Historicity in Games: The Present, the past and the construction of meaning

There are some preliminary concepts that need to be better understood before coming to the object of analysis of this article, that is, the analysis of historicity and the historical narratives in ‘games’.

Peter Lee, in a different article that proposes a reflection on the reasoning for learning and teaching history, discusses ideas that foster the analysis of historical concepts and their meaning. In his approach, it becomes possible to understand the temporal dynamic inherent to historical knowledge and the construction of meaning. According to Lee, the construction of the past occurs from the relations with the present that in turn attributes meaning to concepts that are ‘encapsulated’ according to certain temporalities.

One does not escape the past. It is constructed from concepts that we employ to deal with the day-to-day activities of the physical and social world. Sometimes the concepts encapsulate the past in the form of causal processes (e.g. ‘tree’, ‘mother’, ‘bombs’). At other times, it is wrapped in an institutional past - in the case of talking about a government or an illegal child, or in cases where some criteria of legitimacy were not found. However, the control of the past is always less formal (^{Lee, 2011}, p. 20)¹¹.

The present time, which is surrounded by quotidian social elements, is what attributes meaning to the words and concepts created with specific connotations and linked to lived historical moments. It is due to this dynamic that the textual and graphic languages present in the ‘games’ bring elements of historical nature and attract the audience to which it is intended. Even if these elements do not bring theoretical methodologies for the construction of a scientific and academic historical knowledge, they still generate meaning and senses, for they are inserted in social environments that receive institutionalized concepts, which, in turn, are culturally normalized. This is only possible because social and cultural knowledge is already full of historical meaning from a collective memory.

Therefore, teaching and learning history brings a dynamic that aims to promote a process of reflection on the issues of the present. It is precisely this present that produces elements for the historicity of each lived temporality as proposed by François Hartog (2014, p. 11 - 12):

[…] A historicity regime is only a way to interlock the past, the present and the future or to compose a mixture of these three categories, […] the term expresses the manner of a historical condition, the way that an individual or a collective establishes and develops itself over time¹².

The concept of historicity is established in regimes that construct meanings from each one of its temporalities. It is, thus, important to return to what ^{Hartog (2013}, p. 13) explains:

The use that I propose of historicity’s regime may be rather ample or restrictive: macro or micro-historical. It may be an artifact to clarify the biography of an historical character […] or that of an ordinary man; with it, one can traverse a great masterpiece (literary or otherwise) […] one can question the architecture of a given city, yesterday and today, or else compare the great scansions of the relationship with time of different societies, close to us or distant. And, each time, by means of particular attention given to moments of crisis throughout time and to its expressions, one aims to achieve greater intelligibility¹³.

The notion of time and temporality is inherent to the process of conceptual constitution proposed by Hartog. The French author’s proposal affords an understanding of the rupture with a linear concept of time and that historical and social crises enable changes in both historical conceptions and memory. These crises provide the means to break with established dynamics between past, present and future. It is exactly the relation between past and present that allow us to understand and differentiate history and historicity because the latter, based on the present, promotes meaning and comprehension of the past.

To better define the concept of historicity, Hartog addresses the concept of historical time elaborated by Koselleck and enables the understanding of the relationship that needs to be established between the present, the past and the future, considering the possibility of constituting several types of history.

With [the concept of] historicity’s regime, we touch, in this way, on one of the conditions of possibility for the production of histories: according to the respective relations of present, past and future, certain types of history are possible, and others are not.

Historical time, if we follow Reinhart Koselleck, is produced by the distance created between the field of experience, on the one hand, and the horizon of expectation, on the other: it is generated by the tension between these two sides. It is this tension that the regime of historicity sets out to clarify […]. Even more precisely, to clarify about the types of distance and modes of tension. (^{Hartog, 2013}, p. 39)¹⁴.

In view of these discussions, the present article intends to champion a view that the historical narratives made possible through ‘games’ cannot be related or compared to the historical narratives that are based on traditional methodologies that aim at producing scientific, academic knowledge. Rather, that in assessing the different possibilities to promote historical literacy, ‘games’ have an important role, considering how historical knowledge always presents different meaning and senses. Having said that, it becomes clear that historical knowledge based on ‘facts’ and ‘contents’ defined and defended as premises of the teaching of history in basic education must be refuted in favor of promoting cognitive processes that lead to the understanding that history and the knowledge produced about it are not tight narratives created by rigid structures.

Based on these concepts and discussions, in the following section the intention is to analyze some ‘games’ and their use in teaching history, specifically games concerned with ancient history.

Games, Historical Literacy and the narratives about Ancient History

There is no doubt that it has become a truism to assert that antiquity, and here it is well worth it to emphasize that this relates to the different places the term denotes, be it in the Classical World or to the commonly referred ‘Near East’, is quite present in today’s world. It is necessary then, to leave this commonplace observation, to understand and analyze who is using it, for what purpose and how this presence is being sought, as well as which historical meanings are being produced and identified.

