4 History and computer games

4.1 Introduction

It is important to distinguish between the different angles one can take on the subject "History and computer games". People may have different ideas about what is actually meant.

When I told fellow students or friends the subject of my thesis, I usually got the question: "Ah, about games like Pong and such?". This is a first view one can have of the subject. Most people saw the connection between the two terms literally: a history of computer games. This is perhaps the most logical choice, and it is also covered in this thesis. Still, I do not want to make this part too long-winded, since enough books^[43] have already been written about this aspect of history and games.

A second aspect one can look at is the educational value of historical games, whether or not commercial ones. Besides the effects of violence in games, this aspect of gaming is one of the most popular areas of scientific research. Computer games are a new media genre that is often still viewed with suspicion, just as film and television were viewed with suspicion in their early years. It is therefore only natural that people want to analyse the usefulness of this technological development.

A third aspect that can be linked to history is the source material that the maker of a game uses to make a historical game. One may indeed ask whether these makers really engage with archive material, or whether they simply rent the first Hollywood film they find at the local video store. Do they consider the historical aspect an important factor of their game, or do they simply use the historical setting because it appeals to the imagination?

Last, and also the most important part of this thesis, comes the historical representation in computer games, with an analysis of three recent historical games. What is actually depicted in computer games and in what way? Are these depictions of history correct, or should we take them with a grain of salt? What form does history take in these games and what should we, as historians, think of it?

4.2 Game types

Before going further into the questions posed in the preceding paragraphs, I want to give an overview of the main game types (see also 2.5.4 Game types).

4.2.1 First Person Shooter (FPS)

An FPS is defined by the way the camera viewpoint is set. One views the environment from the point of view of the main character. The camera viewpoint may change during cut scenes. In these games the aim is usually to reach a goal while mowing down the enemy with a variety of weapons. A few puzzles may occur in the game to make progress a little more difficult.

4.2.2 Third Person Shooter (TPS)

The principle of the TPS is the same as that of the FPS, with the difference that the camera hangs behind the main character. One thus looks at the character's back and sees all the movements he performs. This is a popular camera viewpoint for the more "acrobatic" computer games, in which the main character has to perform numerous stunts to reach his goal. Puzzles therefore often occur in this genre.

4.2.3 Real Time Strategy (RTS)

RTS has been an enormously popular genre in recent years, at the expense of the TBS genre described below. In an RTS the aim is mostly to set up a settlement, with accompanying defences and of course also a large army to sweep the opponent off the map. "Real time" means that while the player is building up or attacking with his army, his opponent is at the same time busy with these things too. No time is therefore lost. The build-up part need not necessarily be present; it may equally be that the player is given all his units at the start and has to make do with them. The less violent variants in the genre focus more on economy and trade, elements that are called micromanagement in the field. Many of these strategy games are set in a historical setting and are based on historical facts. This makes it possible to re-enact historical events. The genre is also suited to "what if" history, by playing with alternative historical developments.

4.2.4 Turn-Based Strategy (TBS)

TBS is the predecessor of the RTS. This genre has lost enormous popularity in recent years and games in this genre are rarely released any more. Nowadays TBS still occasionally occurs in combination with an RTS part.
The principle corresponds to that of an RTS, with the difference that each player has his turn. In this turn he must handle his affairs, such as building cities and moving units, while thinking ahead to the moves his opponent will make in the next turn. The genre can simply be regarded as a digitised version of a board game, such as Risk or chess.

4.2.5 Adventure

This genre too is as good as dead. The switch from 2D to 3D display was not handled optimally by the genre, so that few games come out nowadays. The few that do appear, however, are often among the better work, because they are made by dedicated developers with a specific target group in mind. In these games the aim is to solve a mystery by means of objects and hints that one receives in the game world. The player will usually have to rack his brains over puzzles of all kinds before he can reach his goal. In the beginning, adventure games consisted only of text ("text-based"), such as Zork.^[44] Since the appearance of King's Quest 1,^[45] adventures have taken on a graphical guise.

4.2.6 (MMO)RPG

In this kind of game the emphasis is on developing the attributes of the game character. Throughout the game the player will earn "experience", with which he can further build up his character. RPGs are mostly set in a medieval fantasy setting, but this is far from a necessity. At the start of the game the player often has to choose which race he belongs to - orc, human, dwarf, etc - and in which category he wants to develop - archer, warrior, mage, thief, etc.
Most popular at the moment are the MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). In these games, which can only be played via the internet, the player moves through the game world together with thousands of other players who are exploring the virtual world at the same time. One can then form groups (called "guilds" or "clans") and carry out quests together with others.

4.2.7 Sports games

Of almost every sport a computer version can be found. Popular sports in the genre are football (soccer), basketball and ice hockey, but there are also games of tennis, American football and even table tennis. These aim to simulate the original game as well as possible, although a number of arcade elements often dare to creep into the game to make it easier for the player.
Racing games are also extremely popular. In principle these can be regarded as a separate category, but since this list only wants to offer an overview, we leave it at that.

4.2.8 Simulations

Pieter van der Hijden^[46] also gives a nice basic definition for "simulation", which we can adapt to the computer game level: "Simulations are imitations; a piece of reality is imitated by a model. Experiments with the model, i.e. simulations, yield insights that can be translated back to reality. The reason for taking this detour is that simulations can be simpler, cheaper and/or safer than experimenting in reality. Some experiments are not even possible in practice, but are possible as a simulation."
Computer game simulations thus imitate reality as accurately as possible, so that the player can, without any danger and for his own pleasure, immerse himself in certain circumstances in which he could never find himself in the real world. What one learns from a simulation could be applied to reality, if one were to find oneself in the situation in question.

Many variants can be found on the computer game market, ranging from flight sims, submarine sims, car sims etc.

4.2.9 "Cross Genre"

Nowadays the above categories are no longer watertight. Current games try to remain original by offering a mixture of different types. For example, in June 2006 the game Rise&Fall: Civilizations at War appeared. In it, elements of RTS and Third Person Action alternate with each other. It is therefore becoming ever harder to put games into a certain category, but it usually benefits the gameplay, because in this way the player has greater interactivity with the game environment.

4.3 A history of the computer game

As stated at the beginning of the thesis, Ralph Baer is regarded as the godfather and 1966 as the starting date of today's game consoles. That is of course fine, but one must not forget that this date is preceded by a history of its own. Since the history of the computer game is tied to technological development, a number of other precursors that gave the games their content, such as Real Life RPGs, board games, re-enactments, etc., are ignored in this text. What follows is a history of the origins of the computer game and an enumeration of computer games that shaped today's game types.

4.3.1 The era before the computer game

As is well known, every invention is preceded by another invention. For instance, the first cars were based on the design of the carriage, and the principle of film arose from the development of the camera. If we follow the theory of Steven L. Kent,^[48] computer and console games descend from the pinball machine,^[49] which in turn arose from bagatelle.

Bagatelle, a form of billiards, was popular in the 19^th century. The game consisted of a wooden board with pegs and holes. The player had to shoot balls with a cue and hope that these balls would fall into the right hole. The cue was later replaced by a "plunger". Why it was replaced is unknown. No historical sources can be found on this.

In 1930 David Gottlieb designed the game Baffle Ball,^[50] which is based on bagatelle. It became a success in the United States and beyond, with 50,000 copies sold. The game used no electricity and had no "flippers".^[51] The player had to shoot a ball and, by moving the table, make sure the ball rolled into the desired hole.
Some players, however, shook the table so much that it sometimes moved several metres. That is why the "tilt" system^[52] was introduced. If a player moves the table too much, the game does not count. In 1933 the first electric pinball machine was brought to market by Williams, one of the companies that had jumped onto the pinball market after the enormous success of Baffle Ball.

Because gambling and pinball were soon combined,^[53] the pinball machine was banned towards the end of the 1930s, first in New York, later in other states. Gottlieb therefore had to prove that pinball had more to it than just luck. In 1947 the time had come. One of his engineers, Harry Mabs, came up with the idea of mounting flippers on the cabinet. In this way the player gained more control over the ball, and the factor of dexterity was added. The pinball machine had grown from a game of chance into a game of challenge. Here one can recognise the technical precursor of today's computer game, or at least of today's game systems.

4.3.2 The early years

The idea of playing games on the computer is almost as old as the computer itself. Most of the early computer games originated in university computer research laboratories, often as an illustration of computer technology. An example is M.I.T.'s Spacewar (M.I.T. = Massachusetts Institute of Technology) from 1962. Graham Nelson coined the term "university games" in his history of interactive fiction to describe game programs of the 1970s.^[54] Spacewar, Adventure, the Plato Project, and other games raised the "tolerance" for play in the computer laboratory. The evening amusement of programmers and engineers matched their knowledge of coding, computer graphics, interfaces etc. Experimenting with computers and games provided mutual stimulation.

- Tennis for Two (1958)

The first program that somewhat resembles a game was developed by William A. Higinbotham in 1958. Higinbotham worked as a nuclear researcher at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Every year the laboratory organised an open day for the local residents to show that the facility was safe. Because Higinbotham realised that most people found the open day rather dull, he wanted to do something special to entertain them. Together with his colleague Robert V. Dvorak he made the first game, Tennis for Two.
The game was displayed on the screen of an oscilloscope^[55] and was played by two people at the same time. Both players operated the game with a small box with two knobs on it and had to use it to hit the ball back and forth on the screen. Visitors were immediately enthusiastic. Higinbotham himself thought the game nothing special and therefore did not apply for a patent. Something he had better done, because as we see, this game contains the basis for one of the most famous games, namely Pong.

- Spacewar (1961)

In 1961 the first real computer game was developed by Steve Russell,^[56] a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a student, like his friends, he had always been interested in technology and computers. When they discovered the PDP-1 in the building, they took it over completely and developed little programs for the machine, on old-fashioned punch cards.

Steve Russell was the first of these hobby programmers to realise that one could also write a program on the computer to amuse oneself with afterwards. After 6 months of toil, Spacewar saw the light of day. It was an instant success. From then on the game was supplied free with every computer sold. Like Higinbotham, Russell did not see the use of a patent, while Spacewar is now one of the most copied ideas in gaming history.

Afterwards the program was updated by fellow students, but the basis always remained the same. The game was made for two players, each of whom could steer a spaceship with the control buttons of the PDP-1. The aim was for one ship to destroy the other. The control buttons were not so easy to handle, so the students built a pair of hand-held boxes with a number of switches on them. These were the prototypes of today's joysticks.

Remarkable is the fact that even in this first game, gameplay mechanisms were already substituted at the expense of realism. In the very first version the game was programmed so that the spaceships fired missiles, but that now and then one went in the wrong direction. This bit of realism was removed afterwards, because it spoiled the fun of the game. From the very beginning we thus already see the eternal conflict between the depiction of reality, as it should be, and the enjoyment of play.

- Table Tennis (1968)

Next, in 1966, Ralph Baer began developing interactive games on a television set. Baer worked for Sanders Associates, a large company that dealt with military contracts. In the 1960s Baer had a team of 500 people under him, so he could very easily set aside a small number of people to work on his own plans. His bosses told him he was wasting important time and income of the company, but he ignored them and kept working on the project. Originally the idea was flying dots on the screen, which the player then had to catch. The result was ultimately a simple version of table tennis; the game was given the obvious name Table Tennis on the Magnavox, in which one had to hit a dot back and forth using a paddle. In 1968 the game became the first game ever to be patented.

