within the field of

game studies by providing a methodology that combines both approaches to greater

effect while acknowledging their mutual dependencies.

  While academics have, on multiple accounts, determined that the Civilization series

“presents a clear narrative of empire-building that [...] is problematic when set against

postcolonial theory” (Ford, 2016), none have supported their claims through an analysis

dedicated to the game in its entirety, let alone with a thorough investigation into its ludic

qualities. Additionally, their narratological focus often rests on the uncovering of

specific narrow ideologies, avoiding the bigger picture that postcolonial theory and

cultural studies in general can offer: “Some argue that the series propagates the

supremacy of strategic management, while others contend that the series teaches an

ideology of techno-utopianism through scientific progress. A third perspective critiques

the series from a Marxist perspective, while a fourth perspective maintains that the

series teaches the supremacy of geographic location.” (Hayse, 2016:446) Although these

exemplary perspectives are valuable in their own right, they do upon closer inspection

hint at a greater underlying ideology that combines these sub-theories, with strategic

management alluding to the Enlightenment, techno-utopianism as an example of meta-

narratives, and the supremacy of geographic location as a euphemism for environmental

determinism, all three of which will be looked into in this thesis as some of the many

pillars that have served to legitimize imperialism.

  One of the most prevalent perspectives in regards to the series' ludic values, however,

is the claim made by strong advocates of pure ludology, such as David Myers (2003),

that the series' “meaning-structuring process” was designed merely to support the ludic

reward system, which is why any resulting ideologies must be coincidental and thus

outside the realm of critique. Hayse (2016:446) summarizes this popular approach as

the idea that “any supposed historic and cultural significance of the Civilization series

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takes a back seat to its ludic – or game-like – qualities”, shifting “strategic systems

management to the foreground as the cultural impact of video games fades into the

background.” This approach tries to render the entire mechanical nature of the game

only meaningful inside the game, but meaningless outside of it. Since the mechanics

only serve to create gameplay, not to construct a narrative, the analysis of their

conveyed ideologies must therefore be irrelevant. This view is the result of the deep

ludo-narrative divide within game studies, which has shifted many ludologists into a

defensive stance, according to which video games as an inherently interactive medium

may under no circumstances be analyzed through the lens of narratology, as this would

not only not do the game justice, but also fail to acknowledge the uniqueness of the

medium. This claim, however, falls prey to two fallacies: Firstly, it assumes that

ludology can create knowledge about rules and goals without the use of representation,

a tool of narratology. Secondly, it assumes that the knowledge about games exists in a

vacuum, within the confines of which goals and rules are the final conclusion beyond

which there is no other knowledge to be produced.

  This thesis will neither focus on the narratological surface design of Civ 5, nor will it

stop at determining its inner mechanical workings. Instead, it will use both approaches

in tandem to extract evidence of imperialist ideology from both the surface design as

well as the underlying rules and goals. While the analysis of narrative representation can

rely on an established toolset, however, the connection between gameplay and

communicated ideologies requires a relatively young joint ludo-narrative theory, which

will be provided by Ian Bogost's 'procedural rhetoric' as introduced in Persuasive

Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2010:ix): “[V]ideogames open a new

domain for persuasion, thanks to their core representational mode, procedurality. I call

this new form procedural rhetoric, the art of persuasion through rule-based

representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or

moving pictures.” This approach counters the nowadays diminishing, extreme

ludological portrayal of games in a vacuum and falls in line with the growing realization

within the field that interactivity, the unique element that sets this medium apart from all

else, carries – like all other works of culture – meaning, and thus the potential for an

ideological bias: Clara Fernández-Vara (2015:8) suggests that “[r]ather than limiting

ourselves to thinking about games as a medium to convey messages, we can think of

them as artifacts that encode certain values and ideas, which players decode and engage

with as they play.” In the same vein, Egenfeldt-Nielsen (2016:35) even uses strategy

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games (like Civ 5) as an example for games' communication of value systems: “Games

are communication media: Games may communicate ideas and values. For instance, a

strategy game may teach us how complex systems like cities or warring nation states

work.”

  Accordingly, this thesis will look to one of the most popular strategy games in the

world as an ideal candidate for an ideology-focused close reading. The Civilization

series has developed into a staple of the strategy game genre since the series' inception

in 1991. Its fifth installment, released in 2010, still holds the place as the most popular

strategy game on the leading PC gaming platform Steam with peak concurrent player

numbers of more than 30,000 as of March 2018, even after the release of Civilization VI

(2K Games, 2016), including its first expansion Rise and Fall (2018), which falls short

of its predecessor by more than 5,000 concurrent players. This makes Civ 5 the 15 th

most played Steam game as of 2018, according to the public daily statistics provided by

Valve's Steam app itself (Newell, 2018). Even more staggering, however, is Civ 5's

amount of total sales, through which “the game has become one of the most-played,

with over eight million sales, making it a strong presence in modern videogame

culture.” (Ford, 2016)

  Due to its mass appeal, combined with the game's representation of culture and

history, the field of game studies has determined the Civilization series as culturally

significant and thus in dire need of study, resulting in a “proliferation of scholarship that

surrounds [the] series [...]”, (Hayse, 2016:445) many of which refer to its popularity as

the “pinnacle” (Dor, 2016:276) of turn-based strategy games, and Civ 5 in particular as

“one of the most successful and definitive works” (Ford, 2016) in its genre. It is,

however, the genre's level of complexity, that, according to Dor (2016:281) has kept

many experts in the field from analyzing strategy games in greater detail, as the time

required to fully grasp their underlying systems can prove intimidating:

“Methodological investigations in strategy analysis should address this in the future by

showing how a complex activity such as strategy can be meaningfully archived.” While

this thesis is not an exercise in methodology at its core, it will nonetheless offer one

potential solution to this challenge by developing and executing a methodological

approach specifically tailored towards the investigation into Civ 5's imperialist

ideologies.

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2 Hypothesis

  While the goal of the thesis revolves around the unveiling of ideologies related to

imperialism within Civ 5, its hypothesis needs to distinguish the unique nature of the

ludo-narrative approach from the preceding works with similar purpose. Thus, the

hypothesis cannot claim the exposure of imperialist values within the game, as their

mere existence has already been acknowledged on multiple accounts. It is therefore

imperative that the hypothesis emphasizes the essential role of interaction in the

uncovering of the game's ideologies, and thus asserts that the game's ludic component is

objectively more responsible for the game's imperialism than its narrative surface. Due

to the hermeneutic nature of the analysis, however, the hypothesis cannot deal in

quantitative absolutes when comparing ideological impact, especially when trying to

contrast narratology with ludology, and must instead rely on a qualitative comparison of

contributions from either field. In an effort to minimize arbitrariness in any such

assertion, the qualitative analysis will refrain from establishing a continuum of 'impact'

on which to rank the thesis' ludic findings. It will instead settle on a binary system and

only distinguish between two sources of procedural rhetoric:

1. specific goals, rules, and mechanics (equal level of contribution compared to surface

design)

2. interactivity of the video game medium itself (deeper level of contribution compared

to surface design).

On the flip side, the thesis must assume that surface design does not hold the potential

to carry imperialist values through the sheer existence of its text, video, and audio

channels alone, as video games share these channels with literature, film, and music,

respectively. As a result, the thesis is tasked with first finding the strongest cases of

imperialism within the game's surface design, and then similarly scan its procedural

rhetoric to find incidents resulting from source two in order to confirm the initial claim:

  The hypothesis states that Civilization 5's procedural rhetoric contributes to the

game's communication of imperialist and colonialist values on a qualitative level not

equal to, but more impactful than that of its surface design, whereby the existence of

ludic imperialist manifestations based on the game's goals, rules, and mechanics would

constitute equal contribution, while a deeper impact would require the medium's

interactivity itself to inherently set up the game on an imperialist foundation from the

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very moment the player element enters the frame. The null hypothesis must therefore

state that Civilization 5's procedural rhetoric does in fact not contribute to the game's

communication of imperialist and colonialist values in a way that is more impactful than

that of its surface design.

