League 1 Victoria League Professor Grajeda LIT3482H 29 April 2013 Representation of War in Civilization IV, V, and Revolution 1.

Introduction As an increasingly avid video game player, I am realizing how much violence permeates the gaming industry. How can we act violently in a virtual reality but not act violently in real life? To take a deeper look into the truth of how video games represent their violence, my thoughts drifted towards an old favorite game of mine: Civilization IV, a strategy war game in which players build their own civilization and control its growth throughout the centuries of its existence. It is part of a wave of games that attempt to represent and/or re-create historical events and situations (Bailey et al. 215). I recall the way it was fun to overcome other civilizations and win through world conquest. This obviously is not a desirable goal in real life, but it is one of the goals of the game. However, there is more to the Civilization franchise than just defeating nations. In my research, I stumbled upon a teacher, Kurt Squire, who utilized the game for its main purpose: education. Squire was studying what kinds of things game players might learn about social studies through playing Civilization III in classroom environments (Jenkins 213). Although the game contains more historical information than I ever learned in primary and secondary schooling, the focus of this paper lies in the militaristic means by which the game educates. Henry Jenkins, author of Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, discusses the various ways the game progresses: Students can win the game several different ways, roughly lining up with political, scientific, military, cultural, or

League 2 economic victories. Players seek out geographical resources, manage economies, plan the development of their civilization, and engage in diplomacy with other nation-states (213). However, his description seems to be missing the military aspect of the game. According to the Civilization III website, gamers can Dominate the world through Diplomatic Finesse, Cultural Domination, and Military Prowess, adding the feature that Jenkins was missing (Civ Features). With the release of newer versions, the game franchise seems to be moving even closer towards militaristic goals and world conquest. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Civilization III to study further, but I do have Civilization IV, Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, Civilization V, and Civilization: Revolution. Playing the games and studying their descriptions has allowed me to understand the way that they have become more accepting of war and conquest as a way to advance in the game and learn more about history, and how this relates to the way that war is represented so commonly in video games yet does not turn us into rampaging, war-thirsty creatures. 2. What are the Civilization games? The Civilization games can fall under the category of war games. As a History Channel documentary called Video Games: Behind the Fun notes that war games, defined as video games that focus on strategy and tactical warfare, are an ever-popular genre. These games take advantage of all of the intelligence and strategic thinking skills that humans possess (Video Games). Players use these cognitive abilities in the Civilization games to succeed; doing anything in the games requires an understanding of strategic combat processes that will lead their nation to the top of the world. To understand how the path to success is riddled with violence and war, an understanding of the games themselves is necessary.

League 3 Unfortunately, the games are complex in nature, and it takes a while to learn the gameplay. A simplified explanation should be enough to get the general gist and allow a look at the warlike nature of certain aspects of the games. As in most other games, the goal of a Civilization game is to win. There are a few different ways to do this: cultural victory, diplomatic victory, world conquest, world domination, space race victory, or time victory. To examine the representation of war in this game, I will focus on world conquest, which requires the player to defeat every other nation in the game and be the last one left on the planet. A standard game starts the gamer with one settler, a unit that can establish a city. Developing more settlers is possible after creating the first city, and more cities can be built to expand the empire. Gaining more resources, which are available all over the map and dictate where the gamer will want to settle, allows more production to occur, and more technology to be discovered. However, the player is not the only civilization attempting to colonize the world; computer-controlled world leaders (historical world leaders, which is part of the educational nature of the game) are also vying for land and resources, and inevitably, as in the real world, war will break out. At this point, a decision has to be made: either start dominating every other nation, or try to maintain a peaceful policy towards the other leaders. Most people will end up building powerful armies and destroying the other civilizations to avoid being caught up in messy wars between other leaders. Kurt Squire, in Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age, explains that in his use of Civilization III to teach history, one of his students attacked a nation even though it was doing nothing but peacefully expanding (121). He sums up the reason for this unwarranted behavior: you know what they were thinking, meaning that they were probably planning on attacking later (Squire 121). Preemptively