A military company like Sanders Associates could hardly step into the toy world, so Baer was obliged to look for a company that wanted to release his "game console". After a few years, in 1971 to be precise, he came into contact with Magnavox. This company began producing the console, called the Odyssey, but, contrary to Baer's expectations, at a far too high price. Baer had always had a price of around twenty dollars in mind, but Magnavox sold the console for a hundred dollars. The Magnavox moreover gave only black-and-white images. To still add colour to the games, coloured overlays were used, which had to be stuck over the television screen. In this way one got the illusion that the games were in colour.

Baer and Russell can thus be regarded as the godfathers of the computer game. Russell's Spacewar, however, could only be played on extremely expensive computers, which could never be bought by the masses. Baer's console, in turn, was sold at a far too high price, so that only the wealthier people could bring the gadget into their homes.

- Pong (1971)

Both programs (Spacewar and Table Tennis) could ultimately have been forgotten, had Nolan Bushnell not already brought an arcade machine to market in 1971 on which a computer game could be played. This game was called Computer Space and was a variant of Spacewar. The system, however, became a flop, presumably because it was simply too complicated.
Bushnell, however, was convinced of the arcade machine and therefore founded the company Atari in 1971. The name Atari, a company name that today still stands for acceptable computer games, comes from the Japanese strategy game ‘Go’ and roughly translated means the same as "check" in our game of chess.

Bushnell then decided to build a new system with an easy game. This game became the legendary Pong. This game is once again comparable to Tennis for Two. The player hits a ball back and forth, and the computer tries to hit it back via an up-and-down moving cursor. When the player or the computer misses a ball, the other scores points. Pong became enormously popular. In the first year 8,500 arcade machines were already sold. Later, many more variants of Pong would be brought to market, both by Atari and by other companies. An example of such a game is Breakout, in which the player has to make blocks disappear from the playing field by aiming a little ball at them with a little paddle. Breakout, incidentally, was developed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, better known as the people who would later found the Apple Computer Company.

Space Invaders (1978)

Taito, a Japanese company, decided in 1978 to focus on the gaming world as well. The first machine they brought to market became a great success. It was even such a great success that a shortage of coins arose in the country. Coin production had to be quadrupled to keep up with demand. Some arcade owners even decided to get rid of all the other arcade machines and fill their halls exclusively with Space Invaders machines. It was also the first arcade machine that could be found in places outside the usual arcades and entertainment venues.^[58]

Space Invaders, like the preceding games, is known by just about everyone. The idea of the game is fairly simple. Earth is attacked by an army of spaceships. The player has a tank on the ground at his disposal, and some four bunkers he can shelter under. When he is hit by the aliens' bullets, or when the aliens succeed in reaching the ground, the game is over. It is up to the player to destroy all the attacking ships.

Space Invaders was the first game to be transferred from the coin-operated machines to a home game computer. This brought about the breakthrough of the Atari VCS, the console on which the game was released.

Asteroids (1979)

Atari is of course not pleased that another company, Taito namely, has such enormous success. The company therefore does everything to develop a new game that can draw the public to their side again. They succeed with Asteroids, a game that even sells better than Space Invaders. What was new about Asteroids is that it was the first game to save a player's "High Score". In this way the addiction is further encouraged, because the player wants to see his name at the top of the list.

In Asteroids the player flies around in a spaceship and the aim is to shoot meteorites and comets to pieces. If he shoots a large comet to pieces, it will burst into smaller pieces, which in turn burst apart until nothing is left.

Pac-man (1980)

Perhaps the best-known "personality" in game history. It was the first game to get a complete merchandising line of its own. Everything one could imagine, from T-shirts to coffee mugs, got a Pac-man facelift. Like Space Invaders, Pac-man caused another coin shortage in Japan, this while two years earlier the issue of coins had been quadrupled.

The inventor of Pac-man, Toru Iwatani, wanted to develop a game without violence, unlike the many space games on the market at the time, and one that could possibly also encourage girls to play. Iwatani came up with the figure of Pac-man while eating pizza. It is a yellow disc with a mouth, formed by a cut-away triangle. The aim is for the player to guide Pac-man through a maze full of dots. He can eat these dots, 240 in total. Meanwhile ghosts are chasing him. Pac-man can eat these ghosts after he has eaten one of the large dots, called "power pills", in the maze. When the player has taken all the dots out of the maze, the game starts again and the ghosts become harder. To earn bonuses, besides eating the ghosts, the player can also eat fruit and other objects that appear near the centre of the maze.

A fun fact is that Pac-man is not the game's original name. Normally the game was meant to be called Puck-man. When the game was exported to America, however, people started to fear mischief-makers: they could so easily turn the P into an F.

Donkey Kong (1981)

Donkey Kong was the game with which Nintendo broke through on the American game market. Earlier, Nintendo had already released Radarscope, but the original 3,000 units were never completely sold. Nintendo is a company founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi in 1889, under the name Marufuku Company. It was a company that produced Japanese playing cards and, from 1907, Western ones too. In 1951 the company changed its name to The Nintendo Playing Card Company, a name that will be forever linked to the computer game. "Nintendo" means "leave luck to heaven".

Donkey Kong is one of the first platform games, in which the main character moves through the game world by jumping, climbing and running to reach a certain goal. The aim is for the player to make "Jumpman", later renamed "Mario",^[59] climb up in a factory, while Donkey Kong rolls barrels and other things down. Mario would later become enormously famous thanks to the game Super Mario Bros (see below).

The name Donkey Kong is the result of a bad translation by its creator Shigeru Miyamoto. He wanted to give the game the name "Stubborn Gorilla", but through a bad translation using a Japanese-English dictionary, he ended up with the name "Donkey Kong".

Such wrong translations occurred regularly in the past. Japanese games prepared for the Western market indeed did not always come with a perfect translation. Sometimes they were more or less literally translated sentences from Japanese. One of the best-known examples is the sentence "All your base are belong to us" from the game Zero Wing. Zero Wing was released in 1989 for the arcade cabinets, and was ported in 1991 to PC and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It was a side-scrolling shooter in which the player steered a spaceship and had to guide onrushing aliens on their way to the eternal void. The sentence caused an internet hype during the first years of this millennium and has been known ever since to almost every internet gamer.

Dragon's Lair (1983)

This game is not included in the list because it has special value for the computer game as such, but because of the technology. Dragon's Lair was in fact the first game released on Laser Disc. The technology was still in its early stage, however, and came in for a good deal of criticism. The early Laser Disc system literally could not take a knock, so that many arcade machines were broken more often than they worked. Still, Dragon's Lair became a success, although it was one of the few on Laser Disc. The success probably came from the beautiful images it could conjure up on the screens.

The game revolved around the knight Dirk the Daring, who went in search of Princess Daphne. She had been kidnapped by the evil wizard Mordread. If the player made no mistakes at all, the game lasted exactly six minutes. Still, many players took longer, since throughout the game there were 800 points at which the player had to make a decision. If he made the right decision, Dirk could continue his search. If the player went wrong, the knight met a certain death.

King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (1984)

King's Quest was one of the first titles from Sierra, and can be regarded to some extent as the father of graphical adventure games. King's Quest distinguished itself from the other games at that moment because the game allowed the player to walk around in an interactive world. In the previous games the player saw only a picture in which nothing else happened, and had to move through the game world with the help of text commands, such as "Go North". King's Quest allowed the player to move the main character via the keyboard. Other commands still had to be typed in, something that would be replaced a few years later by the use of the computer mouse.

In King's Quest the player was assigned the role of Sir Graham. His task was to collect three magical objects. Once he had obtained them, he was chosen as the new king. The game was so popular that the series received eight "sequels" over the years.

Summer Games (1984)

With Summer Games, Epyx started a new trend, namely that of sports games. The game was released on the Commodore 64. After the success of Summer Games, quite a few games based on the same principle followed. A year later Winter Games came out, and the immensely popular California Games completed the line-up.

The series always followed the same principle. A game consisted of several mini-games. Summer Games, for example, consisted of eight or so disciplines from the Olympic Games of '84. For some events timing and precision were important; for other events it was a matter of pressing various keys as fast as possible. The times were stored in the game as world records. In this way the challenge remained to want to do better and better.

Tetris (1985)

The success story of Tetris was preceded by a turbulent period. It all began in Russia, where Alexey Pajitnov, a Russian mathematician, developed the game in 1985. Russia then came to know the game, but because of the Cold War it took somewhat longer before the rest of the world got to see anything of Tetris. It was only in 1986 that Robert Stein, head of the London-based software developer Andromeda, got to see something of Pajitnov's project. Stein immediately began negotiations with the Russian over the rights to the game, and when Stein thought he had the rights in hand, he began to sell them. Mirrorsoft UK got the European rights and Spectrum Holobyte got the American ones. To make a long story short, Stein turned out never to have actually held the rights. Thanks to the chaos that ensued, Nintendo managed to obtain the real rights. Moreover, Nintendo sued all the other companies that thought they had rights.

Tetris consequently became the launch title for Nintendo's new handheld console: the Game Boy. Partly thanks to the popularity of Tetris, the Game Boy can today boast a place at the top of the best-selling consoles ever. In total 40 million copies of Tetris were sold. Pajitnov, however, never saw much money, despite the enormous popularity of the game. Still, he is happy that his game was such a success. Since 1996, after the great success story of his Tetris, the rights are once again in his hands. When someone now makes a game based on the concept of Tetris, he has to buy the rights from Pajitnov.

Super Mario Bros (1986)

Another hit title from Nintendo, possibly even better known than Tetris, is Super Mario Bros. This game was the launch title for the Nintendo Entertainment System, better known as the NES.
In this game Mario tries to rescue Princess Toadstool from the clutches of the evil Bowser. When one plays this game with two players, Mario's brother Luigi is also on the scene - hence the "bros" (= brothers) in the name of the game. Mario is a true platformer. While the player moves from left to right across the screen, he has to jump on opponents to render them harmless and jump against blocks to get coins or power-ups out of them. These power-ups make you grow or give you certain special abilities.

The Mario series is the most successful in gaming history. Countless games featuring Mario have been brought to market. Besides television series and films, a gigantic merchandising operation has also been built up around this world-famous character. Mario has grown into the mascot of Nintendo and is still the icon for video games.

Because the number of games has become so extensive in recent decades, from now on I will only mention a number of games that have had such a great influence on the design of computer games that they must not be forgotten. The overview that follows therefore has no pretension of being complete at all. The time is ripe for a complete encyclopaedia of the computer game.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

The "Godfather" of First Person games, developed by 3DO. It was the very first game in which the player could move freely in a 3D environment. The player takes the role of B.J. Blazkowicz, an Allied prisoner trying to escape from the Nazi castle Wolfenstein. During his escape attempt he comes across mazes full of Nazis, secret passages and war booty.

