Video games aren’t supposed to be realistic, they’re supposed to be fun
It’s still interesting to analyse them like the cultural products they are.
Yeah, examining the ways they are inaccurate tells us a lot about ourselves.
Noo I want to spend 50 years before I can have a second well!
Sure, but exploring the way games abstract reality can be interesting and worthwhile.
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You can do all sorts of things with video games, even when sticking to realism, if it helps you achieve your goals.
Simulator then?
Written in 2020 but still an interesting read. I wonder what the author thinks of games that have released in the intervening years, like Manor Lords, Going Medieval, and Farthest Frontier?
Well, it looks like someone did an interview with a medieval historian about Manor Lords.
I am looking forward to Manor Lords when it gets released. Been tracking it for years.
Pretty insightful. Key takeaways:
- linear growth didn’t really happen like that
- pre-planning would be good
- experience of tax collectors skimming the surplus, plus hazards of rural life.
Yeah, I thought life was hard but sustainable mostly, turns out one was always at risk of extinction:
Medieval villagers were often living on the edge of subsistence. Agricultural surpluses were skimmed by the church and the feudal lords. Bad harvests, banditry, warfare and disease might decimate a village community at any time. For this very reason, the demography of many European villages remained relatively stable between the twelfth and the eighteenth century.
If I remember Devereaux, the village itself was set up to minimise that risk first and foremost, at the expense of optimisation for max yields. So, every year was around subsistence, never much above, but also never much lower.
relatively stable between the twelfth and the eighteenth century
Hm… wasn’t there like a 33% dip back in the fourteenth, not counting subsequent migration to the cities and whatnot…?
I don’t know, we need a medievalist here
Well, there was that little thing called the black death, if I recall correctly…
Ah, yeah, there was, that’s not how most of the time went, though
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It’s pretty much just a hook into infodumping about medieval cities…
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Some of us like getting insight into the stuff that inspires the things we consume.
Well then I guess the Wolfenstein games aren’t historically accurate either…?
What a shock!
Default difficulty… Certain wiping out of every living being in your village, and failure. Conclusions in article are fairly poor as they are “games are already designed smartly, and there’s nothing that should be changed.”
A good game concept would be to put the player as a “middle manager” with feudal lord as the client. The mission is how to best oppress the villagers in order to graduate to better employment: managing a bigger city.