3 Methodology

  Because of the thesis' unique position within the framework of game studies, and, as

previously mentioned, an expressed need within the field for “[m]ethodological

investigations in strategy analysis” (Dor, 2016:281), the methodology upon which the

thesis has settled must not only be described in detail, but so must the reasoning behind

it, why some elements were deemed more useful to include than others, and why a

certain structure and certain approaches were favored over their alternatives. While an

established methodology specific to the thesis' premise does not exist, general

methodological work within game studies, from which this newly developed

methodology can draw, has been conducted. The basic guidelines and terminology of

the general game studies methodology outlined by Clara Fernández-Vara in

Introduction to Game Analysis (2015) will therefore serve as a basis for this process.

3.1 Inclusions and exclusions

  In pursuit of verification on this hypothesis, it is important to preface the

methodology by clarifying what will and what will not be included in the analysis. The

hypothesis focuses on the content of the game, which extends beyond the computer

screen. On the one hand, narratology reaches into any paratexts of the game that

precondition the mindset with which the player enters said game (Fernández-Vara,

2015:6). On the other hand, within the field of ludology, the player herself is considered

part of the game since it is her interaction that completes and in the process shapes its

content: “The player is a necessary part of the text; [...] the game is not really a

complete text without a player that interprets its rules and interacts with it.” (Fernández-

Vara, 2015:7) Thus, both fields, paratexts and player element, enlarge the game beyond

its hardware boundaries in their own unique ways.

  However, when, as in this case, research is not conducted within the field of

psychology, questions for 'intent' and 'effect' need to be excluded from the analysis. The

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exclusion of intent is especially recommended in video games, where “[...] one should

be careful when attributing certain aspects of the game to the context, falling into the so-

called intentional fallacy. [...] [T]hey are often a team effort, meaning that it is

problematic to establish a single authorship [...].” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:57) Therefore,

the thesis will neither pursue claims on the game's developers or publishers, nor use

information from or about them in order to somehow reveal their intent, and thus the

game's 'true meaning'. Although Fernández-Vara counts “context” among the

recommended exclusion, it must be noted that the entire postcolonial premise of this

investigation makes context an integral part of its toolset. It is therefore necessary to

draw attention to the postcolonial context within which the game was produced and

through which the thesis looks at the game. This also includes the fact that Civ 5 is a

U.S. American game, with both publisher (2K Games) and developer (Firaxis Games)

being situated there. The other aspect to be excluded from the analysis, referred to as

'effect', encompasses the psychological effects that the consumption of media has on

potential players. That would be an empirical exercise that this thesis will not explore.

  In terms of the game itself, both the surface design and the procedural rhetoric are

only examined in regard to the game's central mode of play, which is the 'Setup Game'

option in the 'Single Player' category, whereby based on a plethora of player choices

regarding e.g. resource density, number of competing civilizations, and difficulty of the

AI (civilizations controlled by artificial intelligence), a map is procedurally generated to

provide the player with a potentially infinite number of game conditions. This excludes

the Single Player category 'Scenarios', which offers special pre-made and less

customizable matches, as well as the 'Multi Player' category, which allows for matches

between human competitors online. On the surface, the exclusion of multi-player seems

to follow the trend laid out by Joseph and Knuttila (2016:211):

“From the start screen of a huge swath of games, two paths diverge. In the first, asingle-player campaign laden with narrative components unfolds. In the second,gameplay hinges on the actions of other players […]. Approaches in game studiesare […] often bracketing off online experiences in studies of community, leavingdesign, narratological, and philosophical concerns in the single-player realm.”

However, this does not apply to Civ 5, and is done for the exact opposite reason. Apart

from a guided tutorial that mainly serves to teach new players the basic rules, goals and

means of interaction, the game does not even feature a single-player campaign, let alone

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one “laden with narrative components”. Instead, the narrative dynamically emerges

from unforeseen interactions between the player, the game's rule system, and the AI,

also called “emergent storytelling” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:108). This means that the

opposite of Joseph's and Knuttila's claim applies: The exclusion of the game's multi-

player aspects does not favor narrative over procedural rhetoric, but actually allows for

said rhetoric to present its fullest potential, since the game not only provides a rule

system, but now also needs to take on the roles of all competing civilizations, save the

one controlled by the player. It needs to set goals, interact with the player in trade,

diplomacy and combat, and may even adjust its actions based on certain characteristics

that the game attributes to the represented culture. The thesis deems this piece of code,

the AI, and the “interesting decisions” (Johnson, 2016:10) that it offers to the player, an

integral part of the procedural rhetoric, and thus requires its inclusion in the object of

analysis. In conclusion, outside of psychology, intent and effect are neither inferable nor

relevant, while multi-player must be dismissed for the sake of including AI into the

equation. Paratexts and the player element, however, are marked inclusions necessary to

enhance narratology and ludology, respectively.

3.2 Structure

  In terms of structure, the thesis will begin with an accumulation of all Relevant

postcolonial concepts. This chapter aims to set the ideological foundation upon which

the game itself can then be evaluated. It lists and defines interconnected concepts from

or relating to the field of cultural studies, and presents their relevance in the light of

imperialism and colonialism. While definitions of and investigations into ideology will

be drawn from various authors, the basic framework of cultural studies and cultural

geography will be provided by the works of Stuart Hall and Mike Crang, respectively,

not only in this chapter but throughout the thesis.

  Following the ideological concepts, the thesis needs to bridge the “overblown”

(Arsenault, 2016:476) gap between the heavily interdependent narratology and

ludology, while maintaining a transparent structure. Aarseth (2016:185) claims that

“ludology has been erroneously contrasted with narratology (narrative theory), but since

the 'ludologists' all used narrative theory in their approaches to games, this juxtaposition

is misinformed and does not bear critical examination.” However, completely erasing

these convenient overarching categories presents any approach with yet another

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problem, which is the lack of a system by which to categorize the object of analysis.

Narratology and ludology are both unproductive without the respective other, but on

their own, they still provide a clear pattern that structures the game in question, even

when that pattern then requires knowledge from the other field, respectively, to produce

any relevant knowledge. Narratology divides the game up into different categories of

surface design, while ludology cuts the game into pieces of mechanics.

  For the thesis, this means that narratology and ludology will still structure two

separate chapters, but require a preface that links them both together, to setup a basic

understanding of the subject matter and allow for the two main chapters to actually

produce meaning. This task is taken on by the Overview and categorization of

Civilization 5, without which narratology would not be able to contextualize its

evaluation of the game's design in regards to the common interactive consumption of

said game, and ludology would have no semantic meaning to the player by which to

categorize and actually produce knowledge on game mechanics. Therefore, the

overview chapter will introduce a basic explanation of the game's design and

mechanics, coupled with categorizing it in terms of genre and game studies terminology.

In order to avoid ambiguity in this chapter and throughout the thesis, certain in-game

terminology will consistently be capitalized: unlockable perks, i.e. technologies,

policies, and tenets, such as Archaeology, game elements whose names overlap with

concepts discussed in the thesis, such as Ideology, as well as any otherwise ambiguous

compound word, such as Natural Wonder.

