History and games presentation

History and Games

     For this project, we needed to chose one aspect in games that we feel strongly about and research and discuss about it.  We were again split in a group of 5 (me, Zoe Rice, Tom Donachie, Matthew Fenn and James Dyer). We have decided to discuss history in games, how it is being depicted, how it intertwines with fiction and what is the right balance between reality and fiction in order to create a good gameplay. We each chose a different game to talk about and then put everything together.

For my part of the presentation, I have chosen to talk about Japan in games. I am quite fascinated by the Japanese culture in general, past and present, and I really admire their discipline, applied into every single aspect of their life. I have read the Shogun about 10 years ago, and Memoirs of a Geisha about 5 years ago, and I find it really interesting how their century old traditions are being kept even now. 

To remind myself about the details of the Japanese Civil War (the most talked about period in Japanese history) I have watched a documentary on it: Japan: Memoirs of a secret Empire. (I only watched one episode, where they were describing the time of the Portugese missionaries landing on the island). It was really interesting how the differences between cultures were described here. 

  The Japanese were living their life based on culture, poetic and flowering rituals, but at the same time, they were going through an intense and rigid struggle for power. Their culture was very developed and they also had a very complex political system, hence, when the Portugese arrived and realised all this, they treated the Japanese as equals, which was not normally the case when new territories were being discovered during those times. 

There were massive cultural differences between the two civilisations, which instilled a lot of respect: while the Europeans were eating with their hands, the Japanese were using chopsticks, while the first were having baths once in a few months, the latter were taking them daily. Even though the initial idea was to convert all the Japanese people to Christianity and implement the European culture and traditions, eventually, the Portugese realised that this culture they have come across, was more advanced and  even though it was different, they have learnt to accept their traditions. One thing that puzzled the Europeans initially was the way the Japanese were writing: top to bottom, rather that the traditional left to right. But when asked for their reason to doing it that way, the Japanese answered with: "a Man's head is at the top and feet at the bottom", so it's only normal to write that way too. Simple and logic explanation, that was immediately accepted.

I have also learnt a lot about Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the most important figures in Japanese history, as he was the Shogun that established a Dynasty that ruled Japan for 250 years. Tokugawa Ieyasu is the  preferred choice of main characters when Japan is depicted in games as well. 

The games that I have looked into, in order to see history is being depicted and also how Ieyasu is being portrayed, were:

-Paradox Interactive (PC)

- Samurai Warriors ( PS3, Wii and Nintendo 3DS)

- Sengoku Basara (PS3, Wii)

- Civilisation (PC)

- Kessen (PS2)

- Nobunaga's ambition (PS3)

Here are what we came up with after our research:

                            

                         

                            

This is how Tokugawa Ieyasu was being portrayed in Sengoku Basara - a long way from the original :)

  As a conclusion, James talked about how some games are picking certain events in history and base the events around that, while introducing a fair amount of fiction as well. In other games, the actual historical events have been changed completely ( one very good example was Sniper Elite V2, where  Hitler has been assassinated, while in reality he committed suicide).

And, I do agree totally with the idea of combining fiction with reality in the historical games/literature or movies, as the gamers/audience finding more exciting this way, and also, because if anyone is really interested in learning about history, there are plenty documentary games, books or movies available.

A few examples of documentary games can be found on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/games/