In this article, the specific guiding question, as aforementioned, ‘ancient history, what for?’ The answer provided here is partially given by analyzing the uses and the consumption of antiquity by contemporary cultural industry, considering that, on the one hand, antiquity is now an influential niche of ‘pop’ culture, especially in the world of videogames, and, on the other hand, the role historians may perform in the development of these popular culture products which are not considered to be scientific historical narratives.

Initially, contemplating the relationship between antiquity and pop culture industry, it is easily observable how motifs, characters, stories and narratives from and about the past are continually and repeatedly coopted, reimagined and retold in different products. This range of meaning, in the present, by the present and for the present, refers to elements that are historically constituted by the past.

In the universe of ‘games’, examples of these narratives about the past are the most diverse, both in terms of genre and theme: from games that simulate great ancient battles such as ‘Rome Total War’ (2003) and its sequel ‘Rome Total War II’ (2013); to games that are inspired by ancient mythology, such as the original ‘God of War’ trilogy (2005-2010), ‘Age of Mythology’ (2002); to more recent games similar to ‘civilization’, such as ‘Aggressors: Ancient Rome’ (2018), and ‘Imperator: Rome’ (2019). There are also two games to which we call special attention, belonging to the same franchise that, since 2007, has sought a ‘special’ relationship with history and the past: ‘Assassin’s Creed Origins’ (2017) and ‘Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’ (2018). The first takes place in Egypt between the years of 49 and 44 BCE; the second during the period of the Peloponnesian War.

From this list alone - which is in no way exhaustive - one thing becomes quite clear: regardless of the quality or criticism concerning these products, the audience reach, their media specificities, or even the amount of historical research involved in their development, today ancient history and its themes are, first and foremost, important means of entertainment. Antiquity is alive and well in our present, an everyday occurrence that is teeming with symbols of the past.

The importance of the past as a form of entertainment in today’s culture cannot and should not be underestimated. For the large majority, the entertainment industry is not only the gateway to other temporalities, but also the most pervasive and solid connection to the past, and on a scale that is practically unimaginable to the common historian.

Let us take, as an example, the game ‘Assassin’s Creed Origins.’ According to the specialized website VGChartz¹⁵, the game has sold more than four million copies for the console PlayStation 4 alone. The website TECHSPOT¹⁶, in turn, reports that its sales for PC through the Steam platform has sold somewhere between one to two million copies.

In other words, without taking into consideration sales on the second most important console of the time, namely Xbox One, the sales of physical media or PC through different platforms, the number of copies sold is somewhere between five to six million, meaning five to six million players around the world. It would be terribly unfair to compare these numbers, for example, with the circulation of a book or scientific article produced by an historian dealing with the same period or theme - the power struggle between Cleopatra and Ptolemy, and the role of Rome and Julius Caesar in Egypt’s conflicts.

Today’s public experiences antiquity primarily as a product that is enjoyable and represents an important part of the entertainment industry. Antiquity has a well-defined and relevant space in this industry, as is evident, given that each year several products relating to it are developed and published. Antiquity is voraciously consumed by a legion of players around the world, and considering this reality, it is more than fair to ask: What is the role of ancient history as a field, and the professional historian in and for this industry?

Answering these questions is considerably complex, as it necessarily goes through certain conceptual discussions as seen above. Bearing in mind those concepts, it becomes essential to understand that it is possible to identify different discourses about the past, or even, that there are different ways of producing narratives about it.

In this sense, the problematization and differentiation of historiographical work from different types of narratives about the past is reinforced. The former thus understood as a form of writing about the past supported by a set of theoretical and methodological processes of analysis and circumscript to a series of requirements that, ultimately, attribute to it a scientific nature (^{Barros, 2014}), and the latter based on a very different set of assumptions and therefore may be granted a fictional or, as an example, a metafictional historiographical nature (^{Hutcheon, 1991}).

This distinction between historiography and the other narratives about the past in the cultural industry’s products shows, in the most basic form, that the latter, based on a regime of knowledge that is not necessarily scientific, does not need to be guided by the same parameters as that of the historian’s writing about the past. As a direct consequence, the criticism or judgement that is made taking historiography as the measure ends up being insipient.

However, it has been increasingly observed that these same products have, in the last decade, sought to present to their audience a certain idea of ‘historicity’, even as a characteristic that would raise the monetary value, an element that brings a new set of issues.

Once again, let us return to the game ‘Assassin’s Creed Origins’. During its development by the company Ubisoft Montreal, developers were able to discuss ideas with a team of historians - a team that is in fact a permanent group within the company - as well as other professionals such as philologists and even the French archaeologist Jean-Claude Golvin, responsible for creating a series of paintings reconstructing archeological sites that were then modelled in 3D for the game¹⁷.

At the same time that there is this ‘investment’ in the historical-scientific direction of the game’s development, it is the head of the team of historians, Maxime Durand, who himself points to the fact that there are other elements that need to be considered: “[...] we researched encyclopedias, then other books, then we watched films and TV series to see how the entertainment industry has approached the subject” (^{The Guardian, 10/09/2017}).