Doom (1993)

Not long after Wolfenstein 3D the same developer brings out perhaps the best-known shooter ever. Here too the player walks around in a complete 3D world, but this one is clearly of better quality than its predecessor. This game will define the genre, both in level design and in weapons. Almost every shooter since contains the same basic categories of weapons, ranging from a pistol to a rocket launcher. Another element of which Doom was a founder is the multiplayer part of a game. With Doom the player could for the first time virtually do away with his friends. Field-specific terms such as "deathmatch" (a game mode in which the aim is to kill as many of your opponents as possible on your own) and "respawning" (when you die, you are, usually immediately, dropped again somewhere in the game world) therefore originated at the time of Doom.

Warcraft (1994)

Warcraft is the first of one of the most popular RTS series of all time, made by one of the most popular developers: Blizzard. The game is set in a fantasy world, loosely based on that of Lord of the Rings. There are two races that do not get along well, namely the Orcs and the Humans. It is up to the player to choose which race he wants to lead to victory. Last year many gamers came to know World of Warcraft, an MMORPG based on, as the title says, the world of Warcraft. To this day this game is the most popular MMO, with millions of active users.

Command & Conquer (1995)

This too is one of the most popular RTS series. Unlike Warcraft, C&C is not set in a fantasy world. This year, 2006, the box Command & Conquer: The First Decade appeared, containing all the games released based on the C&C universe since 1995. With expansions the box counts a total of twelve games, each one a classic of the genre. The original C&C set the standard for the RTS type. In almost every other new game the gameplay of this game is imitated. When one succeeds in this, one can still speak of a good game to this day. Last month (June 2006) the thirteenth instalment in the series was announced, Command & Conquer: Tiberium War. The series is far from over.

Diablo (1996)

Once again a game from the Blizzard stable. Diablo is regarded by many people as the first ‘action RPG’. Unlike other RPGs, the emphasis of the game lies less on the development of the player's character, and more on the fights he has to fight. Many hardcore RPG players therefore consider this ‘hack 'n' slash’ genre unworthy of the name RPG. Still, it must be said that the idea of Diablo can be found entirely in the game Angband. This game was released in 1990 on the UNIX system, and was ported to the PC in 1992.

As I already mentioned above, this list is far from complete. My overview ends in the middle of the 1990s because most games released after that go back to the standard that was set at that time (that does not mean that the games of recent years have not evolved strongly technologically and in content, but the game itself no longer changes that much).
Another reason is that the market for computer games, for both console and personal computer, is gigantic today. It is impossible, within the scope of this thesis, to give a complete overview of the most important games. The few books that currently deal with the history of the game fixate almost exclusively on the console market. As a result the influence of PC games is largely ignored. A complete overview - with sufficient attention for PC games - would therefore be desirable. The "histories" that circulate on the internet are, to say the least, fragmentary and seldom up to date. They mostly have an eye only for the early years.

4.4 Educational value of computer games

Today's young people are flooded with technological gadgets. The ubiquity of computer games, for example, raises the question of their influence. Since Atari began selling Pong in the 1970s, computer games have become ever more powerful and attractive, to the level where they can compete visually with film. Gaming is now even more popular among many young people than film or television, so that some believe skills are acquired less through books than through computer games. The question of the educational value of computer games therefore presents itself. There is as yet no definitive answer to the question of whether the new media prepare children for a future in a high-tech world or turn them into antisocial, superficial creatures. As always in such discussions, there are fervent defenders of the usefulness of computer games in developing all kinds of skills, but there are also rabid opponents.

In studies on the influence of computer games, attempts have been made to find out what happens in the brains of young people who are absorbed by a computer game, and these show that they develop a different set of skills than the ones they had before. They become increasingly adept at processing visual information and at ‘multi-tasking’, i.e. performing several tasks at the same time - a crucial skill for surviving in today's world (think, for example, of the ubiquitous continuous information scrolling along the bottom of your television screen - something that twenty years ago was used only for very exceptional news). In answer to the question of what happens to a young brain when it is confronted for so much time with such a fast visual medium, scientists indicate that the brain adapts. The brain is plastic, which means that it adapts easily to different stimuli.^[60] The cognitive neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier researched the influence of computer games on the brains of young people. She discovered that their brains adapt to the environment and that young people score up to 30% higher on tests of visual perception than non-gamers, and she concludes: "Video-game playing increases the capacity of the visual attentional system".^[61] Many questions remain unanswered: why are computer games so efficient at increasing visual perception? Is it because of their graphical power? To what extent do emotional factors - danger, violence, the challenge - play a role? Undoubtedly emotions play a role in the appeal of computer games. From the brain's point of view, gaming is above all a visual task, which is therefore processed mainly in the right hemisphere. This leads to concern among some scientists. When we read about, for example, a violent event, that information is filtered by the more rational, analytical left half of the brain. When playing computer games this filtering does not take place, according to Richard Restak - a neurologist affiliated with George Washington University.^[62] Craig Anderson of the University of Missouri-Columbia also joins the opponents of computer games and posits that an excess of computer games can lead to antisocial behaviour. In a study published in 2000 he discovered that playing violent computer games (such as Mortal Kombat) correlated strongly with aggressive personalities, poor school performance and delinquency.^[63]

Of course, if we want to examine the educational value of computer games, we do not want to stare ourselves blind at violent computer games alone.^[64] "Computer game" is not synonymous with "violent". Games such as The Sims, in which the young person is asked to create fictional families and then watch how their lives unfold, can increase problem-solving ability. Such games belong not so much to the visual circuits of the brain but to the prefrontal cortex, which acts as a command centre and places things in context. The conclusion therefore seems to be that computer games can stimulate or stifle the development of the brain, and the difference between the two is caused by the design of the games.

Figure 3: The Sims 2

There is said to be evidence showing that gaming makes young people "smarter" - or at least makes them score better on tests. According to James R. Flynn, professor of philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand, computer games have contributed to rising scores on IQ tests that tested the speed of solving certain problems.^[65] That not everyone simply accepts his theory is evident from the following quotation:

There also appears to be no correlation between those IQ tests and the school performance of young people. If we can conclude anything at all, it is that these young people are perhaps somewhat better suited to becoming, for example, an air traffic controller or a fighter pilot. We should therefore not overestimate the influence.

So far we have discussed the influence of computer games on the brain of the gamer. In doing so we have made no distinction between "real" educational games on the one hand and computer games that were not specially developed with an educational purpose.

Educational software today (as opposed to the first generation of educational software, which could offer nothing more than testing what you had already learned) comes with splendid visual material and is a fun way of learning for many young people. It seems that educational games have the most success with the very youngest: they play games on the computer even before they are ready to read and write. What is that success due to? Perhaps an explanation lies in the fact that computer games - whether educational or not - display a number of common characteristics that appeal to young people and make the game a challenge:

• every game has a certain goal (solving one or more problems, wanting to achieve the highest score, ...):

The goal to be achieved must of course be attainable. To remain engaging, games must offer both short-term and long-term goals. To reach the final goal, several levels must be completed. Some games provide hints for tasks that prove too difficult (whether or not at the cost of points, the player gets a tip on how the task must be carried out). If the player completes the game entirely, he receives social recognition for it (which is why many games on the internet keep a ranking list)

• every game has limitations and rules (meeting a time limit, collecting certain things or powers in order to continue, having to make a choice - and thus excluding other options, ...):

The limitations and rules must be worked out in such a way that they challenge the player, but they must not make the game so difficult that the finish line cannot be reached. The same balance is found in the choices that have to be made: for example a strong character in the game with a rather limited weapon inventory.
Right up to the end, new elements must be built in so that the player remains curious about how things will continue. This is necessary to maintain the tension.

• every game has a competitive element (either the player wants to improve his own score or he wants to be better than the others):

The game is exciting when the player has the feeling that, if he plays the game well, he can also win. If the player plays against the computer, he must not get the impression that he no longer has a grip on what is happening. In multi-player games the best should win, but the game must also have something to offer the loser (otherwise he is likely to lose his motivation quickly).

• every game takes place in a certain context (a virtual world with virtual beings with whom the player identifies):

The context must be aimed at the players: a game for a young player of 6 will of course not appeal to the experienced gamer of 16. The game characters must also fit the player's world of experience. The design also depends on the kind of game: for some games simple graphics suffice, whereas simulation games, for example, call for a three-dimensional depiction that is as true to nature as possible.

When we talk about educational value, we must make sure that we do not generalise. The impact of the different kinds of games leads to the practising of different skills, depending on the tasks a player has to do: is it about reaction speed, concentration or solving (complicated) problems?^[67] It is true that some of the better games combine all these elements, but many games concentrate on one element. In many action games the emphasis is mainly on reaction speed, whereas in a flight simulator problems have to be solved.

Another factor is the environment in which the game takes place. Adventure games are often set in a fantasy world that first has to be explored in order to play the game well, whereas other games are set in a realistic environment. The player then has to make choices and the computer calculates the consequences of his choices.^[68]

Computer games have an enormous appeal for children, and it might therefore be useful to integrate them into education. A number of positive elements can indeed be pointed out:

• A game can be worked through by a pupil at his own pace. Presenting the subject matter in an attractive context has a positive effect on the learning process.
• A game is interactive. The game gives the pupil the opportunity to practise the subject matter, and "practice makes perfect". Collaborative learning through interaction with other players/pupils is possible.
• Computer games are a form of natural learning. Pupils/players learn by experimenting and experiencing things instead of learning by passive listening.
• The most important factor remains, however, that computer games are motivating. And the learning process is better with a motivated pupil.

A very well-founded contribution to this debate is made by James Paul Gee, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and specialist in the field of learning and language acquisition. The first sentence of his book is a statement in itself:

Gee starts from the proposition that computer games are based on principles that can form the basis of "good learning". According to Gee, computer games above all invite one to play with "identities". In computer games you form a virtual person on the basis of the possibilities of the game. Your own opinions, your expectations and values play a crucial role in developing your virtual character. The strategy the player follows to successfully play a game through is based on:

• exploring and trying things out (= action)
• forming a hypothesis about how it works, what you as a player must do
• taking action, and trying again on the basis of the hypothesis you formed
• evaluating the results and adjusting your hypothesis.

Young children and yes, scientists too, work in this way. Traditional teaching methods, however, work in a very different way: they are more about the transfer of knowledge about meanings, concepts and strategies.
Also interesting is Gee's proposition that the learning process in the computer game is independent of the content. According to him, games with violent content can also be good for promoting learning, through a process of doing, forming ideas, doing again, and developing the ideas further. Gee has drawn up a list of 36 principles that a game must satisfy to be "good", that is to say "instructive" (among other things, the game must ensure that you constantly gain new experiences and try new things).