  After the overview, the thesis will lead with Narratology: surface design. The term

'surface design' was developed for this thesis out of the necessity to refer to anything

that is not a goal, rule, or mechanic, thus not part of ludology, and therefore must belong

to narratology. Bogost (2010:49-50) coined the phrase of “skinning” a static procedural

rhetoric “with new graphics” that other researchers like Fernández-Vara (2015:132)

adopted as the “graphical skin” of a game, resulting in far too narrow of a title, as

narratology encompasses more than just graphics. Christopher A. Paul (2016:461)

proposes the term “design”, which achieves the opposite effect by being too broad, as

gameplay is also designed. Instead, 'surface design' perceives the game like a machine

that produces visuals, audio, and text on the surface, which fall under narratology, and

hides its mechanical underpinning, the realm of ludology, under its hood.

  Narratology will analyze the categories the game creates on its surface, the members

with which it fills them, and the way in which they are portrayed. The surface elements

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will be grouped into chapters based around the methods through which surface design

communicates ideology. The game's most relevant paratexts in particular were chosen

on the basis of Fernández-Vara's (2015:6) guidelines. Most importantly, these will

include the game's announcement trailer, a developer interview with the game's

producer, and a written review by gaming website IGN. She specifically warns,

however, of the biases inherent to the nature of developer interviews and reviews.

Interviews are “normally […] part of the marketing campaign and usually cover some

of the same points advertisements do.” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:39) Similarly, reviews

carry a high potential for a conflict of interest resulting from “economic pressures that

condition its content” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:3), since the advertisements with which a

game review is monetized are often bought by the same companies whose games the

site reviews. Therefore, the thesis will treat all paratexts, including interview and

review, as part of the game's marketing, rather than take their statements as evidence for

the game's production process or its public reception. Both narratology and ludology

will also often refer to so-called “postmortems” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:39) by the

game's lead designer Jon Shafer. These are essays on game design, published after the

release of the game, that the thesis will, as with its other paratexts, use not as insight

into the actual game itself, but predominantly as the lens through which some of the

game's rhetoric and representations are framed as positive or beneficial by the game's

marketing, or rather publications of an advertising nature.

  Ludology: procedural rhetoric examines the game's underlying mechanisms, the

interdependent relations they suggest, and the player actions they incentivize. It will

start out by defining the basic terminology of goals, rules, mechanics, and procedural

rhetoric, and then explain in detail how the game's rhetoric arises from specific sets of

said goals, rules, and mechanics. Because of their more abstract nature, that often lies

beyond established language, the chapters will each bear an additional title that hints at

the interconnected phenomena analyzed within.

  A final Conclusion and evaluation chapter will briefly summarize the main points

from each field and then compare the findings of narratology to those of ludology to

determine whether the hypothesis holds true. Although a popular term in game studies,

the evaluation will – if the findings allow it – only briefly touch upon the phenomenon

of so-called 'ludo-narrative dissonance'. This concept describes “[t]he […] dissonance

between the set of verbs (mechanics) and the supposed theme of the game” (Fernández-

Vara, 2015:99). This would be the case if the findings of ludology would dominantly

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point towards imperialism, while those of narratology would point towards

postcolonialism, or vice versa. However, the concept sits not at the core of the

hypothesis, which claims that imperialism is more deeply rooted in the procedural

rhetoric than it is in the surface design, not that the procedural rhetoric's ideology

directly conflicts with that of the surface design. The chapter will also evaluate the

success of the developed methodology, and provide an outlook on how it could be

applied in the future.

4 Relevant postcolonial concepts

  According to Stuart Hall (2016:136), “[s]ystems of representation are the systems of

meaning through which we represent the world to ourselves and one another. It

acknowledges that ideological knowledge is the result of specific practices – the

practices involved in the production of meaning.” This means that any articulation is

linked to a value system, and that therefore any representation directly contributes to the

manifestation of ideology. It is due to this connection that the succeeding chapters can

point at articulations in the game and infer an ideology like imperialism on the basis of

representation. Since the concepts of imperialism and colonialism are too broad to spot

directly, it is their complex system of underlying and interconnected discourses that

allows the analysis to expose one idea from a connotative set of ideas and thus point

towards the overarching ideology, imperialism and colonialism, or postcolonialism,

respectively, as well as other ideas from the same parent ideology: “Ideologies do not

operate through single ideas; they operate in discursive chains, in clusters, in semantic

fields, in discursive formations. As you enter an ideological field and pick out any one

nodal representation or idea, you immediately trigger a whole chain of connotative

associations.” (Hall, 2016:137)

  In reference to Louis Althusser, Hall (2016:131) defines ideologies as the

“frameworks of thinking and calculations about the world […] with which people figure

out how the social world works, what their place is in it, and what they ought to do.”

Previous attempts at ideological investigation into the Civilization series were based

around much narrower definitions, which yielded conclusions that – by cultural studies

standards – appear inconsequential. While Hayse (2016:446) for example points out that

former research has shown the series' tendency to label entire nations, like Germany,

with generalizing traits such as “industrial”, he then fails to acknowledge this label's

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inherent racism by committing to a mere analogy to examples of everyday-life racism

and sexism, as if they were equally grave, but unrelated. In actuality of course, racism

and sexism are interlinked in Western culture through the common idea of Othering, as

are nationalism and racism, for example through the common ground of essentialism,

which is why all these ideas cannot be clearly separated from one another. This thesis

aims to remedy such oversights by detailing the various ways in which the ideologies

found in the game are dependent on each other and can be traced back to imperialism.

They will also be outlined briefly, yet no further than to the extent within which the

game analysis will make use of them. The concepts to be introduced and interlinked will

be imperialism and colonialism, Othering, determinism, teleology, essentialism,

nationalism, the ecological fallacy, the Enlightenment, Orientalism, exoticism, Euro-

centrism, sexism, and meta-narratives.

  Imperialism and colonialism present the overarching ideologies to which the other

concepts can be put in relation. These terms are better explained through the underlying

ideas explained below, but some general understanding and distinction needs to be put

in place beforehand: According to Bill Ashcroft's (1999:122) definition, developed from

Edward Said's interpretations, “imperialism refers to the formation of an empire [...], a

process distinct from colonialism [...]”, which instead emphasizes the foundation of

colonies. This already shows that while these ideologies seem distinct by name, they

actually build on each other. A global empire would require initial colonies, and

settlements that fly the flag of distant lands herald the expansion of an empire. The

following concepts will reveal that these two main ideologies can more easily be

distinguished by tendencies rather than absolutes, and by acknowledging that they are

used to describe specific actions and phenomena, not to universally label an entire

relation. While the thesis will frequently summarize the two under the term of

imperialism for the sake of brevity, it will distinguish them by how power is used, if

necessary: While imperialism will be used to describe the overt display of power

through violent expansion, colonialism will refer to the more subtle empowering of

hierarchies that facilitate exploitation.

  One of the central tools of imperialism and colonialism alike is the representation of

the subaltern, with the purpose of arguing a hierarchy that legitimizes future actions

against them, for example by dehumanizing the victims, by naturalizing their culture, or

by weaving their desired fate into the net of romanticized manifest destiny. This is best

exemplified through the binary oppositions that the colonization of the Americas opened

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up between the Westerners and the natives, painting the colonized peoples as sub-

humans or even animals:

“Western Americasclothed nakedfashion adornmentlabour leisureethics pleasuremasculine femininereason emotionculture nature” (Crang, 1999:63)

This table, derived from Michel de Certeau's (1988:228) opposition of the “civilized” to

the “primitive”, already shows manifestations of several relevant concepts, like

sexism/feminism (masculine vs feminine), the Enlightenment (reason vs emotion, ethics

vs pleasure) and essentialism (culture vs nature). It is through the revelation of these

binary contrasts in represented cultures that imperialist and colonialist ideologies can

best be uncovered.