League 4 attacking these civilizations also allows gamers to take whatever the defeated civilization owned without having to navigate the tricky waters of diplomacy. The warfare turns out to be the most exciting part of the game, and the franchise is fully aware of this. They use it to their advantage in their marketing and advertising strategies. Take a look at some of the quotes from the packaging of Civilization IV: Implement new technologies, conduct diplomacy or wage war to grow your society and become the most powerful leader the world has ever known. Notice that waging war, not the development of technology or the diplomatic side of the game, is the policy that is put next to grow your society and become the most powerful leader the world has ever known. This may not be intentional, but it certainly is an arrangement of words that encourages war and world conquest in the game. Here is another quote: Rule throughout time and create your own legacy (Civilization IV). Becoming the ruler of the world is truly the main goal of anyone playing, and the game enables them to achieve it. In an expansion pack for Civilization IV called Beyond the Sword, it is advertised that it is possible to Found your own corporation and spread its influence as another tool to gain control over the world. Again, there is a focus on gaining control of the world by using the tools that the game provides. Civilization V echoes this: Become Ruler of the World and build the most powerful empire the world has ever known. These quotes are focusing on the gamer acting out violently to destroy other civilizations that might get in their way. To become the ruler of the world, a person must take control of the world. The only way to do that in the Civilization games is to own the worlds land and resources, which means that other civilizations cannot exist. They have to be destroyed. Ultra realistic graphics showcase lush landscapes for you to explore, battle over and claim as your own (Civilization V). Civilization V is a more recent game, so showcasing the

League 5 graphics is extremely crucial. I find it intriguing that they not only talk about how beautiful the graphics are, but they also discuss how players can use them as battlegrounds and then own them. There is no text about appreciating the graphics; no, the gamer must conquer and possess the exquisitely crafted landscapes. Speaking of battlegrounds: City States become a new resource in your diplomatic battle-ground (Civilization V). Even diplomacy is a battleground. Granted, it does say afterwards An improved diplomacy system allows you to negotiate with fully interactive leaders (Civilization V), showing that not everything revolves around war. But even though players do not have to choose the conquest victory, it is almost guaranteed that they will end up in a militaristic confrontation with someone at some point in the game. One student in Squires study says, it [is] impossible to survive while staying neutral (122). This makes the word choice for diplomatic battleground even more intriguing and rather frightening. Actually, most of these quotes are quite scary and disturbing because they move the focus of the game to war and conquest instead of the educational purpose that I value. While Civilization IV and V are both PC games, there is an adaptation for the Xbox called Civilization: Revolution. Similar to the computer games, it advertises that the player can Go head to head with historys greatest leaders as you wage war, conduct diplomacyand build the most powerful empire the world has ever known (Civilization: Revolution). Again, it puts the focus on battles and conquest. Violence permeates the game. Triple your strength by combining three units into an army to pulverize your enemies (Civilization: Revolution). The word choice here is quite intense and graphic: pulverize. By this point, it is clear that there is a strong theme of world conquest. Video Games: Behind the Fun says, We have to accept that, in our nature, we are a somewhat imperialistic and predatory species. Clearly, this is an understatement when looking at the focus of the war-driven victory side of the game and the fact that to achieve

League 6 success and build a civilization, imperialistic and violent measures must be taken regardless of which victory the gamer chooses to pursue. But, lurking in the background of all of this war, there is also the related theme of manipulation. 3. Playing God Before tackling the darker side of playing as a supreme being in control of the entire world, it is worth mentioning the creative side of acting as a god. There is an option to engage in world building: Virtual reality, as evident with wargames and digital simulations, allows the powerful and privileged to play God: We can invent enemies, frontiers, geographies, consequences (or lack thereof), or historical narratives all toward our own empowerment (Huntemann and Payne 93, citing Sherman and Judkins). This is especially true for the Civilization games if the gamer chooses to create a custom world. The world is entirely malleable: anything can be changed from geography to the resources available to the number of soldiers that the player has. Civilization IVs box packaging proclaims that gamers can manipulate units and cities with greater control and faster speed. In Civilization games, as is evident, the player is God. Technically they play as a leader of a civilization, but their power extends beyond that. Whoever is playing the game has power over the world, not to mention immortality (the gamer chooses their character in the beginning of the game, and remains that person until the game ends). Nina Huntemann and Thomas Matthew Payne, in Joystick Soldiers: the Politics of Play in Military Video Games, say, video gamesnot only transport players into an alternative, expanded terrain but also utilize interactive technology, a process that turns participants into active agents rather than pure spectators (94). They go on to say that video games are truly the technology of miracles and dreams, places where humans can pretend to play God (Huntemann and Payne 92, citing Sherman and Judkins). The Civilization games

