Coded Colonialism and Ludic Empires

“While these processes in which the digital remediates earlier processes of colonization have been discussed in the context of software studies and digital humanities, videogames have not received adequate attention when it comes to scrutinizing their algorithms and the technical aspect of digital colonization that some software makes possible.”

“Little, if anything, has been said of how the algorithmic or procedural logic of these games, their functional aspects, their code, and finally, their numerous patches, updates, and downloadable content (DLCs) might work to perpetuate notions of empire and of colonialism.”

“The idea behind the regular updates to games is that they require maintenance and constant repair.”

“The game software, as it were, is seen to need to remain always current and always free of flaws.”

“Updates, patches, and DLCs are considered such toolkits of repair”

“It seems that even play, otherwise claimed to be a free activity, is in need of repair where digital games are concerned.”

“Formulated by J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin,9 remediation addresses a double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy, both processes working in tandem to refashion the material from one medium to another.”

“Immediacy is the process whereby the medium tries to erase traces of mediation, whereas hypermediacy is the process that makes the user or viewer aware of the medium.”

“After over two decades since the game’s initial publication and the release of two full-blown sequels Age of Empire 3 and Age of Empire 4 (2021),21 the developers released the definitive edition of Age of Empires 2 as well as a DLC, The Dynasties of India.”

“Newly featured in this DLC are Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty; Rajaraja Chola, the founder of the Chola dynasty; and Devapala, the third king in the Pala empire of Eastern India.”

“The Bengali civilization (although whether this even existed historically in the way the game posits is again open to question) has as its unique technology, Mahayana, which is a sect of Buddhism.”

“While Mahayana Buddhism may have been the principal religion in the Pala kingdom, equating such a religious sect to a technology is a curious decision. Also quite worrying is what the technology entails: it reduces the so-called population cost of the civilians. As a result, more civilians can be created at town centers without crossing the population limit, thereby reducing the value of the civilian population by making people more expendable as in-game units.”

“The videogame’s perspective on history is thus problematic on both counts: in describing the Mahayana Buddhist sect as a technology and in attributing a reduction of population cost to the Mahayana way of thinking.”

“Jayanth does not mince words here and alleges that the premises of game design are often based on “an enormous store of false knowledge which masquerades as truth about the world while obscuring it from us.””

“In her recent book, Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Hui Chun provides a formula: Update equals crisis plus habit. Chun argues that “things and people not updating are things and people lost or in distress, for users have become creatures of the update. To be is to be updated: to update and to be subjected to the update. The update is central to disrupting and establishing context and habituation, to creating new habits of dependency” (emphasis added).”

“As Chun defines them “[h]abits are creative anticipations based on past repetitions that make network maps the historical future. Through habits, networks are scaled, for individual tics become indications of collective inclinations. Through the analytic of habits, individual actions coalesce bodies into a monstrously connected chimera.””

“The algorithms of the game updates perpetuate the idea of empire and colonialism that the players are used to and keep expecting from the gameplay, not just as individuals but as a network of players globally.”

“In Trammell’s terms, one might ask how the DLC functions as a repair in that it perpetuates the same colonial logic in the update to the game.”

“Repair, here, is deployed in irony—the attempt to repair the initial game’s colonial bias by including a marginal (from the Eurocentric view) civilization as a reparation falters since the failure of such reparation is evident.”