  Binary oppositions projected onto cultures, as those pictured above, are the result of

Othering, “whereby the 'self' is defined in relation to the characteristics of an 'Other'

culture.” (Crang, 1999:59) It describes the process of painting the foreign as inherently

different, and turning it into a canvas on which to unload the fears, burdens, and desires

that one's own identity intends to exclude from its self-image. An additional artifact of

Othering is thinking in clear-cut, often binary patterns that do not allow for a third space

in-between. This gap is filled with Homi K. Bhabha's concept of hybridity, which

“suggests that the result of modern history is vast numbers of people 'between' cultures

[…].” (Crang, 1999:175) Individuals like these defy standard categorization, which may

lead to Othering and exclusion from all groups, rather than inclusion into any groups

with which they share common attributes, which shows the overpowering impact of

projection. It must also be pointed out that in general terms, “the Other […] is essential

to meaning”, because “[m]eaning arises through the 'difference' between the participants

in any dialogue.” (Hall, 2013:225) It is therefore never the mere concept of an Other

alone, but the projection of said Other onto real ethnic groups, cultures, and nations that

enters imperialist and colonialist territory.

  One complex tool used to project dependencies onto an Other is determinism, which

describes “[a]pproaches which seek to find a single cause (or more rarely a small

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number) for events […].” (Crang, 1999:189) Due to their simplifying nature,

determinist concepts become increasingly harmful the more complex the subject matter

they aim to explain becomes. Possibly the most famous representative and also the most

relevant to this thesis is environmental determinism, an inherently racist tool designed

for the forging of imperialist hierarchies, as Crang (1999:15), describes:

“This school saw the development of cultures as a process of human adaptation tobasically climatic factors. […] [I]t suggested the northern hemisphere temperateregions had 'naturally' achieved the greatest cultural and economic developmentbecause the climate forced the populace to work, but rewarded such labor – unlikethe tropics, where it suggested people had not needed to labour, and the extremenorth where existence was so marginal the possibilities for accumulating wealthwere limited. As such it formed a self-serving justification for Europeanimperialism […].”

To such effect, environmental determinism is a so-called “legitimation theory”, as it

only “served to legitimate the social, political, and economic ambitions of certain social

formations.” (Mitchell, 2005:18) It not only naturalized the idea of an “imperial struggle

for world domination” (Peet, 1985:310) in the first place, but also preemptively blessed

all actions that led there.

  This legitimizing function marries the supposedly secular determinism closely to the

originally more religious concept of teleology, which describes a “directed story where

the predetermined end-point guides the interpretation of prior events. […] [I]t applies to

theories that posit a generally historical evolution towards an inevitable end-state.”

(Crang, 1999:194) A prominent U.S. American example would be the concept of

manifest destiny, whereby functional memory selects and interprets historical events as

the manifestations of an inevitable destiny steering history towards itself.

  Both determinism and teleology draw from the confusion of culture and nature,

which they share with the concept of essentialism, “[t]he view that there are essential

properties which define what something is, and without which it could not be what it

is.” (Edgar, 2008:113-114) Crang (1999:190) describes essentialisms as “interpretations

that seek to ascribe a fundamental and unchanging core value to something. [...] These

core elements are not seen as negotiable or contestable.” Because “culture is the

opposite of nature” (Mitchell, 2005:14), so-called “[n]aturalization” (Hall, 2013:234)

presents the most egregiously imperialist form of essentialism, as it ascribes a natural

core to a cultural phenomenon, most often a foreign ethnicity, in order to present a

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perceived difference as natural and legitimize previously unethical means.

  While ethnic essentialism attempts to naturalize links between a set of core values

and an arbitrary group of people, ethnic nationalism links an arbitrary group of people

to a geographical space in an attempt to legitimize not only the claim on that space, but

also strengthen the unity of the individuals within said group through the construction of

'home' and 'belonging': “Such ethnic nationalism identifies culture with a space and the

space with a people – forming a circular logic whereby one's right to belong to a space

is seen as dependent on possessing the culture that is also used to identify the territory.”

(Crang, 1999:162) Ethnic nationalism represents another legitimation theory that aims

to find an arbitrary fixed point in history in order to allow for Othering and exclusion on

the supposed basis of the justifying past, where the authentic truth was perceived as

reality. Said authentic truth is of course a desired state that would put the proponents of

the theory on the top of a hierarchy. Ethnic nationalism can therefore be combined with

essentialism to persuasive effect when supported by the belief in tradition, i.e. the

justifying power of the “taken for granted” (Hall, 2016:138), as shall be outlined

through this Fox News opinion piece on the United States' official recognition of

Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017:

“President Trump has commented that his decision is 'recognition of reality.' [...][A]ncient Israel [...] existed in the very place where modern Israel exists today.[...] By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Trump is affirming theJewish people’s history. [...] The Jewish people have in fact lived in their land ofIsrael for more than 3.000 [sic] years and took possession of the city of Jerusalemitself almost exactly 3,000 years ago. They have lived there continuously, eventhough they have not always ruled over their own land. Therefore, Israel’slegitimate claims to the land and to the city of Jerusalem itself should be accepted[...].” (Evans, 2017, italics mine)

  Notice the circular logic of ethnic nationalism, where the text argues for “Israel's”

claim over Jerusalem through prefacing the statement with arguments on “the Jewish

people”'s claim over Jerusalem, effectively equating the country with a specific ethnic

group, which leads to the literal statement that (all of) Israel should be owned by the

Jewish people, because the Jewish people are those that own Israel. The essentialist

rhetoric is more covertly expressed through “the Jewish people” and “they”, which

assumes a unified ethnic group in the first place, the common unchanging core features

of which have supposedly existed for three millennia. Therefore, only with the help of

essentialism can ethnic nationalism fabricate continuity between history and today, even

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to the extent of spanning thousands of years between the supposed reality of authentic

truth and the present.

  Due to the neatly categorized world view that ethnic nationalism propagates, it stands

in competition with globalizing trends that tend to slowly dissolve the borders that

manifest the nationalist discourse. This results in increasing conservativism in order to

defend the perceived 'purity' against 'contamination' from outside, that seemingly

threatens the nationalist group unity as well as the essentialist core values of its

members: “Seeing culture linked to identity in this way thus animates, and is animated

by, a series of fears. This is then an identity of retrenchment rather than expansion – in

contrast to the colonial era […]. “ (Crang, 1999:162-163) 'Isolationism', as this thesis

will proceed to refer to this phenomenon, is thus the postcolonial face of imperialism,

driven by fears of an impure third space.

  Both essentialism and ethnic nationalism dwell on the so-called “ecological fallacy,

assuming what applies to the group as a whole applies to each member.” (Crang,

1999:21, italics mine) As an example, if a country's ranking in the World Happiness

Report (Helliwell, 2018) decreases by 10%, this does not mean that all citizens of that

nation rated their lives as 10% less satisfactory than the previous year. Factors like age

or class stratify the demographic into subgroups with distinct conditions, down to

individual differences. A high-income class making up 50% of a hypothetical population

may have experienced a 20% happier year while the low-income class felt 40% more

unsatisfied. Essentialism and ethnic nationalism look past these ruptures within a group

in order to maintain clear categories.

  The trust in categorization in order to facilitate understanding can be traced back to

one of the most central forces in the web of imperialist and colonialist ideologies, the

discourse of the Enlightenment, which remains the dominant underpinning of many

discourses today, most famously that of the self-governed Subject. The Enlightenment

“implies a change in outlook on the world where science was seen as the key to

demystifying the world, and the world was believed to be explicable by rational

thought. [...] [A]lthough Enlightenment projects spoke of universal truths they were

often based on the experience of white, male European scientists.” (Crang, 1999:190)

While some definitions of this school of thought, such as its dominant “faith in the

ability of reason” (Edgar, 2008:109) emanate an air of innocence even by today's

standards, its inherent imperialism arises through the connection between

'understanding' and 'controlling'. The Enlightenment served as the overarching

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legitimation theory of all theories, providing scientists with the confidence in their

empirical knowledge, with which they could categorize and thus conquer the world.