Simulation games such as SimCity or Civilization require the player to process a large amount of information and, on that basis, to make decisions and determine strategies. The player has to gather the information himself. In some games aids are built in - in Civilization, for example, there are advisers - but the player must in the first place follow his own strategy. After all, the advisers are not entirely neutral and each has his own agenda. The skill of gathering information is learned by the player unconsciously, but in an age of ever-increasing information flow that skill will certainly come in handy. Processing visual information requires a kind of visual literacy, which is also practised by playing computer games. This skill too trains the player without his being aware of it. A game may therefore be regarded as successful if it combines the useful with the pleasant. That playing computer games leads to social isolation is strongly denied by Gee. The games sometimes form the basis of a whole network: young people exchange tips, challenge each other to improve their score, discuss the game and so on. Other research^[70] also shows that gamers are very social; an image that runs counter to the prejudice that gamers are hyper-individualistic and asocial.^[71]

A major problem with the educational value of (historical) computer games is that educational games are often seen as non-entertaining. As a result young people, and older people, pass over these games much more often. On the other hand we note that people label ordinary computer games as uneducational, while studies show that one learns as much from an educational game as from a commercial game. There is thus at the moment a dichotomy in the field of entertainment.

At a study day in Leiden^[72] we were shown an educational computer game, Scherven en botten (Shards and Bones), which aims to teach the child everything that is involved in being an archaeologist. What immediately stood out was the cartoon-like drawing style. The program clearly had primary school children as its target group. There is nothing wrong with that in itself; the game nicely showed everything you have to do as an archaeologist when you are engaged in an excavation. But what stood out was that even in this game, which is purely educational in intent, elements of fantasy are also used to keep the game engaging. For instance, the game contains a C14 dating machine, but it looked as if it had been designed by Professor Calculus (Professor Gobelijn), complete with bells and whistles.

The question is of course: is that so bad? The children learn that something like C14 dating exists, which is the most important thing for the makers of the game. That the children do not know the technical side of it does not matter much. In this I agree with the makers of the game. It is important to impart guidelines and experiences about history to young people, without overloading them with technical or academic terms.

It would also be completely wrong to expect that all the necessary information can be "packaged" into computer games. Games are still a relatively new medium, a new medium with its own characteristics, with advantages and disadvantages. This medium should be able to gain a place in education, alongside the other media.^[73] Computer games can play a role in the overall package of education, alongside classical lessons, project work and the like. One can treat computer games in the same way as films, newspapers, magazines and literature. But for that, perhaps, the supply still needs to be improved.^[74] Computer games, as a new medium, still have to learn to distinguish themselves from the other media. At the moment, in my opinion, too much attention is paid to films; people try to make interactive films. This, while so much more is possible with the genre. The future will show in which direction the medium will develop, but I am sure that in the future computer games can gain more identity of their own and more educational value.

I would like to point out here that the market for so-called "persuasive games" or "serious games"^[75] has seen unprecedented growth in recent years. These "persuasive games" are games brought to market by governments and international organisations to explain the complexity of certain crisis situations in the world. Perhaps we may conclude from this that people are more and more convinced of the educational value of the computer game, alongside the traditional channels of information. A few examples: Peacemaker - to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ("I know more about the conflict than when I’ve read newspapers for 10 years." - as a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh put it)^[76]; Food Force, published by the United Nations about the difficult situation of providing aid in war zones; A Force More Powerful, a game for teaching the principles of non-violent strategies, etc. The American army even tries to recruit new soldiers via America’s Army, a computer game that can be downloaded free on the internet.

4.5 Historical sources used by a game developer

This chapter is unfortunately based on the information of only one game developer, namely Ian Howe. It is hard to find contacts in the gaming world who, in addition, know something about history. I contacted various companies, but as an outsider you usually do not get further than the public relations department, if you get an answer at all. This is not only due to the fact that those companies have no interest in this kind of research, but also to the fact that they are usually very large companies, who can put their time to better use elsewhere. Other companies where I have direct contacts, namely the Belgian Larian^[77] and the British Lionhead^[78], in turn have no experience with historical games, so that their contribution unfortunately did not suffice to give shape to my thesis.

Ian Howe has in the past worked on the development of B-17 Flying Fortress II: The Mighty Eighth. This is a historical flight simulator, based on a squadron of B-17 bombers at the time of the Second World War. In the game the aim is for the player, as a member of the bomber's crew, to bring his missions to a successful conclusion. The missions all consist of so-called "Daylight Strategic Bombing Runs". Missions against military targets were deliberately chosen, so that there is no question of innocent civilian casualties in the game. Even though many games revolve around violence, there is often thought given to whether this "violence" is morally acceptable. Put bluntly, in a WWII game you will, for example, never have to exterminate Jews, although this is an entirely historical fact.

Ian Howe pointed me to some seven sources, each with its advantages and disadvantages, which he used to sharpen his view of the B-17 and its crew: official archives; oral sources; scholarly books/articles; popular-scientific books and articles; the internet; entertainment media; and the expectations of the target group.

• Official archives

Official archives are of course very important sources. It cannot get more authentic than what is in an archive. Another advantage is that an immense amount of information can be found in them.
Of course, with these archives you have the problem of confidentiality. With recent history, such as in this case the Second World War, part of the archive material is still closed to inspection. Another problem from the developer's point of view is the fact that, in order to consult this archive material, you often have to cover international and sometimes even intercontinental distances. You cannot look at the material at your leisure at home or at work. A third problem is that this kind of research is technically demanding. Someone who is not trained in this kind of research, like most employees of a developer, can quickly become entangled in the oversupply of information.

• Oral sources

A second method that Ian Howe uses for his research is that of oral history. Logically this is only possible for recent history. The advantages are that you get the information directly from the people who experienced the events. You can then ask your source further questions, and in this way go deeper into points that you as a developer consider important. In this way you also create an extra sense of authenticity, because you are in direct contact with the past.
A disadvantage is that human memory is not perfect. Stories about a long-vanished time may well have been supplemented by human imagination, or parts are forgotten, consciously or not. The source also speaks from a personal standpoint, as a result of which some details may be distorted. It is, moreover, difficult to verify the anecdotes you are handed.

• Scholarly books/articles

Scholarly literature is the next source used. It is logical to search there, because scholarly authors usually verify their sources before writing about them. In this way you usually get an accurate rendering of history.
A disadvantage of this kind of source is that they stand rather far from the original facts. They are not primary sources, so that errors may nevertheless be hidden in the work.

• Popular-scientific books/articles

Popular-scientific literature in turn gives a more general view of the events, and is closer to what the player in general expects of the history offered in the game. These texts are also written in such a way that they are understandable to everyone. This helps a person without historical training to dissect history easily.
As with scholarly literature, you then have the problem that such publications sometimes stand rather far from the events themselves. Unlike scholarly literature, popular-scientific works are prone to more sensation-oriented writing, and certain events may be presented as more spectacular than they actually were.

• The internet

The internet: a difficult source to assess. On the one hand, everything can be found on the internet these days; on the other hand, there is also an infinite amount of rubbish among it. Via the internet it is possible to track down other sources that you can consult afterwards. Everything you find on the internet must be checked very thoroughly. Every possible theory, right or wrong, you will come across somewhere on the internet. A great risk is that you have an idea of your own about a certain matter, and that on the internet you come across an apparently reliable text in which your idea is confirmed. Because you yourself had the same idea, you will quickly be inclined to regard that information as true, while it is just as possible that the author of the text went wrong himself.

• Entertainment media

Entertainment media, and especially films, are a well-known form of source material in the computer game world. This is because films are very easily adaptable into the form of today's computer games. What of course plays an important role is the recognisable image that historical films have created of our history. Whoever thinks of Ancient Rome nowadays thinks immediately of Gladiator. And that is the image people expect in a game about that period. A disadvantage is of course the enormous lack of historical correctness in many films. This aspect will come up again later in the thesis (see 4.6 Historical representation in computer games).

• Expectations of the target group

As a last source, which is especially important for computer games, you have the devoted fans of the genre. This is a source unique to the gaming world. Developers often have a large "community" around them, with people who are interested in the work of the company or in the game the company is working on. Via the internet these fans have direct contact with the staff. On the forums they give feedback on the work delivered by the developers. Many of these fans also get the chance to take part in the beta test of the game, and they can point out errors in the program to the makers.^[79]
Here too, however, there is the problem that one gains access to incorrect information. Not all fans have an equal amount of historically correct knowledge, and they can therefore pass on wrong information to the developers.

It goes without saying that one must always apply historical criticism to the sources used. In the gaming world this can often cause problems, since the people who work on a game often have not had a historical, or other critical, education. In addition, many developers deliberately pay no attention to historical accuracy. As long as the game conveys a historical feeling to the player, the matter is for most developers already settled.

4.6 Historical representation in computer games

In this chapter we discuss the representation in computer games: what historical image they convey to the player and in what way this happens. For this I make use of three popular historical games that were brought to market in the course of 2005 or are still very much in the spotlight, namely Rome: Total War, Civilization IV and Age of Empires III. It is important for the research that the games are as recent as possible. The possibilities and the graphical capacities improve every year, so that recent games have a higher value than their predecessors, both technologically and in content. Basing this thesis on games from five years ago would give a totally wrong picture of the current generation of games.
A short explanation of each game now follows, together with some historical errors. The way in which these games deal with history is also described.

4.6.1 Short explanation of the games studied

For this thesis I had to make a selection from the oversupply of computer games with a historical theme. I deliberately chose three strategy games. Logically because it is easier to compare when the games come from the same main genre, but also because strategy games have that little bit more depth that can be useful to a historian.
FPSs are usually graphically very detailed; for example, most locations in the WWII game Brothers in Arms are based on archive photographs and maps from that period. We can therefore look at them from a historical angle in this respect, but the gameplay revolves for the most part around shooting the enemy and reaching your goal. I certainly do not want to call the genre bad, but it goes without saying that this does not directly invite scholarly thought.

The three games studied are therefore:

• Age of Empires III^[80]: this is a 3D RTS game for PC, developed by the American production house Ensemble Studios^[81] and published by Microsoft in 2005.
• Rome: Total War^[82]: a strategy and simulation game (RTS/TBS) in 3D for PC, developed by the English game developer The Creative Assembly^[83] and published in 2004 by Activision.^[84]
• Civilization IV^[85]: a 3D TBS game for PC, developed by Firaxis Games^[86] and published by 2K Games^[87] in 2005.

4.6.1.1 Age of Empires III

Figure 4: Age of Empires 3

In terms of game mechanics, Age of Empires III is the simplest of the selected games. In broad terms the game simply consists of building up a village/town and an accompanying army, after which the player tries to literally sweep his opponents off the map. The game moments do not take place on a world map. For each battle the player is placed in a certain area, and there he has to fend for himself. If the player wins the battle, he is automatically referred to another place; he has no say whatsoever in how and what he will conquer. He maintains his army by providing food; he obtains wood for the buildings by chopping down trees, and so on.

The player does not have to take into account the morale of the troops, housing, or any other players in the fictional world. There is nowhere any question of underlying ideologies or profound social consequences.

The game is set just after the discovery of the New World and runs, via three campaigns, to the middle of the 19th century. The units the player commands and the buildings he builds all look historically correct. Most units, such as the ‘musketeers’, use firearms, but there are still a number that use bow and arrow, to make clear that the beginning of the game is a transitional period. The indigenous peoples also supply units, which are based on historical truth. The Aztecs, for example, can provide the player with ‘Jaguar Warriors’. These, like the "Eagle Warriors" that also occur in the game, can be regarded as the elite troops of the Aztec Empire. When someone of the nobility had proven himself on the battlefield, these Aztecs were given the honour of clothing themselves in the skins of a jaguar, with the head of the beast over the head of the warrior.

