Historie i spil - historiebrug og historiesyn i computerspilgenren historiske strategispil belyst gennem en analyse af Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom

摘要

This thesis investigates the use of history in the digital game subgenre historical building strategy games through a narrative and ludological analysis of the game Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, which is set in late Medieval and early Renaissance Europe. Like film, books and other media the strategy games use historical periods, events and persons as a setting or part of the gameplay. And as games on a global scale are continuously gaining ground, it is important to uncover the character of their use of history and their inherent ideological assumptions. The research done so far is scarce and mostly centered on the ideological assumptions in a very limited number of games, and by analyzing a game different in several ways from the few games that have be examined, I hope to add new perspectives. The overall conclusion is that even though Settlers 7 is a game without major ambitions in regards to historical detail, and despite its simplifications and omissions of many important aspects of the late medieval world, it still manages to paint a relatively nuanced picture. This is due to the fact that the use of history is not just a setting interchangeable with other settings, but embedded in the core of the game. This makes the game capable of actively using the historical material to in a larger sense tell a story of the development of the late Medieval and early Renaissance European society through three driving factors; capitalism, conflict and knowledge. It does so by structuring the gameplay around societal elements and attributing different values to them by marking elements representative to the Renaissance as the future and the medieval elements as the past. In doing so, the game portraits the late medieval world from a present day perspective.