In other words, the historian shows that there is a real concern in dealing with the public’s expectations about a given historical theme and characters; expectations that are negotiated not only with historiography, but also with prior productions of pop culture’s narratives.

In this exact sense, both Durand and Ashraf Ismail, the game’s general director, are unanimous in highlighting the primarily fictional character of the product, stressing that it is a work of entertainment, even if it has a historical basis:

We have guys like Maxime who are part of the team, who are involved in the early concept discussions. They’re there when we’re talking about the narrative, they are always there to be a bit critical on the credibility side - it’s a back and forth that for us creates a happy medium where we can still create a pure fiction, but one grounded in history (Ismail, ^{The Guardian, 10/09/2017}).

I think some historians will never see the value of this, or they’ll only see the value as an entertainment product, and that’s okay, because that’s what we built it for at first (Durand, ^{The Guardian, 10/09/2017}).

The question here, however, should not be minimized to a discussion concerning the role of the historian or ancient history as some sort of ‘quality control’ for historical accuracy of a determined product, as if it were possible to hand out an equivalent of a ‘seal of quality’ about the past. Ultimately, this type of discussion rests on the assumption that there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ about the past and about different narratives, or even a return to the idea of the ‘fact as they truly happened’.

Here is proposed that the role of the historian, and of ancient history as far as its themes are concerned, is to provide consumers with these non-professional narratives, and from them, an idea of historical literacy.

As Schmidt points out, a concept of historical literacy involves:

The construction of historically literate subjects that are minimally able [...] to accomplish certain things, such as:

Although Schmidt is mainly dealing with an issue of teaching history, it seems reasonable to extrapolate these guidelines well beyond the school environment to our own community.

The idea of historical literacy emerges intrinsically with the concept already discussed by ^{Rüsen (1992}) of creating a ‘historical consciousness’, that is, a ‘specific mode of orientation’ that enables the understanding of a past reality in order to understand the present reality.

While articulating the concepts of historical literacy and historical consciousness, we observe that there is a specific concern with the ability to read the different narratives of the past, the result, or even the aim, of which, would be to enable the subjects to problematize themselves (^{Schmidt & Garcia, 2005}), and through themselves look for answers in the relationship between past and present.

The conscious and historically literate individual, therefore, is capable of orienting himself in time, using his knowledge to make a series of decisions in his own present, so that what is important when dealing with narratives of the past is not their accuracy, but rather the ability to problematize them.

In this regard, ^{McCall (2016}) presents a similar view concerning simulation games such as ‘Assassin’s Creed’:

If history, however, is primarily the record of the past, an accurate master narrative of sorts that needs to be transmitted to students, the open-ended flexibility of simulation games essentially undermines the enterprise. […] If one understands history in any way to have been pre-determined, the historical game-open ended and allowing for a variety of outcomes-has little place. In return for playing with the past, however, one can gain a much richer understanding of why certain possibilities were more likely than others and why actors ultimately did what they did. (^{McCall, 2016}, p. 528).

By removing the concern of the historical narrative solely as a record and focusing instead on the universe of questions of thinking historically, or even of temporal orientation as previously stated, one can see the importance of historians working with game developers for the sake of the community as a whole.

On the one hand, it is easier to think about this issue in relation to the school environment, where games can be problematized in the classroom, their narratives can be questioned, and students can be provided with activities that enable them to form their historical awareness and historical literacy. As such, the role of the teacher in the classroom becomes crucial as the mediator of knowledge, for, following ^{McCall (2016}), playing with the past becomes less an activity about the transmitting information - such as dates and events -, and more an activity to open up a considerably larger range of questions and concepts to students. Therefore, the teaching activity must be understood, among other aspects, as the one that stimulates creative imagination, constructs knowledge and a historical awareness and, finally, introduces them to a determined historical culture (^{Parisoto & Telles, 2016}).

On the other hand, for those outside the school system, the role of the historian would perhaps be in the development of the game itself. As observed, historicity is increasingly gaining ground in the game industry, with several companies already hiring teams of specialists to be part of their development teams. Although a greater part of these teams’ attention was initially focused on being critical support for historical ‘credibility’ - of what did or did not happen - , their role is evolving to one of making the historical contexts involved more explicit, developing products that are even more specific to this goal.

On this subject, it would be amiss not to draw attention to the ‘^{Discovery Tours}’ mode, developed for ‘Assassin’s Creed Origins’, that was envisioned by the producers as a ‘teaching tool’ and a ‘virtual museum’¹⁹, allowing players to interact in different ways with elements of life in Ancient Egypt.

Although there are severe criticisms of this game mode, which has already been discussed elsewhere (cf. ^{Bondioli & Lima, 2019}), it is certainly a commendable initiative that a so-called AAA game company took the time to develop a product that has the direct objective to lead to historical reflection.