As a historical extra, the player in America receives support from the European city from which he supposedly departed, in the form of food, settlers, raw materials, ... . The more he conquers and builds, the more experience points he gets. With that experience he can have various aids shipped over from his home country during the game. This gives the player more of a feeling that he is really a pioneer in the New World, and that despite all his hard work he is still dependent on his home country.

But there the connection with history ends. The storyline itself has the player go in search of the mythological "Fountain of Youth", through the eyes of three successive generations. Something that seems more like a fantasy story than a historical event.
Yet the "Fountain of Youth" does turn out to play a role in the history of America. Don Juan Ponce de Leon^[88], who went to America with Columbus on the latter's second voyage, was appointed governor of Puerto Rico in 1510. On this island he heard the natives talk about the fountain, which was said to lie on a beautiful island north of Puerto Rico. In 1513 Leon fitted out a fleet to search for the island. In this way Florida was discovered on 3 April 1513. The story presented to us can thus, somewhere, still be given a historical foundation, although the fountain of course remains a fantasy.
Myths about the Water of Life can be found throughout history in many cultures, both in the mythological tales of Alexander the Great and in the Ancient Arab world. For this reason the appearance of the Ottomans in Age of Empires III is understandable, although for people who do not know the background of the myth it will probably come across as a completely abstract given.

For the rest, the game does contain a few historical battles, but the gameplay of the game does not allow extensive tactical possibilities, so that one can hardly speak of a historical simulation.
The player can also establish contacts with the local population. He does this simply by placing a trading post next to one or more of the tent villages. No negotiations, no resistance or defiance from the local population. Realistic is something else, but the makers deliberately chose entertainment.

In the single-player campaign the player is bound to a certain country, but when he plays multiplayer, or starts a skirmish game^[89], he can choose from eight different peoples: the Spanish, the British, the French, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Russians, the Germans and the Turks. Each of these peoples has its own special units and characteristics that give them a slight edge over the other peoples. The Dutch, for example, get special bank buildings that allow you as a player to collect money faster. This image of rich Dutch society during the Early Modern period has already manifested itself in various computer games.

• The "Janissaries" (< Turkish = recruit), an Ottoman infantry unit armed with a firearm, are depicted in the game with a beard, whereas in reality they were not allowed to wear a beard.

  The Janissaries formed an elite corps in the service of the Ottoman Empire. It consisted of prisoners of war and Christian youths who were obliged to enter service; all the recruits were converted to Islam and trained under the strictest discipline. They were not allowed to grow a beard, because that was the sign of a free man.^[90]

• Queen Elizabeth I is presented in the game as the leader of the Kingdom of Great Britain, whereas that Kingdom would only be founded more than a century after her death.

  Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603; also called the Maiden Queen or the Virgin Queen) was Queen of England from 17 November 1558 until her death. The United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For more than a hundred years Ireland was also part of it.
  The United Kingdom came into being by the law of 1707: under the first Act of Union - a series of laws, by the parliaments of England and Scotland, that regulated the union of both kingdoms - England and Scotland ceased to exist as independent countries. The most important consequences of the laws were the formation of a new state, the Kingdom of Great Britain (although this name had already come into use when the Scottish king James VI also became King of England in 1603) and the abolition and transformation of the national parliaments into a new British parliament. A second Act of Union added Ireland to this in 1800.

• During various cut scenes, and some moments in the game, TNT is clearly used.^[91] The developers have clearly not made the distinction between TNT and gunpowder here.

  TNT was only discovered in 1863 by the German chemist Joseph Wilbrand, and it is thanks to Alfred Nobel's invention of the first detonator that the invention broke through.^[92] In 1867 Nobel invented a way to make safe use of it in the form of dynamite (he formed the name from the Greek dynamis = power).

• In the game Germany is one of the playable monarchies. Yet it must be pointed out that Germany did not yet exist at that time. The territories that now make up Germany were, at the time of the game, still part of the Holy Roman Empire.

  By "Germany" the game developers probably mean the "German Empire": the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) was from 1871 to 1945 the official name of Germany. The term is also used to refer to the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806). In the 19th- and 20th-century German Empire three periods are distinguished: those of the German Empire proper (1871-1918), the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) and Nazi Germany (1933-1945).

• Saint Petersburg is indicated as the capital of Russia. Tsar Peter I the Great, however, only founded the city in 1703.

  Tsar Peter I, the Great, was born as Pyotr Alexeyevich on 9 June 1672 in Moscow. He died in St. Petersburg on 8 February 1725. He was the son of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich and his second wife Natalya Naryshkina. As early as 1682 Peter was appointed co-ruler alongside his mentally ill half-brother Ivan V. The regency for both was exercised by their sister Sophia Alekseyevna. In 1689 Peter the Great gained sole rule. Under his energetic leadership Russia found its connection with the West.

  In a marshy area on the Gulf of Finland Peter the Great founded his city in 1703. The undertaking claimed the lives of more than 40,000 workers. The city is built on 42 small islands and is crossed by the Neva. This river and its branches flow into the Gulf of Finland.
  Compared with cities like Amsterdam, London and Paris, St. Petersburg is thus a young city. In the eighteenth century palaces, houses, cathedrals and fortresses rose along the Neva. All erected by the greatest builders of the time.

  This city was not named after Peter the Great himself, but after the tsar's patron saint, the apostle Peter, and gave Russia an entirely new look. By 1712 the construction of the city had progressed so far that the capital of Russia was moved to Saint Petersburg.

  Until the October Revolution of 1917 Saint Petersburg was the capital of Russia. During the communist regime the city bore the name Leningrad. In 1991 the population opted for the old name again.

• Napoleon is in turn presented as leader of the French, under the well-known French fleur-de-lis flag. Napoleon, however, had the fleur-de-lis flag replaced by the tricolore that the French still use to this day.

  

  Figure 5: Fleur de Lys

  The fleur-de-lys flag^[93]: the name literally means lily flower, although the symbol is in fact a stylised iris. It was originally a creation of the ruling class of the Roman Empire. The symbol was adopted by King Philip I of France in the 11th century. His grandson Louis VII of France was the first to adopt the Azure semé-de-lys Or (a blue shield with a dense pattern of golden lilies). Fleurs-de-lys as a sign of the Bourbons, to whom the kings of Spain belong. The association of French kings with a lily dates from the coronation of Clovis. During this coronation, not only is the Virgin Mary said to have appeared, who gave Clovis a lily, but a vial of oil is also said to have fallen from heaven, with which Clovis was ultimately anointed. The lily was therefore used by the kings to show that they had received their power from God himself. Around the 14th century the lily was so identified with France that the English King Edward III of England extended his coat of arms with lilies to show that he had a right to the French crown. The lily was removed in 1801, when George III of the United Kingdom dropped his claim to the French throne. Golden lilies on a white background remained the French flag until the French Revolution, when it was replaced by the Tricolore. This flag was, however, reintroduced after the return to the Ancien Régime in 1814, but was abolished again after the revolution against Charles X of France in 1830. The fleur-de-lys is still depicted on the flag of Quebec.

  

  Figure 6: The French tricolore flag

  A single visual symbol has become an official symbol, because it is mentioned in the constitution. It is the tricolour flag in the colours blue, white and red, in that order, from the flagpole. This symbol, which was devised in 1789 and was linked to revolutionary and subsequently imperial France, was violently rejected and replaced by a white flag from 1814 to 1830. During the revolution of 1830, also called the July Revolution, this symbol was reintroduced and came into general use again^[94].

  The current flag of France, in France also called drapeau tricolore, drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge, drapeau français and sometimes le Tricolore, has three vertical bands: blue at the hoist, white in the middle, and red on the other side. This flag is the oldest vertical tricolour in the world.
  Since a flag reflects the developments of the country, the most radical changes in it take place in times of revolution. The best-known example of this is the replacement, during the French Revolution, of the fleur-de-lys flag of the French royal house by the current tricolour.
  The Tricolore first appeared during the French Revolution. The colours were derived from the coat of arms of Paris (red and blue), and the colour of the king (white). The combination is usually attributed to the Marquis de Lafayette. The original flag, however, was the mirror image of the current one: red at the hoist side. During the First Republic the current flag was introduced on 15 February 1794.
  During the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy after the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the tricolore was replaced by the earlier white flag, strewn with golden lilies. Since the revolution of 1830, when the citizen-king Louis Philippe came to power, the tricolore has again been the national flag.
  Because the white band is lighter in colour than the other two bands, it appears wider. To counteract this optical illusion, the white band is usually made slightly narrower than the other two bands.

These are probably only a few of the historical errors that can be found in the game. To give a more detailed picture, experts would have to be called to the table to analyse the game at length and in depth. Perhaps this could yield an interesting study in future theses?
A conclusion about these errors follows later in the thesis.

4.6.1.2 Rome: Total War

Figure 7: Rome: Total War

Rome is the third instalment in the Total War series, in which Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War had already appeared earlier. These games dealt respectively with the old feudal system in Japan and with medieval Europe. Rome is the first version in which the tactical game world is rendered entirely in three dimensions, an enormous advance in the graphical field. It is meanwhile known that the sequel to Medieval is in development and that it may be on our shelves at the end of 2006. The series is known for its ability to conjure gigantic armies onto the screen, up to 15,000 men per army, a number that almost no other game matches at the moment.

Non-gamers may recognise Total War from television. An early version of the game was used for two different television programmes. The programme Decisive Battles on the History Channel^[95] used the game as a way to depict great historical battles. On BBC2 the game was in turn seen in the programme Time Commanders, in which two teams of players took each other on as generals in a historical battle, with those showing the most tactical insight emerging as winners. For both programmes the game was updated by specialised historians to meet certain details. Releasing demos, preview material and other media are often excellent ways for game developers to make their game known to the gamer. But basing a complete TV programme on one game is fairly unique, and perhaps the best way to reach people. This is precisely what the developer Creative Assembly did with Rome: Total War. They made the latest build of their engine available for those programmes.

Rome: Total War is set in the Roman Empire between 270 BC and AD 14. The game is twofold, with a strategic part in which the player conquers his Empire by means of resource management, diplomacy, trade, troop allocation etc., and a tactical part in which he can defeat his enemies in a ‘real time strategy’ manner. As a player you take charge of one of the various factions. When you play the game for the first time, you get a choice of only three Roman factions, namely the "Julii", the "Brutii" and the "Scipii". The names were taken from three important figures in Roman history, namely "Gaius Julius Caesar", "Marcus Junius Brutus" and "Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus". Here the errors already begin, because these designations are not correct. The Latin plural of Julius is indeed "Julii", but for the others it should be "Bruti" and "Scipiones" respectively. And to go a little deeper into the errors, a family of the Scipiones never existed. Scipio was a cognomen, a third name that referred to a character trait of the person, not a family name. Further in the text the "incorrect" names from the game will be used, since we are discussing the game here.
Now, depending on which faction the player has chosen, he will have to occupy himself with different goals at the start of the game. At the start he will not be able to attack the other Roman families and the senate. If he has chosen the Julii, he will have to defend the Roman Empire against the hostile tribes in the north. If he is a member of the Brutii, he is located in the south of Italy and his first concern will be the Greek city-states. If he is of the family of the Scipii, he is located on Sicily and will have to worry about Carthage, Numidia and Egypt.