League 7 allow the player to be totally involved and all-powerful. The documentary Video Games: Behind the Fun notes that the gamers actions affect what happens in a game, and the outcomes are clearly visible on the display. Youre making decisions, youre seeing the results of what youre doing (Video Games). This is part of the God-playing aspect of the games. When the games talk about waging war, using corporations, manipulating City-States, and combining units, it is easy to forget that all of these things are made up of individual human beings in real life. This is one of the ways that the all-powerful gamer can achieve his or her goals. As horrible as it is, common foot soldiers can be seen as disposable units in the grand scheme of war and conquest in the Civilization games. The small characterized units that represent the army are just that: characters. Referring to them as units, as the games do, takes away any human aspects that they may have had. They are just enemies in the form of pixels. They have no personality, no past, and no future. The players own units are as depersonalized as the enemy. They are tools: the game is based on manipulating individuals to achieve goals of world conquest. As for the enemy, anyone who is not with the player is against them and has to be destroyed before they can attack. The gamer can see this as a sort of preemptive strike. Those who play the game feel no pity as they destroy farms, people, and cities because they know that eventually, the nation will turn against them. Methods for world conquest revolve around destroying every other world leader, one at a time, starting with the weakest. It can be fun to develop technology past that of the enemys, drop bombs on their cities and watch the graphics of smoke and fire billowing from the city. To the player, the bomb is just that: nice graphics. The game does not attach sentiments to the people being destroyed, and the gamer does not experience feelings of guilt or self-doubt. The depersonalized inhabitants of the world have no substance and no worth. As the documentary

League 8 says, video games have become the virtual playground, a virtual playspace (Video Games). The Civilization games are a playground for people to exercise their brains in the field of strategic gameplay and learn more about history through the educational aspects of the game. The violence seems like nothing more than pressing a button to get rid of a civilization so that they will not attack the player later. 4. Representation of war: difficulties with accuracy The documentary Video Games: Behind the Fun discusses the making of a game that was based off of a historical event. The developers faced technological, emotional, and ethical challenges during the process of its creation due to the violent and tragic nature of the events being translated into a video game (Video Games). One of the men muses, How do you relay that empathy?, referring to the feelings of sadness towards those who have died or been injured in combat, and the overall despair that permeates war. He continues to say, War is not a fun thing (Video Games). According to the documentary, it is difficult to accurately show the true nature of war in something as playful and enjoyable as a video game. In addition to trying to make their game realistic, the developers in the documentary wanted to convey that the opposite is applicable as well. Even though[it] is a game, its developers wanted players to understand that real war is not (Video Games). Simultaneously conveying the realities of war in a videogame and the fact that real life war is not a game is bound to create some kind of incongruence in the message that the player receives. Much the same thing may have happened with the Civilization games, which do not try to show the gruesomeness of war; no blood appears when units die in battle, no footage is shown of what happens to the population of cities that are bombed, and, as mentioned, there is no empathic link with the humans in the game. The creators may have faced problems conveying the realities

League 9 of war while also making the game fun and making sure that the gamer knows that real war is not like war in the game. Huntemann and Payne discuss this phenomenon and the problem it causes: In the absence of blood, and with the increasingly technologically generated glimpse at warthe absolute horrors of war are lost on many people. Within this virtual world, one has the potential to both die and kill, but within a cocoon protected from having to face the graphic realities of war (101). This directly contradicts the documentary, which states that video games mimic reality in extraordinary accuracy (Video Games). Perhaps it is safer to say that not all aspects of reality are accurate; war seems to be too gory to be replicated exactly in video games. This may contribute to the lack of empathy seen in the Civilization games and the lack of realistic war experiences. It makes more sense to say that the nature of war is not fully represented in the games due to their educational purpose. It would distract from the progression of the game and inhibit the historical information that is distributed as players build wonders, unlock achievements, and run a nation. Although it is impossible to certainly say that this is the reason for the inaccuracies with war aspects or the absence of empathy for humans and victims, it could be a possibility. If the games truly wanted to be historically accurate, perhaps conveying war truthfully could be an asset to the educational purpose, but it would severely diminish the audience that can receive and play the game. With so much mature content in the violence of war, children would not be able to experience the educational benefits of playing the games. Not all aspects of the game are entirely historically accurate because the gamer can reshape history, but there are options that allow the gamer to replay memorable moments from the past. Kurt Squire discusses the way that history can be rewritten or kept the same: within the game, the player determines who settles America, not real-life history. The player can try to replay history just as it happened, or they

