Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames

Videogames are ubiquitous, yet videogame studies remain niche. Proponents of historical videogame studies continue to battle antiquated biases against the viability of games as a primary source of study in academics. Unburdened by any disciplinary tradition, scholars of videogames are free from the confines of established practices, but limitless possibilities can also produce methodological dissonance. Currently, reception theory is the dominant hermeneutic in studies dedicated to historical videogames, with each author tweaking the formula through the application of methods from diverse academic disciplines.In his new book, Ross Clare, University Teacher in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Liverpool, provides a broadly applicable and useful system for assessing “popular antiquity” in videogames (8). As explained in the introduction, popular antiquity results from the indiscriminate consumption of books, comics, film, television, and videogames featuring Greco-Roman themes. Clare sees this process as a convergence of transmediality, or the passive acquisition of classical ideas by the consumer, and intertextuality, which is the active appropriation of a classical source by the producer. Ultimately, Clare is interested in understanding how antiquity in videogames “allows modern audiences to confront, interrogate, and reflect on their own behaviors, thoughts, and surroundings” (114).In the first chapter, “(The Tutorial Level) How Might We Study Ancient-World Videogames?,” Clare describes some of the ways in which games set in antiquity reflect modern concerns. He cites recent historical videogame studies that have focused on reception theory, especially those that conclude meaning is constructed on the receiving end of gaming. Clare acknowledges that publications focused on distinctive and diverse players are still emerging in videogame studies, and to his credit in chapter 4, the author tests his system on two atypical games with feminine and lesbian themes.Significantly, Clare’s brief historiography of the application of reception theory in historical videogame studies displays contrasting and contradictory applications of semiological concepts indebted to structuralist philosophies alongside poststructuralist deconstructive criticism. On the one hand, the dynamism of recent scholarship is laudable; on the other, the continuing discord may signal deleterious intellectual factionalism among advocates of videogame studies. Clare’s reaffirmed alignment with pop culture methods will be of particular interest to traditional historians, as he describes the outcomes stemming from the application of his system as “different to, independent of, ‘real’ ancient-world studies” (29).In the second chapter, “Finding a New Epic in Action-Adventure Videogames,” Clare examines four gaming products: the God of War series (Sony, 2005–10), Apotheon (Alientrap, 2016), Okhlos (Devolver Digital, 2016), and Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance (Acclaim, 2003). Tied closely to cinematographic practices designed to communicate an “epic” experience for moviegoers, these titles recycle the materiality and narrative tropes of American pepla. However, Clare argues that the interactivity of videogames lends a new intertextual dimension to the player’s transmedial acquisition of popular antiquity. Play gives consumers a different kind of agency than what can be experienced reading a text or viewing a film. At the same time, such agency makes the player far more complicit in the pleasure of the experience.Clare believes that the epic filmic and gaming tradition evinces an antiestablishment message through the consumer’s enjoyment of virtual violence. In the titles cited, the player fights celestial and terrestrial authorities through a process that requires the demolition of material culture; outcomes champion self-determinism and villainize tyranny. As such, the player is implicated in the attempt to disseminate a contemporary liberal hierarchy of political ideology. The player may have agency, but she has zero autonomy in fashioning an ending that is not predetermined by developers. This begs the question: Does the interactivity of videogames actually “evolve” the appreciation of narratives borrowed from film and literature?In the third chapter, “Ideas of ‘Rome’ in Ancient Strategy Games,” Clare extends his examination into far more elaborate programs. Strategy games like Imperium Romanum (Kalypso, 2008), Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients (Longbow Games, 2015), and Age of Mythology: Extended Edition (Microsoft, 2014) are sometimes termed god-games. Unlike the kinetic appeal of action-adventure games, strategy games attract players interested in the slow and complex mechanics of management and construction. Players receive near-omniscient and near-omnipotent powers over a dizzying array of resources, and they are tasked with leading their faction to a successful end. Clare laments that game developers’ conception of success relies on outmoded notions of empire, pernicious representations of colonialism, and caustic practices in contemporary capitalism. Nevertheless, the author endeavors to find “postcolonial play” in games overtly schemed after a retrogressive, capitalistic, and colonial mindset (83). The premise is aspirational and confusingly naïve at this point in the book. Clare states, “The Rome we encounter [in videogames] . . . is a ‘Rome’ identified in popular culture” (87).When developers funnel antiquity through film in order to produce a progressive message against autocracy, Clare focuses on the importance of the dynamic intermedial experience. When developers use the same process to perpetuate unsavory views, Clare notes a misappropriation in intertextuality: “We therefore play not just with an unhistorical or inaccurate Rome, but a dream of an empire that never was” (89). Suddenly, the rigidity of gameplay and narratological outcomes becomes problematic, although the player is no more a prisoner of prescripted experiences in a strategy game than in an action-adventure game. Because Clare recognizes that strategy games do not (yet) provide an avenue for postcolonial play, the chapter’s exercise remains quixotic to the reader.In the fourth chapter, “First-Person Antiquity,” Clare primarily analyzes Salammbo: Battle for Carthage (Cryo Interactive, 2003), Eleusis (Nocturnal Works, 2013), Melos (Skarn, 2015), and Helena’s Flowers (Heiden, Lani, and Reikun, 2015). Redefining first-person games from a literal characterization to an “interrogative category” allows Clare to include visual novels (118). While the categorization of games and characterization of gaming genres remain fluid, Clare’s description of the gaming experience across this selection of games subverts his definitions. For example, an insistence on the visceral experience of “embodying” a character through the first-person presentation in a game like Eleusis does not work when it is applied to a visual novel like Melos. Visual novels are illustrated, text-based games; they do not possess the immediacy of the ambiance and/or the kinetic engagement of first-person games. Simply saying the visual novel maintains a first-person perspective thanks to its illustrations seems forced and unnecessary. Suggesting the visual novel makes a player embody the lesbian protagonist is oversimplistic. As this is a particularly long chapter, perhaps visual novels deserved a separate numbered chapter in this publication.More importantly, Clare returns to a forgiving bent on the assessment of the historical rigor of the titles in this chapter. The games are “indie” and frequently characterized by the author as “experimental.” Yet again, the appealing messaging that now includes progressive attitudes on multiculturalism, feminism, LGBTQA+, and environmentalism trumps transmedial conclusions, including the player’s belief in Homeric talk therapy or Carthaginian liberalism. The author’s more interesting intertextual application of Polybius, Sappho, and Euripides takes a back seat here.In the end, producers and consumers of videogames could argue that popular antiquity is harmless. Scholars of “real” ancient world studies cannot be criticized for thinking that it is pointless. The dual conclusions in the book reveal that the scholarship on historical videogames is still in its infancy, and Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames aligns closest to work in media and/or pop culture studies. With regard to Clare’s system, fine-tuning will require a balancing of transmediality versus intertextuality, excepting author proclivities. Last, it is clear that the ill-defined player requires significantly more refinement in a niche whose proponents lean heavily on reception theory. The default player cannot remain the white, affluent, cisgender male

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Discipline · Epistemology · Intertextuality · Literature · Meaning (existential · Parallels · Reception theory · Social science · Sociology · Digital Games and Media · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · History · Philosophy · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

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