Does Historical Accuracy in Games Really Matter?

Public History Interns Series

Author: Katie Haberlin, IFPH Explorers Intern, undergraduate enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts (Modern History) program at Macquarie University, Australia.

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Historical video games take all kinds of forms – strategy, action, historical fantasy, and role-playing, to name a few. Across these games, we find varying claims to ‘historical accuracy’, as well as ‘historical authenticity.’ But what do we really mean when we talk about historical accuracy? Is it important for video games to have it, and is it actually possible to learn history from games? 

While studies show that gamers value historical accuracy, it becomes clear that what they view as ‘historically accurate’ is often not so. Instead, it is often based on player preconceptions about history. While the Assassin’s Creed series has been highlighted by scholars and journalists for its multiple inaccuracies, 77.3% of players in one study agreed the series was historically accurate. I explored a number of Reddit threads regarding ‘historical accuracy’ in video games to try and decipher what issues were of the greatest concern and found that many players knew less ‘accurate’ history than they let on. One commenter claimed there was “no need to insert brown people into Ancient Rome… just for the hell of it,” despite the fact that the Roman Empire at its peak included large swathes of North Africa and the Middle East. Another defended the lack of Jewish characters in Kingdom Come: Deliverance on the basis that there is no way to tell if a character is Jewish without being told, whereas the persecution of European Jews in the middle ages has been widely documented. It seems ‘historical inaccuracy’ has become a dog whistle term for arguments that depictions of People of Color, women, and LGBTQ+ people are necessarily inaccurate or pandering.  I don’t wish to suggest that all desire for historical accuracy is in bad faith, but it’s these players who are often the most vocal.

Modern developers increasingly seek to create ‘historically authentic’ game worlds that represent physical and social realities of the time, while allowing players the freedom to perform a kind of historical fantasy, permitting or even encouraging players to address historical social issues. One particularly memorable quest in Mafia III allows the player to ambush and slaughter a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan. Red Dead Redemption II presents a fictionalized version of the American West at the turn of the 20^th century – a genre about as stereotypically white and male as they come – to include the stories of women and black, Indigenous, and Mexican people, stories which are central to the main plot of the game. Other historical settings allow the character to interact with some of history’s most notable figures in ways that wouldn’t pass even the most cursory litmus test of ‘accuracy’: Assassin’s Creed II’s Ezio receives fantastical weapons from Leonardo da Vinci, allies with Niccolò Machiavelli, and does battle with a supernaturally powered Pope Alexander VI underneath the Vatican. However, the serie’s attention to detail in rendering its physical settings can be admired. For example, a later installment, Unity, made headlines when its 3D model of Notre Dame was used to aid restoration of the cathedral after it was ravaged by fire in 2019. Perhaps the series can be taken as a good example of the balance between allowing fantastical narratives set in a world that feels historically real. 
After all, it’s not clear that strict adherence to ‘accuracy’ even engenders players with an interest in history as a hobby or discipline. Many fans of Sid Meier’s Civilization series credit the game with “sparking a lifelong interest in history,” while being able to recognize and critique the problematic aspects of the history portrayed in the series. The Civilization games are prime examples of strategy games, where the gameplay takes place over multiple historical ages, and the player’s goal is to enhance their ‘faction’ and progress in science, culture, commerce, and military power to eventually reign supreme over the world. Such strategy games are “inherently inaccurate because the player effectively decides how history unfolds and which nations are conquered;” as soon as you press ‘new game’, it is no longer historically accurate.

Historian John Majewski argues that perhaps because of the sheer time investment required to master Civilization, players are more inclined to view the game critically, and “come to understand it as a constructed system with its own peculiar strengths and weaknesses in understanding history.” Civilization players have claimed to learn more from the game than from history class. While we can doubt what they have ‘learned’, it is clear that the games do possess a genuine ability to engage their players with history. Research has already been done on the impact of Civilization in classrooms, and both in high school and college, use of the games has encouraged students to think about contingency and causality in history. 

Should we see games, therefore, as a gateway to history, or as productions of public history themselves? As historian Claudio Fogu argues, has history “replaced poetry and philosophy as the realm of the possible”? There is an argument that player agency, shared authority, and co-creation are all aspects of video games that make them good tools for public historians. Immersing oneself into an historically authentic world and behaving according to its rules can help to illustrate aspects of life in a given historical period. Additionally, due to the increasingly collaborative online community for video games in “affinity spaces” – forums, blogs, Let’s Plays, modding communities, there exists an opportunity for players themselves to act as public historians in sharing their interpretations of the work.

Some games already take steps to serve as quasi-educational tools. Many historical games include databases of information about the setting, characters, objects, and environment that the player can access during play. Assassin’s Creed has introduced ‘Discovery Tour’ modes to their installments Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla which allow the player to explore the game world while being provided with information and quizzes about history, culture, philosophy, and other aspects of life in the setting. The Discovery Tours have been well received, although Origin’s counterpart received some criticism for the decision to portray girls attending school alongside boys in Ancient Egypt. In game, this is acknowledged as being inaccurate, stating that “the team felt it was not necessary to prioritise historical sexism over inclusive gameplay.” While this decision was not accepted by everyone, could such disclaimers be the key to critiquing historical prejudices whilst still maintaining an authentic historical experience allowing an inclusive gameplay experience? 

By their nature, all historical games intend to portray a narrative that never really occurred – all historical games are automatically and necessarily alternative history. The very idea of player agency – that a player alters the narrative through choice and action – removes the possibility of telling a truly ‘accurate’ story. History is a constantly evolving discipline and practice: it has never been a static, universally accepted series of events from Day 0 to today. The practice of history is in large part questioning the sources we have access to, why they were created, for what audience, with what agenda, leaving which aspects out, and so on. All historical output is inherently interpretive, and so are historical video games. I would argue that the creation of historically authentic, interesting, engaging game worlds which allow players agency in the sandbox of history are more likely to spark an interest in history than games that merely hold ‘accuracy’ as the pinnacle of achievement. 

Katie Haberlin is an undergraduate enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts (Modern History) program at Macquarie University, Australia. Her main interests in the discipline surround how we learn history, and especially how popular entertainment history affects our understanding.

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