This made it an essential tool to imperialism, allowing man to “control and master the

earth […].” (Crang, 1999:104) Humans create meaning through difference (Hall,

2013:225), difference requires separation, which in turn creates categories. The creation

of categories inevitably results in the creation of hierarchies, and hierarchies literally put

one thing on top of a list of others. Therefore, the producers of knowledge, and thus

hierarchies, are biased to interpret their empirical findings in a way that favors their own

position within them, compared to the inferior Other. This legitimation of power is best

observed in the imperialist Othering of Africa as the 'barbaric' counterpart to the

'civilized' Europe, forming the two ends of the ethnic “evolutionary scale” (Hall,

2013:229) that the Enlightenment allowed for. This blind trust in science as the

undoubted motor of good in the world helped justify even the most inhumane actions, as

long as they were carried out under the disguise of supposed rationality: “Lyotard and

Bauman, to name but two, have linked the atrocities and excesses of the twentieth

century (for example, Auschwitz, the Gulag Archipelago, the nuclear build-up) to the

overweening hubris of the Enlightenment's prediction of an emancipatory triumph of

reason and virtue.” (Edgar, 2008:271-272)

  The imperialist potential of the Enlightenment, as it constructs supposedly objective

knowledge of the Other, is best exemplified by the inner workings and lasting effects of

Orientalism. According to its founder Edward Said (2016:37-38), this concept describes

“a sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an Oriental

world emerged, […] according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical

reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections.”

Orientalism thus presents a more specific case of Western Othering (“desires,

repressions, investments, and projections”) supported by the Enlightenment (“empirical

reality”) to construct a supposed reality of the unified, spatially and diachronically

consistent Orient through observing 'it' from the outside. However, “the 'Orient' exists

only through that gaze.” (Crang, 1999:61) According to Hall (2013:250), this

“racialized knowledge” is then used to affirm and perpetuate imperialist hierarchies that

enforces the Orient's perceived inferiority. Among these hierarchies, the opposition of

future over past is the most prevalent one: “The Occident defined itself as progressive,

in the sense of making history and changing the world, while the East was defined as

static and timeless. [...] Europe shapes the future, while the East can only experience

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repetitions.” (Crang, 1999:66)

  Where Othering describes the securing of an identity through projection, exoticism

explains how this Othering is used to justify economic exploitation in regards to

foreign, so-called 'exotic' goods: “[T]he exotic, the foreign, increasingly gained,

throughout the empire, the connotations of a stimulating […] difference […] with which

the domestic could be (safely) spiced. The key conception here is the introduction of the

exotic from abroad into a domestic economy.” (Ashcroft, 1999:94) Aside from

exploitation, the trading of exotic goods also served to turn the potentially dangerous

because discourse-challenging foreign into a literal object that could be bought, owned

and controlled, turning “each land and people into just another commodity […].”

(Crang, 1999:123)

  Orientalism and exoticism are both tied to a Western world view that does not

recognize its own bias and therefore assumes its views to be universal. This ideology,

named Euro-centrism, describes “[t]he conscious or unconscious process by which

Europe and European cultural assumptions are constructed as, or assumed to be, the

normal, the natural or the universal. [...] Orientalism examines the ways in which Euro-

centrism […] actually produces other cultures.” (Ashcroft, 1999:90-91) It needs to be

highlighted that European cultural assumptions extend beyond the geographical reality

that is Europe. 'European' culture equates to the broad term of Western culture, which

most importantly also includes the majority of cultural biases found in North America as

well as those of many other communities around the globe that are similarly rooted in

European world views. They usually share a similar identity supported by similar

projections onto Other cultures, while also employing a similar set of symbols to

produce meaning.

  Since imperialism and colonialism necessarily create an Other outside of one's own

culture, the theories they employ also aid in reinforcing the borders to the Other gender,

the feminine. Therefore, they can also be revealed from the viewpoint of feminism in

observing their inevitable sexism: “[T]he terms used to make the colonised peoples

sound subordinate were heavily gendered and normally used to justify and perpetuate

the subordinate status of women.” (Crang, 1999:76) This celebration of patriarchy even

extended beyond the perception of women to that of civilization itself, when deemed

necessary for the argument: “Patriots, such as Baden-Powell, were concerned that

civilisation lead to decadence, a 'softening' of men [...]. So he turned to the frontier for a

model of manhood […] equipped to rule the empire.” (Crang, 1999:73-74) This marries

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sexism to the very essence of imperialism, while also heralding its downfall upon the

end of the colonial era. Hall (2016:174-175) specifically links the “struggle for women's

rights” to the collapse of colonial empires at the beginning of the 20 th century, rendering

emancipation as the result of the fight over the hegemonic power vacuum left by the

established and highly gendered discourses of the dying imperial age.

  The relevant concepts shall be concluded with the all-encompassing idea of meta-

narratives. Put forth by philosophers like Jean François Lyotard and Ludwig

Wittgenstein (Crang, 1999:182), this theory aims to give a name to ostensibly definitive

narratives that are deemed unfit to properly explain the postmodern complex reality of

“competing discourses” (Mitchell, 2005:58). Also known as “grand narratives” (Edgar,

2008:151), they present “overarching explanations that claim to speak for all people;

that claim to be universal and not 'particular'; that claim not to be bounded in a language

game unlike the cultures they comment upon.” (Crang, 1999:182) These narratives can

seek definitive explanations in all fields of life, like the Marxist meta-narrative of

capitalism and class, the industrial meta-narrative of technological progress, or even the

mere general conception of time as a linear progression through history that brings with

itself an inevitable continuous improvement as problems are overcome one by one.

  A meta-narrative inherently combines some of the most egregious imperialist

ideologies: It lays universal claim on objective knowledge while also creating an Other

by excluding all other discourses, as it does not perceive itself as one. It presents a pure

form of taking ideology for granted and equating it with nature, finding a singular

determinist and undebatable cause for the events of history, while also providing a

teleological, inevitable outlook into the future. Its empiricist foundation calls upon the

Enlightenment to legitimize its claims through the sheer form of its approach, which

often helps to reinforce existing divides in society by painting reconciliation as

impossible by nature. It is therefore the foundation of meta-narratives upon which

imperialism thrives best.

5 Overview and categorization of Civilization 5

  This chapter will first outline the premise, goals, rules, and mechanics of Civ 5, on

the basis of which it will then categorize the game according to academic terminology.

Descriptions of goals, rules, and mechanics will not be satisfied with merely explaining

the game's logic, as this would result in a trivial exercise without any context on what

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these systems amount to in practice. Instead, the explanations will also be used to give

insight into some of the more intricate game concepts relevant to the thesis, and even

which strategies these procedures tend to motivate.

5.1 Premise and paths to victory

  In Civilization 5, the player takes control of a civilization of her choice and leads her

people through the ages, in constant competition over territory and resources with

civilizations controlled by the AI. Her goal is to be crowned the victor among the

competing civilizations, of which there can only be one. There are a total of five paths

to victory, all of which can be followed simultaneously, although some benefit more

from similar strategies than others. Competing civilizations can and usually do aim for

different victories, in which case the civilization to first fulfill all conditions of one

victory wins the game. Victory paths do not have to be determined or declared, they

merely exist as overarching goals that motivate the actions during a match.

  Domination victory requires the civilization to control all original capitals, including

one's own. This victory requires military action to conquer enemy cities, or threaten

them into trading possession over cities against an armistice. It incentivizes the costly

and resource-heavy training, maintenance, and technological development of

competitive armies, as well as gaining the edge in the science race for access to

powerful technologies. Such military might requires consistent access to a mass of

resources, while also being unable to rely on trade, as civilizations may turn on frequent

warmongers and refuse them diplomatic interactions. This, in turn, makes the pursuit of

a Domination Victory also that of a self-sustained empire.