League 10 could play as the Iroquois and fend off Europeans (115). The Civilization games do strive to teach parts of history and an understanding of the strategic aspects of running a nation, but they lack the realistic war representation, and war is a significant part of advancing through the games to learn history. 5. Brief overview of the debate over video games causing violence There is currently a debate dealing with the proposition that video games are instigating violence in children, teens, and young adults. One side believes that recent increases in violence among teens/young adults, including school shootings, can be attributed to video games since the perpetrators have been avid gamers. They argue with others who think that correlation does not prove causation, and that if video games truly did turn people into violent creatures then we would have seen a massive spike in the immoral acts that are committed in video games as opposed to one person, out of the millions of people that play video games, acting violently. In 2006, there was a Senate meeting that discussed this issue. One senator said, Thanks to new technology, the violence in todays video games is becoming more graphic, realistic, and barbaric (U.S. Congress). Other sources agree: David Grossmanargues that video games are teaching kids to kill in more or less the same ways that the military trains soldiers (Jenkins 210). Could this be due to the lack of empathy generated by the depersonalized nature of the enemies? If the players are unaware of the carnage they are causing when they slaughter characters in games, maybe they are unable to understand the consequences that would occur in real life. Squire talks of the obsession with the warlike aspects of the Civilization games, saying few students had built much technology, managed military spending, or traded goods, instead focusing mostly on [amassing a] military (116). Players who only work on building up a military are the people that worry those who are afraid of the violent aspects of war games.

League 11 On the other side of the debate, people believe that it is essential to emphasize the knowledge and competencies possessed by gamers, starting with their mastery over aesthetic conventions that distinguish games from real-world experience (Jenkins 210). They propose that gamers are able to easily tell the games apart from reality and have control over themselves. The games are not so influential that players feel the need to go out and kill people just because that is what they do in their virtual playground; they are able to understand the difference between real life and fantasy. No matter how realistic they may make it, children playing lets pretend gamesknow that the game is not real (Bryant and Vorderer 328). If even children can tell that their own pretend games are false, how can others think that teens and young adults are so confused by a video game that they believe it to be real? It is doubtful that older individuals have difficulty distinguishing between real life and the violence entrenched in video games; instead, I would settle for the proposition that video game viciousness merely brings out the barbaric nature that is already present in the individuals that commit atrocities. Media, television, books, movies, and video games all contain parts of war culture that are working together to enhance our violent culture. Of course, more research needs to be done in response to the video game violence debate; it is a fairly new area of concern that is still arguable by scholars and parents alike. 6. Conclusion The depersonalized population of the Civilization games makes violence easy and fun when put into a strategic context. Players enjoy testing out their tactical brain muscles and playing God in a world that they are able to shape and command with the press of a few buttons. If feelings were attached to civilians and empathy felt towards them, it would be difficult to move through the game to build the greatest civilization of all time. The lack of accurate

League 12 violence and realities of war helps the gamer progress in the game and allows the historical information to be distributed to him or her as they build world wonders, see famous and influential individuals contribute to their flourishing cities, learn about the world leaders that they interact with, and discover the strengths and weaknesses of each great nation. One of the students that Squire worked with stated that the game was extremely educational because It actually forces you to learn about other civilizations in order to survive (119). And although the sacrifice of armies and soldiers is easy and thoughtless in the games, there has not been an epidemic of killers sweeping the globe. Players are able to distinguish virtual realities from the reality that we live in, and understand that video games are just games that we play for enjoyment.

League 13 Works Cited Bailey, Wm. Ruffin, et al. Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008. Print. Bryant, Jennings and Peter Vorderer. Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis Ltd., 2006. Print. "Civ Features." Sid Meier's Civilization III. Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiaries, 2010. Web 24 April 2013. Civilization: Revolution. Novato: Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., and its subsidiaries, 2005-2008. CD-ROM. Civilization IV. New York: Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiaries, 2006. CD-ROM. Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. New York: Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiaries, 2005-2007. CD-ROM. Civilization V. Novato: Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiaries, 1991-2010. CDROM. Huntemann, Nina and Thomas Matthew Payne. Joystick Soldiers: the Politics of Play in Military Video Games. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. Jenkins, Henry. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: University Press, 2006. Print. Squire, Kurt. Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age. New York: Teachers College Press, 2011. Print. United States Congress Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. Whats in a game? : regulation of the violent video games and the First Amendment: hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution,

League 14 Civil Rights and Property Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Ninth Congress, second session, March 29, 2006. Washington: U.S. G.P.P. : For sale by the Supt. Of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2006. Video Games: Behind the Fun. The History Channel: Modern Marvels. 2007.