Crash Bandicoot 7: A comparative analysis of gender roles in Georgian and Victorian households

So some guys ogle cars, others, with some justification find salvation in reruns of classic football games; perhaps others prefer the solitude of the lake, rod and line. However I tend to spend my days day dreaming of the day when the RPG genre of video games, or ‘interactive entertainment’ if we are being polite, finally converges with a team of historians to produce an ‘accurate’ portrayal of an historical event. Imagine being a roman citizen walking around a restored Rome as it was then – faithfully reconstructed based on ruins and paintings and witness accounts. Imagine being able to speak to ‘real’ soldiers, politicians and traders. You could spend an evening watching the sun set (with the contemporary star grid) as yet another slave caravan enters through the city gates or you could take your coinage and see what goods you can find from the Middle East at the local market. Fancy coming to see a gladiator show tonight, or does the theatre more take your fancy?

Perhaps you prefer being a pirate during the great age of piracy. Preying on Spanish gold ships and seeking patronage from Elizabeth, perhaps you could even dabble in a bit of slave trading yourself. Who knows?

Oh alright, I know. This is horribly flawed:

Games already exist that allow for such gallivanting, the series of ‘Civ’ games is practically a full blown historical tutorial and even the academic heavy weights like Crash Bandicoot allow you to bounce around approximations of Ancient Egypt and the like.More than that games like ‘Medal of Honour’ even pride themselves on how historically accurate they are in certain aspects. And yes, they do provide a pretty good job reproducing the equipment and missions, of among others, the Normandy campaign.

So what’s new in what I am saying? And secondly, even if you hired ten of the most drab history professors you could find and got them to design a digital representation of the Norwegian financial markets in and around 1784 - who would want to buy it? Even if someone did, you become unstuck the second you sat down to design it because how on earth can history be interactive? History is linear, it followed one set pattern. You can’t go back and start chatting to people who would otherwise not be chatting or shooting folk who would otherwise not be shot.

And of course how do you graft ‘game play’ onto something that is trying to portray historical evidence? Surely these two aims will come into conflict.

Of course these arguments would sit atop the whole little predicament of ‘is history possible at all?’ but that leads us down horrifying avenues of post modernist thought which I don’t have the stomach for.

So again, what is my point? I claim I want to see accurate history portrayed in interactive entertainment yet readily admit that it’s impossible. Besides the best one can hope for, namely ‘inaccurate history’ already exists in games just as it does in literature, art and film.

Let’s suppose then that what I want to see is ‘more’ accurate historicalbased games. The audio/visual immersion capable in video games far out paces anything more traditional forms of media can produce. So why not use it? We present historical research in books and in television documentaries, so why not interactive entertainment? History is already a large market with its own celebrities and brand names, why not extend the franchise?

I think it can be done. ‘Video games’ and ‘game play’ may be inappropriate notions for this new genre; perhaps ‘interactive history’ and ‘simulation’ might be better placed. Could we move from the role-playing game to the role-playing simulation? Have I just proposed a plan to drain the fun from interactive media? Possibly.

Yet if done in the right way a simulation can be just as enthralling than a more traditional game and the spectacle of the environment would be its own reward. The ability to stroll around London during the great plague, perhaps experience the Great fire – would be both fascinating and educational right?

Sure it wouldn’t appeal to everyone, most people would be hard pressed to find anything more boring – yet boring people exist in droves. I should know. I’m friends with most of them – we exist and we have disposable income. Market something at us.

‘Interactive entertainment’ is such a mind boggling large format it seems a shame to restrict its efforts into generating ever more alluring Korean girls in hot pants who scream an all to satisfying ‘hi-ya!’ whenever you hit ‘X’.

It’s capable of so much more.

‘Hi-ya!’