  Cultural Victory requires the civilization to reach 'influential' cultural pressure over

all remaining opposing civilizations. A civilization Y is culturally dominated by a

civilization X if Y's culture value is lower than the specific tourism output of X on Y.

Tourism is measured independently from culture, but their means of production greatly

overlap, which is why this victory requires an early focus on all means that accelerate

the growth of culture. Since the touristic pressure on another civilization can be further

influenced through specific intercultural relations, Cultural Victory also incentivizes

additional diplomatic strategies that boost the multiplication of the civilization-specific

touristic pressure.

  Science Victory requires the civilization to assemble and launch a spacecraft to Alpha

19

Centauri. This victory requires a focus on the output of science, accelerating research, in

order to be the first civilization to reach the technologies required to build the four parts

of the spaceship, which then require cities with high production values to quickly

assemble them. This victory incentivizes strategies that significantly boost science

output. It may also prompt a focus on espionage, both defensively and offensively, in

order to steal technologies from other civilizations, and on the reverse, to prevent other

civilizations from profiting off one's own research. Once all spaceship parts have been

built and assembled, victory is achieved automatically.

  Diplomatic Victory requires the civilization to win the UN vote for World Leader.

This victory requires influence over the majority of UN delegates, which can be

achieved by a number of means, most effectively, however, through allying with city

states, non-competing cities around the map which ally with civilizations against a

number of different favors. This strategy usually entails the abuse of the power held in

the congress until the World Leader vote is triggered, in order to sow grief and conflict

among the adversaries deemed most dangerous to one's own pursuits. Effective

strategies to curtail other civilizations' economies, military power, and political relations

include a variety of bans, embargos, and taxes.

  Time Victory is only triggered on the rare occasion that until a certain in-game year,

none of the aforementioned victories has been achieved by any of the competing

civilizations. This victory creates a 'win-on-points' scenario in order to avoid a

stalemate. Upon reaching the predetermined deadline, all civilizations are awarded

points on the basis of calculations that – among others – evaluate their territorial,

economic, military, cultural, and scientific standing. The civilization with the highest

score wins the game.

5.2 Basics on rules, mechanics, and interface

  Before a match, the player chooses one of 43 available civilizations that differ in their

unique ability, which usually grants bonuses tied to certain mechanics, and sometimes

through a unique unit or building as well. Upon starting the match, the player is greeted

with a welcome screen that calls upon the player to restore her civilization to its former

glory. Each nation starts with a settler unit placed somewhere on the map. Some

civilizations have a so-called starting bias, which determines climatic conditions of the

area in which the original settler is placed. The settler can be moved, but most often, it

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is strategically sound to immediately use it, which deletes the unit and creates the

original capital at its position.

  Civ 5's map is constructed through a hexagonal pattern of so-called 'tiles' and is

played in turns. The player's civilization always has the first turn, followed by all other

civilizations as well as the non-competing city states and the so-called barbarians, a

distinct group whose military units spawn from neutral land to attack units and cities

nearby. Decisions can only be made during one's own turn, but there is no limit to how

long a turn may take. During a turn, the player is provided with a range of intricate

mechanics to control her civilization's military, economy, infrastructure, politics, and

society. She may also choose to interact in diplomacy with other civilizations, which

brings their leaders on screen with a backdrop of their office, throne room, or homeland

landscape. The player is also regularly 'forced' to make choices based on unstoppable

processes such as the appointment of a new technology to research upon completion of

the last.

  Player decisions usually revolve around the accumulation of desired resources and

the unlocking of desired mechanics that aid in the gathering of such resources. Because

of their significance to all interaction, they need to be named and explained briefly.

There are five types of resources: nation-wide and city-specific resources can be

produced infinitely, while strategic, luxury, and bonus resources are bound to their

respective tiles and are thus finite. Figure 1 outlines the purposes of these resources,with the dominant first two types represented through their in-game icons.

natio

n-w

ide

science - accelerates the research of technologies

gold- used to skip development processes of units and buildings

- used to upgrade military units- used in trade and bribery

happiness- accumulates to trigger a Golden Age period which boosts

several beneficial values in one's civilization- when negative, it curbs said values and can cause uprisings

culture - accumulates to unlock new Social Policies and Ideology tenets- counteracts the cultural influence from other civilizationstourism - increases one's cultural influence over other civilizations

faith- accumulates to automatically spawn a Great Prophet, which can

be used to found, enhance and spread a religion- used to purchase religious units like missionaries and inquisitors

Figure 1

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city

-spe

cific food - accelerates the population growth, allowing the city to 'work'more tiles in order to reap their benefits

production - accelerates the training of units and construction of buildingsand wondersstr

ateg

iccoal, iron,

etc. - required for the production of specific units

luxu

ry cotton, silk,etc. - raise happiness

bonu

s wheat, bison,etc.

- boost the food or production output of the terrain on which theyare found

Figure 1

  Desired mechanics and boosts can be unlocked by progressing through the game's

three 'trees': the technology tree, the Social Policy tree, and the Ideology tree. The

research of a technology usually requires the successful research of up to three previous

technologies. Technologies are also assigned to eras, which causes a civilization to

officially enter an era upon completing the research of one of its technologies, which in

turn unlocks new mechanics. Social Policies are divided into different trees that can be

accessed simultaneously. Ideology tenets, however, are tied to mutually exclusive trees.

As a civilization enters the Modern Era, it has to commit to one Ideology, locking it out

of the other two.

  The player perceives and manages the game world from a slightly angled bird's eye

view, often falsely described as isometric. Initially, all but the tiles close to one's

original settler are covered by a so-called 'fog of war', represented by clouds. The

presence of own or allied units or cities reveals the surrounding tiles. As can be seen in

Image 1, the view down on the world is framed by an interface, which facilitates theinteraction with and the visualization of the game's abstract systems. The basic and

strategic resources are listed prominently at the top left to center (frame 1), while the

currently researched technology and its progress is shown on the top left (frame 2). The

top right shows the number of the current turn and year (frame 3), with the latter being

calculated logarithmically in relation to the former. A match usually starts at 5000 BC

and the Time Victory deadline usually ends at 2050 AD. At the bottom right a so-called

'minimap' gives an overview of the world (frame 4), dividing it up into territories, cities,

unowned land, unexplored land, water, and lastly ice, which frames the map at the top

and bottom. Ships can travel to the eastern border of the map by sailing westward, and

22

vice versa, implying a round globe.

Image 1

5.3 Categorization

  Game studies terminology allows for a categorization of the analyzed gameplay on

three levels: game type, game genre, and game mode. There are only two game types,

which form the extreme points of a continuum, namely games of emergence, and games

of progression. “[E]mergence refers to the aspects of the game that relate to the player

making decisions, whereas progression refers to the goals and sub-goals of the game.

Since most games have both rules and goals, most games also combine both progression

and emergence […].” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:152) Games of progression thus focus

more on enabling the player to 'progress' through the game on a linear, predetermined

path, goal by goal, while games of emergence allow the player to choose her own

approaches to few, rather general overarching goals, and use the tools given to her in

unpredictable ways, which causes the gameplay experience to dynamically 'emerge'.

Many scholars have referred to the strategy game genre as prototypical emergent

gameplay, such as Dor (2016:276), Juul (2011:73), and Fernández-Vara (2015:152)

herself, with the latter explicitly citing Civ 5 as “a clear example of [...] emergence,

where the player interacts with a complex game system to achieve a specific goal

(become the dominant race or civilization).” (Fernández-Vara, 2015:152)

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  Egenfeldt-Nielsen (2016:18) defines strategy games as “[g]ames focusing on the

ability to deal with dynamic priorities, typically in a context of resource shortage.