Meanwhile the player is given missions by the Senate. The Senate, or S.P.Q.R.^[96], is a separate faction in the Roman Empire that can only be played by the computer. The missions are fairly general and range from blockading a certain port to conquering a certain territory. The player is free to choose whether he accepts the Senate's assignments. If he agrees, his standing with the Senate rises and he receives greater rewards if he manages to bring the assignments to a successful conclusion. If he prefers to stay aloof, no problem, but his standing with the Senate will not improve.
When the player's popularity is at a minimum, the Senate can oblige him to accept the missions and issue sanctions if he keeps refusing. Ultimately the Senate can ask the player to have his leader assassinated, which puts him back in good standing in the following years. If he refuses that too, a civil war breaks out in the Roman Empire. This is not the only way to provoke a civil war, however: if the player is popular enough with the people, he can himself decide to attack one of the other Roman factions.

Other factions also become playable as the player progresses in the game:

• "Barbarian" factions:

one can choose between the Gauls, the Britons and the Germans. The non-playable barbarians in the game are the Spaniards, the Dacians and the Scythians.

• Greek factions:

consist of the Greek city-states and the Seleucid Empire. Non-playable are the Macedonians and the Thracians.

• Carthaginian factions:

only Carthage is playable; the Numidians remain under computer control.

• Eastern factions:

only the Parthians are playable. The Armenians and the troops of Pontus are present in the game.

• The last playable faction in the game is Egypt.

All these factions have their own specific units and must be managed in a different way. I will not go into this further, because it would take me too far from the actual aim of this thesis. Anyone who wants to know more about it should consult the manual, or surf the internet to one of the many fan sites.

This game is a good deal more challenging than a game like Age of Empires III. Much more is expected of the player. As said, the game is twofold. During the strategic phase the aim is for the player to move his troops across the world in a Risk-like manner. Meanwhile he can click on the various cities, set their tax level and start placing buildings in them. These buildings can serve different purposes. Some buildings keep the population content, other buildings enable the player to build new units, and still others provide for the general development of the cities. It is up to the player to choose carefully which buildings are best placed in which city at which moment.
In addition, the player must also maintain contacts with the other great powers in the game world. He has to trade with them to survive; he can, for example, send diplomats, have spies look at the state of affairs in another empire and have assassins kill important military or political figures.
Once the player has decided that he has done everything he could do in that turn, he gets the choice of fighting his battles himself, or he can ask the computer to resolve them automatically. If he chooses to take command of the battle himself, he is presented with a real-time landscape in which the battle takes place.
Before the battle begins, he gets the chance to organise his troops and place them strategically on the playing field. This can take quite complex forms, by hiding units in forests so that he can flank the possibly attacking enemy army or even attack it from behind. But all this remains a gamble, since before the battle he does not know what the Artificial Intelligence is planning.

Historical errors:

• The system of three families is entirely a-historical. In that period the Roman Empire was governed entirely by the senate. Families could hold some power over a few provinces, but not over the whole Empire.
• Conquered territories did not remain in the possession of the general who conquered them (in this case the player). They were assigned to governors. The offices of governor and general were thus never as intertwined as the game presents them.
• Many units in the game are inaccurate. For example, the Vigiles are depicted in the game as a Roman elite unit, whereas in reality they were a kind of fire brigade and night watch.

• Another unit in the game is the Arcani. These units are a kind of heavily armed soldier, whereas in reality they were more a kind of scout and spy.

  This was a function in the Roman army that is mentioned only by Ammianus.^[97] From his text it can be inferred that they operated as a kind of spies/scouts outside the borders of the Roman Empire in order to observe armed conflicts there. In all likelihood they gathered information there about the numerical strength of the armies, their armament, their tactics, etc.

• The Celtic druids in the game fight side by side with the other soldiers, whereas in reality the druids were exempt from the army, because they were important for village life.

  The druids occupy a very important place in Celtic society. They are more than priests: they also act as judges and as counsellors to the Celtic leaders. They are very closely connected with nature (they are often depicted together with mistletoe) and base their counsel and predictions mainly on (pre-)signs from nature and the cosmos.

• Entirely the product of the developers' imagination are the British ‘Head Hurlers’. These units throw heads at their opponents. This never existed. Severed heads were rather regarded as a trophy among many Celtic peoples. These heads were greatly prized as spoils of war. The heads were often hung from the neck of the victor's horse and later stored in a chest in order to show them off.

• Gladiators were a well-known phenomenon in Ancient Rome, but they were not used in battle, contrary to what is claimed in Rome: Total War.

  According to certain sources the first gladiators (gladiator = person with a sword; gladius) were slaves who had to fight to the death at the funeral of a prominent aristocrat, Junius Brutus Pera, in 264 BC. The spectacle was organised by the heirs of the deceased to honour his memory. Gradually the gladiatorial spectacle was detached from funerals, and it was staged by the rich to show their power and influence within the local community.

  The number of gladiators was important: the higher the number, the more generous the sponsor was seen to be, and the more important the spectacle.
  Most gladiators were slaves. They were subjected to rigorous training, they were given an energy-rich diet and they were medically supervised, because a gladiator who lost his life in combat sometimes cost the sponsor a hundred times more than the cost of a gladiator who survived. Not all gladiators were slaves. There were also free men who became gladiators voluntarily. The main reason for this was probably the considerable sum a volunteer received when he pronounced the gladiator's oath. Through that oath the owner ultimately obtained judgement over the gladiator's life, who in this way actually acquired the status of a slave. On the other hand, a slave who became a gladiator could also be the first step towards freedom. The gladiator was paid each time he fought; if he survived the fights for three to five years he was a free man. There were several types of gladiator, who were armed differently. In general a heavily armoured man fought against a gladiator who was practically naked.

  The most common types were:

  • the secutor: he wore leather armour on his left leg, his elbows and his wrists; he carried a large shield and a sword. He also wore a heavy helmet with visor.
  • the thracianus: he carried a small square shield that barely protected his torso. He was armed only with a dagger.
  • the murmillo was protected by a long heavy rectangular shield, which covered his body from shoulder to shin. He had a large helmet with a crest and a short dagger.
  • the retiarius was the most vulnerable of all gladiators because he fought almost naked. His only protection was a leather shoulder cover, a net and a trident.

  It was assumed that a lightly armed fighter compensated for his defencelessness by speed and mobility and the ease of attacking.

The game is in any case not realistic. There are numerous anachronisms in it that make clear that the makers did not concern themselves with historical accuracy at all. In a certain screenshot^[98] we see a triumphal arch that looks historically accurate, including Latin text. But anyone who looks carefully can read a mention of Emperor Vespasian. Since Vespasian only came to power in AD 69, fifty-five years after the end of the game, this can be seen as a major historical error. The clothing and armament of the Roman soldiers are also historically incorrect. Some helmets represent a non-existent mixed type, a mixture of the Imperial-Gallic and the pseudo-Attic type, and the shoulder plates worn by the soldiers date from the Late Roman Empire. The Egyptian soldiers, moreover, wear clothing that dates from a thousand years before the supposed time in the game.
Fire arrows and fireballs are also invariably shot by archers and catapults. This was of course done in Antiquity, but certainly not on the scale shown in the game. According to the game, fire arrows are part of the standard equipment of every archer, and those fire arrows are used against infantry. This gives beautiful and spectacular images, as in blockbuster films, but in reality these arrows are of little to no use against infantry, if only because the clothing of these troops often consisted of wool, one of the least flammable fabrics. A catapult that fires fireballs at a charging troop of infantrymen is equally useless. Fire arrows and fireballs were used only against buildings or ships. Not against troops. But of course it looks good. A reason why this is nevertheless done can be read in the conclusion after the section on Civilization IV.

4.6.1.3 Civilization IV

Figure 8: Examples from Civilization IV

Civilization IV is, as the name says, the fourth instalment in the series of the same name. The very first Civilization appeared in 1991 and was an immediate bull's-eye. For many twenty-somethings the series was therefore a part of their youth. The game is certainly the most complicated of the three games discussed here, and probably also in comparison with all other games in circulation. The manual alone runs to a good 200 pages, and that does not describe everything, so it is impossible to explain all aspects of this game here.

Civilization is a different kind of historical game from the previous two. Unlike the two previous games, Civilization does not fixate on one particular period of time, or a few periods. On the contrary, the game presents an alternative version of the entire history of humanity, from prehistoric times to our present world, and even takes a look at a possible future. For this reason Civilization can hardly be regarded as a real historical game. The aim is not to present a simulation of history as it really was, but rather how history could have unfolded if the player had been able to make all the decisions. The theory on this is described in chapter 3 (see 3.2 Representation in audiovisual media).

A standard game begins in the year 4000 BC. The player starts with one ‘settler’, with which he can build a village at a place of his choice on the world map. The choice of where he builds his village is important for the future of the game, so it is best for him to choose a location that provides him with enough resources. When he has done this, the player can build a ‘warrior’ to defend his village, and a new ‘settler’ so that he can found other settlements. This is the beginning of the great empire that he will hopefully build up.

To arrive at this empire, the player will be confronted with numerous obstacles based on economic and political problems, as in "real" societies. In addition he is obliged to maintain diplomatic relations with his opponents, and the player has to encourage his scientists to do research, so that he always has an edge over the other players. Meanwhile he must also make sure that his population remains content and grows, and that his army is strong enough to defend the borders of his territory. The game thus revolves entirely around structural principles of society, around how societies arise throughout the centuries.

New in Civilization IV is the use of religion as one of the underlying ideologies. Religion was in the game before too, but simply served as a factor for the happiness of the player's subjects. The addition probably has to do with the present tension between the Arab world and the West, because it is becoming ever clearer that religion in fact still has an enormous influence on humanity. There are seven religions in the game: Taoism, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam and Christianity. Mind you, the game deliberately refrains from profiling any religion as better. Each religion simply has a few technological advantages that can possibly help the empire in question. Where a religion can be important is that it becomes possible to absorb other cities in the player's Empire if these cities adopt the player's state religion. The player also has insight, across the whole world, into all cities that venerate his state religion. It can thus be seen as a kind of espionage.

Because this game is based on a completely alternative historical reality, it is impossible to extract historical errors from the game. Because technology can develop faster or slower than it all actually did, the game is full of anachronisms. The same goes for the "rulers/leaders". The person who serves as leader for a certain people stays for the whole game, and consequently also plays a role in various periods in which this ruler never actually lived.
This cannot, however, be cited as an objection, because the game renders the tendencies in world history in a realistic and more or less correct manner. It may perhaps even be regarded as an aid to world-systems analysis.

4.6.1.4 Conclusion

One may of course wonder why such conspicuous errors occur in historical computer games. This question, however, has a very simple answer.