Strategy games may be divided into real-time strategy games and turn-based strategy

games.” According to this definition, Civ 5 qualifies as a turn-based strategy game, or

short TBS game. Dor (2016:276) even claims that “TBS games reached the pinnacle

with Sid Meier's Civilization (MPS Labs, 1991)”, in reference to the start of the series.

  Finally, the game mode this thesis investigates lets the player compete against the

game through the use of artificial intelligence. Fernández-Vara (2015:88-89) calls this

“Single Player vs. Game”, which is often simply referred to as single-player, and mostly

contrasted with multi-player, which pits several players against each other, or lets them

compete against the game together. In conclusion, the object of analysis is a single-

player, turn-based strategy game, falling under the games of emergence category.

6 Narratology: surface design

  “All cultures tend to make representations of foreign cultures the better to master or

in some way control them.” (Said, 1994:120) Naturally, the surface design in Civ 5 is no

exception. Its explicit portrayal of real-world cultures and their relations opens the game

up to a thorough investigation into the game's representation of said cultures, both overt

and subtle. Fernández-Vara (2015:149) claims that the representations in a game help

“in creating a mood [and] expressing themes”, which assumes the representations within

a game to share some common ground and provide an overall consistent ideology on

some or all levels of design. In this case, imperialism and colonialism are assumed to

govern this game's representations, as they still govern Western functional memory to

this day. However, the advent of postcolonial theory brought with it a public

confrontation of colonialist values, which Pethes (2008:69) refers to as subversion, in

contrast to an articulation that enforces and perpetuates the already dominant discourses.

This dichotomy of functional memory may prove essential in the discerning of the

game's surface design. Some articulations may overtly or subtly fall in line with the

imperialist mindset, while others could openly attempt to subvert it.

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6.1 Paratexts and priming

  The conditioning of the player's expectations and the world view with which they are

expected to enter the game start with the game's title itself. According to Nünning,

civilization derived from the Latin 'civilitas', which originally refered merely to the

conglomerate of 'cives', citizens, but undertook several semantic changes throughout

Western history, first to imply 'politeness', later to mean the same as 'culture', which in

turn came to denote 'education', most famously through the writings of Immanuel Kant,

one of the fathers of the Enlightenment (Nünning, 2003:21). The name therefore already

determines a narrow Euro-centric perception of 'civilization' as the final goal of

universal cultural progression, while also peddling the meta-narrative of progression

itself.

  The game's title thus already hints at a common romanticizing thread throughout the

game's paratexts, which is best explained through a more traditional example given by

Hall (2016:140): “We know the words to the song 'Rule Brittania', but we are

unconscious of [...] the [...] imperialist history, the assumptions about global domination

and supremacy, the necessary other of other peoples' subordination, which are richly

impacted in its simple celebratory resonances.” This innocent mask of romantic

celebration is a veil behind which Civ 5's paratexts consistently try to hide the game's

imperialist notions, and thus prime the customers to approach the game's representations

accordingly.

6.1.1 Announcement trailer

  This romanticization is nowhere better observed than in the Civilization V

Announcement Trailer (2K, 2010), which was released seven months before release, and

published through several outlets as both embedded advertisements and official youtube

videos in their own right. Many sentences and phrases in the trailer, uttered by several

different voice-overs, immediately introduce the most relevant ideologies through

quotes attributed to a variety of historical figures, including, in that order, Indian Prime

Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, U.S. American general Douglas MacArthur, ancient Greek

general Themistocles, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Chinese chairman Mao

Zedong, and U.S. American politician Eleanor Roosevelt. The selection alone points

towards Euro-centrism, as Nehru and Mao are the only two of the six whose nations are

25

not typically counted among the Western world. However, Nehru's quote revolves

around India's liberation from Britain's colonial suppression, which, in the tradition of

Orientalism, portrays India yet again through the Western gaze. Most obviously, the

U.S. are represented twice, and round off the trailer with Eleanor Roosevelt talking over

the reveal of the game's title with a quote on believing in the beauty of one's dreams.

  The quotes are not obviously presented as citations. Each has their own unique voice

actor, but no actual sources or names are given, which enables the trailer to show

culturally unrelated, but thematically related material in the background. This might be

seen positively as it draws connections between cultures, but it also lets a single, mostly

Western voice speak for an unrelated culture, which lays claim to universal knowledge.

Interestingly, the accompanying clips all depict historical periods that are long gone:

ancient Egypt, Vikings, the early Ottoman empire, and medieval Japan. This allows for

visually more distinct and immediately recognizable cultures, but supports a form of

ethnic nationalism that marries nations to their supposed heydays.

  The quotes themselves also communicate familiar ideologies. Nehru speaks of the

“soul of a nation, long suppressed, [that] finds utterance.” (2K, 2010, 0:20-0:24) This

constitutes the idea of an essentialist core to a culture, which cannot be manipulated,

just “suppressed”. Themistocles exclaims: “I know how to raise a small and obscure city

to glory and greatness, whereto all kindred of the earth will pilgrim.” (2K, 2010, 0:42-

0:51) This creates a hierarchy of nations, judging their cultures by the influence they

have over others. This hint at the Cultural Victory path is followed by an allusion to the

Domination Victory path, through Bismarck's famous quote: “The great questions of the

day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and

blood.” (2K, 2010, 0:53-1:02) Not only is this quote a child of the imperial era, but the

“iron and blood” phrase has arguably become a symbol for extremist nationalism ever

since.

6.1.2 Developer interview

  After the game's announcement, its ideologies were further perpetuated through

developer interviews. In one such interview in June 2010, the game's producer Dennis

Shirk emphasized what he believed the game's strengths would be. His promotion of the

game can be broken down to three core arguments: the game's supposed historical

accuracy, the overhauled military gameplay, and the Sid Meier legacy. Interviewer

26

Remo (2010) points out that “Civ is more about revisionism”, but that the historical

theme brings with itself a “level of accountability”, to which Shirk replies: “[W]e

always have to put gameplay above historical accuracy, but we always want to start out

at a square that's accurate.” He later elaborates in reference to leaders: “We're not trying

to keep people absolutely accurate. [...] [T]hat's part of what makes Civ fun.” (Remo,

2010) This contradictory stance hints at one of the game's biggest issues: It represents,

but also allows the player to warp and create representation through its emergent

gameplay, thus creating emergent storytelling that would be everything but accurate.

Shirk repeatedly emphasizes the game's accuracy, calling the series a “historical

simulation” with the intent to create a “believable, real world” and a “serious place”,

even lauding the player community's feedback on “incorrect” (Remo, 2010) entries in

previous games' Civilopedias, which are in-game lexica that roughly outline the

historical accounts on entities in the game. Yet, since gameplay is king, “[p]eople still

have their civs be whatever they want it to be”, again emphasizing the player's creative

freedom, which directly goes against the aforementioned accuracy. Said freedom

clashes with yet another premise, namely that “Sid [Meier] gave each Civ [sic, actually

refers to a specific 'civ', not a game in the series] a unique flavor.” (Remo, 2010) This

contradiction of starting and shaping a culture from zero, which would imply freedom,

while also choosing a restrictive, preset “flavor”, will be taken up again in the Ludology

chapter under the name of the Ex Nihilo Paradox.