An enormous amount of money circulates in the computer game world. Some projects run into millions of euros. It is therefore logical that the makers of these games want to make a profit; profit maximisation is simply what the gaming world is about. To make a profit, one has to reach as large an audience as possible with the game one is developing. The game simply has to sell.
And one does not sell by depicting everything as accurately as possible. No, one has to meet the expectations of as many people as possible, not the expectations of a few experts. That is why the gaming world borrows an enormous amount from other popular entertainment media, such as films. Everyone who has seen the film Gladiator will remember the spectacular opening scene. In it we see how General Maximus commands his troops and repels an attack by some Germanic tribe. Time and again the catapults come into view, firing flaming bombs at the charging savages. These are of course spectacular images, which almost everyone has seen. When one then makes a game about the same period, one will want to apply the same degree of spectacle.
No wonder Rome: Total War plays to this. The public expects it, after all. If one sticks to the historical rules, many people will drop out, because the game does not meet the romantic vision they have received in other entertainment media. It does not appeal enough to the imagination. And that is what a game is still all about: taking the player to a world, fictional or not, in which he/she can lose himself/herself completely. At the moment gaming remains entertainment.
The same goes for Age Of Empires. This game also contains a fictional element, namely the "Fountain of Youth". That the story is somewhat connected with history has been explained earlier, but the point remains that this fountain undermines the authenticity of the game. You are no longer a simple pioneer in the New World. As a player you are in fact put in the place of a Renaissance Indiana Jones, or a Baroque Lara Croft. A treasure hunter.
The reason for this is again very simple. Myths and legends have always appealed enormously to ordinary people, and the developers play to that. The concept simply sells. As already mentioned in the previous paragraph: computer games are a form of escapism. By adding a touch of fantasy to a historical setting, one creates a special atmosphere. It gives something magical to the game world, in which the player completely loses himself.

4.6.2 Homo Ludens

We can divide historical computer games into different categories. If we look at the range, we see as extremes, on the one hand, games with only a historical presentation, and on the other hand historical simulations. These two extremes have a different view of historiography.

The simulations, such as Hearts of Iron II, released in 2005^[99], are specific in the sense that they deal with a particular historical event - in this case somewhat broader, namely the Second World War - that allows the player to engage in a speculative or "what if" encounter^[100] with a particular past. In these games some effort is usually made to render the historical details as accurately as possible, with the environment or background and the circumstances limiting and shaping the gameplay.

At the other end of the spectrum are games that deal with a historical development in a rather abstract or structural way. Civilization IV is typical of this kind of game. They are historically situated and the player, like a god, takes strategic decisions in which he learns how to deal with the consequences, while being freed from the limitations of historically specific circumstances. These historical games also require a speculative engagement with the past, but they are usually built on certain visions or theories of long-term historical development.

The historical specificity of the first games thus plays a restricting role (through historical scholarship, education and popular tradition), whereas games of the second kind are usually more clearly structured by unspoken historical principles or ideologies. As a result they lean closer to structuralist notions of history. In both cases, however, history in the sense of Ranke's "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" is undermined by persistently holding on to the idea of history as a course with many facets subject to many different possibilities, interpretations and outcomes.^[102]

Structuralism refers to the human being as a node in a network of symbolic and social relations. Structuralists assume that these relations determine the human being. Structuralism thereby runs counter to humanistic existentialism, in which it is posited that the human being is a free and independent object.
Leopold Ranke, in turn, is the father of the ideal of objectivity. According to his view the historian must "as it were extinguish himself and let only the things speak". The historian may only describe history "as it really was", without embellishment. Complete objectivity is of course impossible, but the historian must make sure to put as little personal influence as possible into his work.^[103]

It is therefore not surprising that some historians and educators have attacked the game industry for allegedly dealing with the facts in an inadequate way and displaying an inappropriate lack of reverence for the past. It is of course equally unsurprising that the industry has responded by stating that the games are only about recreation. Game developers admit that they ignore certain historical aspects, but at the same time they emphatically point to the positive effects. Players become so enthusiastic about history that they actually start reading about it or looking for more information. Stimulating interest in history is the only claim the game industry arrogates to itself: no more, but no less either.

The critical reactions of historians and educators and the answers of the game industry closely resemble what happened in the past at the rise of the other "new" media, such as film (see 3.2 Representation in audiovisual media). When this once-new medium, film, was used with the aim of rendering historical representations, those attempts were met with much criticism from the historical establishment, which was better acquainted with the printed book. Supporters defended the medium with practically the same arguments as those now used by the computer game industry. But although it is important not to overlook these similar reactions, we must nevertheless state that there are also a number of important differences. Unlike with film, remakes of computer games are always seen as improvements. The explanation for this lies in the very different relationship of those media and their underlying technology, namely the relatively stable relationship of film and technology as against the dynamic situation of computer technology. But perhaps more important with regard to our research question is that the historical film and the subset of historical computer games that we consider in this thesis also differ in their relationship with history. Film, like a book for that matter, cannot get around historical representation: films have to give a certain depiction of the past in the best possible way. The historical computer game, on the other hand, is bound to a process of historical simulation: the game provides a number of fixed elements and underlying principles, but only comes fully into its own through the creative interaction of the user. As the following paragraphs should show, this is the crucial difference.

According to Gertrude Himmelfarb^[104], deconstruction, as a conscious, systematic philosophy, penetrates all aspects of the new constructivist history. She notes that historians now frequently use terms such as "inventing", "imagining/supposing", "creating" (not "recreating"), and constructing (not "reconstructing") to describe the method of historical interpretation, and that they go on to support a new interpretation via a series of "possibilities", "may have been" and "could have been".

The development that Gertrude Himmelfarb describes relates to the post-structural historical turn that roughly coincides with the rise of hypertext and computer games. Her words so clearly characterise the historical endeavour as play. One must almost see her words as imperatives: imagine! create! invent! What is clearly at stake here is the subjunctive, the speculative, the "what if". This notion of play, in Himmelfarb's terminology, also applies to historical computer games. One could indeed easily imagine those imperatives and modes of engagement as promotional "descriptors" for historical computer games. Although Himmelfarb, together with many other respected historians, complains about this ludic turn in historiography, she has articulated the problem in a way that points to the convergence of the new history with computer games.

Huizinga's definition of ‘play’, which we already mentioned in the introduction to this thesis (see 2.5.1 The term ‘game’), covers many possibilities, and that is good within the context of the computer game: historical computer games indeed have a range of ‘precursors’. Pinball machines, board games, Real Life RPGs, ‘re-enactments’ and simulations have all contributed to the emergence of historical computer games in general, with a number of more specific references that inspired the development of a number of titles. War games (regardless of platform) have undeniably had the most influence on historical computer games, particularly because they are usually ‘event-oriented’ and historically specific in their references. In J. Dunnigan's Wargames Handbook it reads as follows:

The terminology that Dunnigan uses (using the past to understand the future, a time machine, a set of possibilities bound by rules) echoes several definitions of history. As with Civilization IV, the tension between the specific and the speculative gives the genre its strength, and corresponds directly to Huizinga's notion of play. It is indeed the case that the richer the specific historical detail, the deeper and more enjoyable the game with the speculative.^[106]

Ciril Rozic illustrates the importance of the specific detail (and detailed knowledge) as the basic material for history and gameplay in his description of the Battle of the Bulge as a place for ‘gaming’:^[107]

A quick look at the many reviews of these games and scenarios circulating on gamer websites^[108] soon shows which parameters of "game" matter to the player (or conversely, which elements he hates). Generally speaking - as already suggested earlier - the reviewers who look beyond technology and interface (which are themselves important factors in historical simulation) seem to appreciate both historical accuracy and the possibilities for creative intervention. "Play" arises in the space between the constraint of detail and the joy of improvising.

At the other end of the computer game spectrum, a very different approach to ‘play’ emerges, in those games that are built around historical eras rather than around historical moments. Games such as Sid Meier's Civilization series, Age of Empires, The Oregon Trail, and Europa Universalis - although they meet a number of historically relevant parameters - make no claim to historical specificity. Simulation games of the same genre as Sim City, Civilization, and so on, require strategic management of financial resources, investments and population - micromanagement - so that the player can move on to the next level of gameplay. One could argue that these computer games differ from the historically specific games just discussed only in the amount of detail they contain, but details make precisely the difference when it comes to a claim of historical specificity. Historically specific simulation games tackle a particular event; and although we must admit that the approach may differ, non-specific simulations of the Civilization type, by contrast, are abstracted from the specificity of the historical event, making it possible to play and test the impact of decisions in various worlds, without having to bear the burden of any specific historical reference. Although the principles and details appear to be worked out just as finely as in a "specifically specific" simulation (specifically specific simulation^[109]), the claim to reference is absent. Rather than a ‘what if’ simulation with a known case study as reference, non-specific simulations provoke a broader range of questions, encouraging a more abstract, theoretical engagement with the historical process.

It will therefore surprise no one that a game like SimCity is increasingly used for serious purposes such as spatial planning (it was already used in 1994 at the ‘Mayors Conference’ in Portland, for example, but urban planners today too often draw on this game^[110]). Sid Meier, an important developer of historically oriented games and inventor of the Civilization series, described it as follows in an interview in The New York Times^[111]: "We're not trying to duplicate history. We're trying to give you the tools, the elements from history, and show you how it would work if you were in charge." (my translation from the Dutch rendering). In that interview he revealed the essence of the extremely successful Civilization strategy: to achieve the greatest possible effect, the developers of historical strategy games try to build in precisely the necessary dose of reality. Often this is achieved by deciding what should not be in it, rather than deciding what should be in it^[112]. David Kushner, the author of the article in the New York Times, draws the following conclusion: "Too much information can make a game too mysterious or controversial to be good. For that reason, the historical facts used to make simulations like Civilization rarely go deeper than the content of an illustrated children's history book" (my translation from the Dutch rendering).

Kushner's comment partly misses the mark. It is certainly true that the historical details often remain limited to rough data of time and place, and stay away from specific events. This is the case, for example, in Age of Empires III. The atmosphere of the period is nicely rendered in detail in the clothing and the buildings, but no mission has anything to do with historical reality (as mentioned in Chapter 4.6.1.1, the actual story revolves around the mythological "Fountain of Youth").

Games like Civilization, in turn, obtain their complexity through the course of historical simulation rather than in the representation of the historical moment. This means that players are asked to make difficult choices about how the player wants to develop his society. The population, the treasury, technological and spiritual development etc. must be taken into account. Civilization, Age of Empires, and the like usually use the same structure, focusing more on the important development of broadly defined historical cultures, requiring strategic decisions about allocating limited resources, and confronting the player with the consequences of his actions.

The question of course remains how historical that is. In a judgement undoubtedly shared by many traditionalists within his profession, Martin Ryle, professor of history, found the emphasis on process rather than on event problematic:

But such a view can cast fundamental criticism on the efforts of the Annaliste histories of Fernand Braudel^[114], Roger Chartier^[115], Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie^[116], and others who focus on the broad structures of history such as economics, anthropology, linguistics, and so on. I do not wish to suggest thereby that games like Oregon Trail (in which no hostile ‘Native Americans’/Indians occur), or Colonization (without slaves), or Civilization (without a Hitler in 20th-century Germany) are historically entirely unproblematic. Rather I want to state that at the moment of shifting historical paradigms, the thin (‘childlike’) historical detail and their focus on process as "play" are not necessarily the main source of their problems.