  The obsession with accuracy highlights another problem: “Claiming to speak from

nowhere for everywhere has often meant speaking from the position of white, Western

man.” (Crang, 1999:77) Hall (2013:39) explains why universal knowledge on discourse

is impossible: “This subject of discourse cannot be outside discourse because it must be

subjected to discourse.” In the game, however, the Western account of history

constitutes the universal truth, while everything else is mere fiction. In a few cases,

Shirk's excitement about new features even reveals some essentialist understandings of

'accuracy', e.g. as he speaks about the new leader screens: “When you're playing

Montezuma, there's fire, and arm-waving – he's got to be able to bring the character

forward.” (Remo, 2010) The idea of accuracy in this case, however, is built solely on

the basis of infering Montezuma's “character” from the colonialist picture of the Other.

Fire and exaggerated gesturing conjure up images of the animalistic savage as the

binary opposite to the civilized white man. It is important to note that Civ 5's

Montezuma is not Montezuma II who fought the Spanish invaders, but Montezuma I,

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someone of which there is no Western account at all, let alone a postcolonial one.

  Next to accuracy, Shirk stresses the importance of many overhauls to the Civilization

formula, but most importantly, the military. “We've showed this overwhelming military

game in our public demonstrations, but the peaceful players, the cultural players, and

the science players are all going to be able to play just as easily without having to focus

on the combat game.” (Remo, 2010) The heavily advertised improvements to combat,

however, as well as the fact that the game's PR on multiple accounts feels the need to

stress that players will not have to focus on it, not only exposes the Domination Victory

path as one of the central ones, but also that the target demographic expects this path to

take center stage. The expansions Gods and Kings (2012) and Brave New World (2013)

focused mainly on overhauling the other victories, e.g. by reintroducing religion to the

series, but the initial focus on the “military game” remains. Shirk even calls the changes

to the game's combat “the most interesting.” (Remo, 2010) The ludic freedom that this

focus propagates by always offering a sword next to the pen romanticizes the heavy

imperialist notions of enforcing power over others not through hegemony, but brute

force.

  The third marked focus of the interview is the genius cult surrounding Sid Meier,

which stands in the way of building the community's faith in the new lead designer Jon

Shafer. Shirk tries to solve this by painting Meier as the “executive producer” who is

“instrumental to everything we do” and has “his hands pretty thoroughly in everything

[...]” by testing the game in various stages and giving “very frequent” (Remo, 2010)

feedback. He then portrays Shafer as someone who based his decisions on Meier's

overarching design philosophy: “Jon wanted that same flavor.” (Remo, 2010) Sid Meier

is thus used merely as a seal of approval, he remains in the background, and is not

counted among the developers. This legitimizes the represented ideologies from the

very start, just through the name itself, while not entering the sphere of the personal, a

human face given to the ideologies, which would lower their impact, now exposed as

the brainchild of a man rather than the impersonal account of objective truths. It also

frames the entire game with a sentiment of theology, the precursor to teleology, whereby

the assumption of an impersonal entity lending guidance to those actually in charge

grants legitimacy to everything the game does.

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6.1.3 Review and marketing

  One day before release, video game website IGN released a review echoing similar

ideas. While the review does explain the importance of the other victory paths, most

prominently the cultural one, it also leads with the headline: “A game that's optimized

for the uncivilized”, stating: “My Iroquois nation […] slowly but surely conquered the

Americans and other European nations, subduing them to my rule... or simply burning

their once-haughty nations to ashes. This is what Civilization V is all about.” (Gallegos,

2010) That last phrase in particular stresses that the shortcomings of the original release

were not only advertised as forgivable, but to be embraced, seeing as Gallegos still

awarded the game 9 out of 10 points on IGN's rating scale.

  While the release of the expansions mostly remedied said shortcomings, however, the

advertisement texts for the 'Complete Edition', which includes all expansions, still first

and foremost celebrates the violent imperialism that was prevalent in the original

release. The back of the box calls on the player to “wage war by land, sea, and air,

conduct diplomacy and espionage, establish religious beliefs, and discover new

technologies in [her] quest to build the most powerful empire the world has ever

known.” This short text alone leads and ends with concepts of overt imperialism. The

five bullet points below also lead with “huge battles”, while a more peaceful, although

equally important in-game feature like “international trade” is pushed to second-to-last

place. Similarly, Ford (2016) points out that “the first line of the game’s description on

Steam challenges players to 'become Ruler of the World […]'.”

  This prevalence of the concept of war and the reliance on imperialist ideas to make

sense of peaceful interactions can also be explained through the strategy genre itself.

Dor (2016:275) claims that “[u]sually, […] strategy games refer to military-themed

computer games where the player takes the role of a commander and needs to gather

resources to summon new military units.” Civ 5 may be a special case that opens up

avenues for more peaceful approaches, yet it advertises itself as belonging to the 4X-

strategy genre, which even finds allusion in the developers' company name Firaxis

Games. Civ 5 lead designer Jon Shafer (2013, Strategy) explains that “[a] moniker often

used for empire builders is '4X', for exploration, expansion, exploitation and

extermination.” The imperialist implications are clear, since an empire explores the

lands of which it deems its inhabitants unworthy, expands onto said land, exploits it and

exterminates all resistance. It is nigh-on impossible for a hypothetical consumer seeking

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information on Civ 5 to avoid this genre name, which in turn confirms that all paratexts

leading up to the purchase of Civ 5 advertise the game as a romanticized imperialist

playground.

6.2 Civilizations and leaders

  Ideology revolves around inclusion and exclusion: “[W]hen designers include and

exclude particular ethnicities within game action, the subtext of their design choices

carries ideological weight.” (Hayse, 2016:443) Representation thus starts with the

variety of playable civilizations on offer. The game's Euro-centrism can be spotted

immediately when categorizing the available nations by continent, as can be seen in

Figure 2.

continent civilizations present nation(s) historical nation(s)

Europe 15 FRANCE CELTS (Gauls)America 7 GERMANY Teutons

Asia 13 Italy ROME/Africa 6 BYZANTINE EMPIRE/

Oceania 2 VENICE

Figure 2 Turkey OTTOMAN EMPIREIraq/Kuwait ASSYRIA/

BABYLONIATunisia CARTHAGE

Peru INCAMexico AZTECS/

MAYAIran PERSIA

Thailand SIAMNorth/South Korea KOREA

Mali SONGHAISouth Africa ZULU

Figure 3

The most striking contrast is the representation of Europe through 15 nations in total,

while Africa, a culturally diverse continent almost three times as large, is represented

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through less than half as many civilizations. The same can be said for America, offering

an immense variety of native peoples, but only settling for five, next to the United

States and Brazil.

  Figure 3 highlights another problem that Hayse (2016:446) hints at byacknowledging that “Civilization [...] favors [...] an ethnocentric view of non-

industrialized cultures […].” Civ 5 reserves a special form of Othering against all

cultures deemed technologically less advanced than Western cultures. The ties to both

ethnicity and space reveal tendencies of essentialism as well as environmental

determinism. Hayse fails to recognize, however, that the imperialist Othering through

the mere visual, technologically inferior depiction of cultures like the Maya, Aztecs or

Zulu is just the tip of the iceberg. Instead, representation starts with dividing the cultural

continuum of the world geographically and chronologically and then decide which

'cultures' to include in the first place. Figure 3 exercises one aspect of this bycontrasting a selection of presently recognized countries to historical nation states and

cultures that occupied a similar space in the past, and marking those included in Civ 5

through capital letters. This reveals a Euro-centric world view that favors the

representation of present-day Western nations over historical ones, while also favoring

the historical Orientalist Western view of non-European nations over modern

representations of their current nation states.

  Prototypical European countries like Germany and France are included in the game,

while additionally, France's historical identity, the Gauls, are arguably represented

through the Celts. Italy marks a special case, where the modern nation itself was

supposedly excluded due to the inclusion of three corresponding civilizations already in

its place, as Venice, the Roman, and the Byzantine empire mark important items in the

functional memory of Europe. This classicist and Christian view on history also

explains the inclusion of Cart