We can therefore conclude nothing other than that historical computer games, including those of the current generation, do not give a precise picture of history. Historical computer games still contain too much entertainment and too little edutainment. One must not draw the wrong conclusion here and claim that these games are therefore bad for the upbringing and development of the gamer. Like historical films and television, they play on interests and prompt the gamer to want to know more about history in general, or about specific events from the past in particular.

But it remains a pity, of course, because if there is one medium that can truly transport us like a kind of tele-time machine to the past, it is that of the computer game. Thanks to the interactive character, the player can immerse himself much more intensely in the created environment, much more than is possible in films and/or books. As in films and books, the player/reader is transported to a certain period, but where in the film or book he sees everything through the eyes of someone else, in computer games he gets to see everything through his "own" eyes, which makes it even easier to empathise.

We must admit, however, that in terms of historical correctness the world of computer games lags far behind the other media. In the worlds of film, television and books, historians are regularly called upon to fit in, alongside the fictional elements, as many real historical details as possible, to make the whole feel as authentic as possible. Game developers lag behind in this area:

Still, there are a number of games that distinguish themselves by a higher degree of realism. For the time being, however, these games are mainly in the World War II setting. Games like Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty 2 and Brothers in Arms impart quite a lot of knowledge to the player unconsciously. Although some games, such as Battlefield 1942, are built in an arcade style^[118], they do render the correct weapons, and the places one ends up in can more or less be compared with the real historical places. Brothers in Arms was even developed entirely with the help of photographs and staff maps from that period, so that the environment in which the player walks around corresponds exactly to what it was like 60 years ago. Veterans should in principle be able to find their way back blindfolded.

This is a step in the right direction, but to truly meet the historical requirements, game makers will have to call on specialists. And in this way we arrive once again at the big problem of the game industry. An enormous amount of money circulates in this industry - sometimes several million dollars per game - and those who advance the money usually do not allow too much experimentation. The game has to sell, so that the invested money can at least be repaid. This is a simple capitalist principle. But the problem for historians is consequently that these financiers only want to step in if a market for the game exists. And at the moment there is no large market for historically detailed games, or at least not among the mainstream-oriented games.

[43] King (L.), Game On: The history and culture of video games, ed. Lucien King, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2002

[44] Zork (1980) is the first game of the type of ‘Text Adventures’ or ‘Interactive Fiction’.

[45] 1984

[46] see 2.5.2 The term ‘computer game’ or - in jargon - ‘game’ + footnote 15

[47] Herman (L.), Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames, Rolenta Press, 2001.

[48] Kent (S.L.), The Ultimate History of Video Games, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2001.

[49] Pinball machine (Dutch: flipperkast)

[50] See appendix 3 for an image.

[51] The term "flipper" comes from American English: to flip > flipper: "he who ‘flips’, tosses".

[52] In the beginning this was a ball on a raised platform. If the ball rolled off it, this meant that the table had been shaken too much.

[53] Even today there are bingo machines in various pubs and cafés.

[54] Nelson (G.), ‘A Design System for Interactive Fiction Based on Natural Language’ http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Welcome.html.

[55] An electronic instrument for making current and voltage fluctuations visible on a cathode-ray tube (definition from Van Dale, Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal)

[56] Fellow students Martin Graetz and Alan Kotok helped him with the project; Alan Kotok died on 26 May 2006 at the age of 64 of a heart attack.

[57] A primeval computer, almost as big as a house.

[58] During a study week in Oxford in 1978 my mother found - to her great dismay - a Space Invaders machine in the ‘Students Room’ of the renowned Jesus College.

[59] First in the game Donkey Kong Jr., 1982

[60] Green (C. Shawn) & Bavelier (D.), ‘Action Video Games Modifies Visual Selection’, Nature 423 (May 29, 2003), pp. 534-537. Available at www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/daphne/GreenandBavelier.pdf. (bcs = Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, New York)

[61] ibid., pdf version, p. 1

[62] Restak, (R.), The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind, Saint Martin's Press, New York, 2003 (the book can be consulted in pdf format at http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1579545017/ref=sib_rdr_fc/102-3417709-5951338?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S001&j=0#reader-page)

[63] Anderson (C. A.), & Dill (K. E.), ‘Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour in the laboratory and life’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, pp. 772-790. (A pdf version of the article can be read at http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/00AD.pdf )

[64] It is remarkable, by the way, how the same claims were made about the influence of television on (young) children.

[65] In a study of IQ test scores of various population groups over the last 60 years, Flynn discovered that IQ scores rose from one generation to the next in all countries for which data existed. This phenomenon is generally referred to as "the Flynn effect".

[66] http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/intelligence/iq.shtml

[67] See appendix 4 Learning types and possible game types.

[68] An example can be found at http://www.bized.ac.uk/virtual/economy/, where the player is given a floor plan of 11 Downing Street in London, the residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer of England, and so gets an idea of the minister's tasks.

[69] Gee (J. P.), What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literature, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Excerpts from the book can be consulted in pdf format at http://www.amazon.com/

[70] Beck (J.) & Wade (M.), Got Game, How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever, 2004

[71] Keith Stuart, ‘All human relationships are on the servers’ The Guardian, 2006-06-22 (http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1802537,00.html)

[72] 31/03/2006 - Lipsiusgebouw, Leiden. See footnote 4.

[73] One must not assume that a game like City Zone, for example, is regarded as the be-all and end-all for encouraging children to positive social behaviour, but as a support for what children learn at school and elsewhere it can be useful. (Ellie Gibson, ‘Police Launch New Game to Promote Good Citizenship’, http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=17159; Posted 22/05/06)

[74] See for example Overmars (M.), ‘What is a good game?’ Tutorial (http://www.gamemaker.nl/tutorial.html)

[75] Funnekotter (B.), ‘Als een game geen spelletje is. ‘Serious gaming’ verandert educatie, communicatie en beleid’ [When a game is not a game. ‘Serious gaming’ changes education, communication and policy], NRC Handelsblad, 22 July 2006.

[76] Thomson (C.), ‘Saving the World. One Videogame at a Time’, The New York Times, July 23, 2006.

[77] Known for Divine Divinity, a popular fantasy RPG. Its script is written by two British fantasy authors. (www.larian.com)

[78] Known for Black&White and Fable, both games with a fantasy theme.

[79] I myself have taken part in several beta tests for the Belgian Larian (see footnote 77). Unfortunately these were not historical games.

[80] http://www.ageofempires3.com/

[81] http://www.ensemblestudios.com/

[82] http://www.totalwar.com/

[83] http://www.creative-assembly.co.uk/

[84] http://www.activision.com/

[85] http://www.civilization.com/

[86] http://www.firaxis.com/

[87] http://www.2kgames.com/

[88] http://www.fountainofyouthflorida.com/history.html

[89] A game against the computer without being tied to a storyline

[90] Encyclopaedia of the Orient, http://lexicorient.com/e.o/janissaries.htm, The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05 Columbia University Press.

[91] Trinitrotoluene

[92] http://www.explosives.org/HistoryofExplosives.htm

[93] http://www.heraldica.org/topics/fdl.htm

[94] Agulhon (M.), ‘De Franse Republiek en haar symbolen’ [The French Republic and its symbols], 2001 (http://www.ambafrance.nl/article.php?id_article=997).

[95] http://www.historychannel.com/decisivebattles/

[96] Senatus Populusque Romanus: The Senate and the Roman People (other possible readings of S.P.Q.R. are not dealt with here)

[97] Poppe (J.), Status quaestionis van het onderzoek in Vindolanda op het gebied van de militaire geschiedenis [State of research at Vindolanda in the field of military history], UGent, 2001, Supervisor: K. Verboven. http://www.ethesis.net/vindolanda/vindolanda_hfst_3.htm

[98] See appendix 5: Screenshot Rome Total War.

[99] http://www.arena51.be/pc/reviews/item.php?id=4149

[100] "‘what if’ encounter" is the term used by William Uricchio. Literally translated into Dutch it would be "wat als ontmoeting"; I use the English term "what if" in this thesis because it is well established in reviews and other texts concerning historical computer games. Uricchio (W.), ‘Simulation, History and Computer Games’ in Goldstein (J.) and Raessens (J.) Handbook of Computer Games Studies, Cambridge M.I.T. Press, 2005, pp. 328

[101] Atkins (B.), ‘What Are We Really Looking at? The Future-Orientation of Video Game Play, Games and Culture’, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2006, pp.127-140.

[102] Historians who see their profession as objective and cumulative, with each generation of scholars refining the truth and adding further data, appealed to Ranke's notion of "what really happened", but such a notion of history inevitably leads to the idea of reconstruction.

[103] See Lorenz (C.), De constructie van het verleden, Boom, Amsterdam, 2002.

[104] Quoted in Uricchio (W.), op.cit., pp. 328.

[105] Dunnigan, J., The Complete Wargames Handbook. Chapter 1, ‘What is a War Game’; available at http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/1-what_i.htm (the author's Dutch translation, rendered here back into English; wording may differ from the original)

[106] Although we stated above that the medium is different, we must admit that the historical novel too derives its strength from a mixture of rich historical details from a certain period and narrative inventions.

[107] Rozic, C., ‘The Wargamer: Computer War and Strategy Gaming’, p. 1, 2003. Available at http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/bulge_44/page1.asp (the author's Dutch translation, rendered here back into English; wording may differ from the original)

[108] Examples: http://www.metacritic.com/games/; http://www.gamespot.com/; http://www.gamerankings.com/, etc.

[109] W. Uricchio, op. cit., p. 330.

[110] See for example Maher (J. J.), ‘Building for the Future’, January 2005 (http://www.westword.com/issues/2005-01-06/news/feature_full.html)

[111] Kushner, (D.) ‘In historical games, truth gives way to entertainment’ in New York Times, September 6, 2001, p.6.

[112] In Colonization, for example, a game about the discovery of America, slavery is not mentioned. In Civilization there is a fictional German leader, but Hitler is not mentioned.

[113] Ryle, (M.), ‘Humanist Mailing List’, vol. 2, No. 592, Feb 11 1989. http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v02/0117.html (the author's Dutch translation, rendered here back into English; wording may differ from the original)

[114] French historian (1902-1985) who attached importance to the effects of economy and geography in world history. His best-known work is the three-volume Civilisation Matérielle, Économie et Capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe from 1979.

[115] French cultural historian (1949- ) who publishes on the history of the book and literature. For example: Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d'Ancien Régime, 1987; L'ordre des livres : lecteurs, auteurs, bibliothèques en Europe entre XIVe et XVIIIe siècle, 1994

[116] French historian and bestselling author (1929- ) with, among others, the « Platter » series (Le siècle des Platter, I « Le mendiant et le professeur », Fayard, 1997; Le siècle des Platter, III « L'Europe de Thomas Platter », Fayard, 2006)

[117] Massey (D.), ‘History through Games’, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/print/29/15 (2006)

[118] This means that the way of playing is not realistic; you can, for example, take several bullets before going down.