Video game designers and writers wade into this intellectual battlefield in ways that will likely surprise and frustrate most historians. Few things are better at sparking heated debate (and more than a few eye-rolls) than bringing up the “agency question” in a seminar room or at a conference. Entire fields, such as the history of American slavery and abolition, have been riven by big-stakes arguments over such questions. The question of agency-whom or what produces historical continuity and change-is one of the most contested and controversial philosophical and historiographical problems in my profession. We (through the player character, Desmond Miles and his ancestors) can battle Evil but the struggle will repeat itself time after time.Īs a historian and life-long gamer I find these aspects of my beloved hobby in turns fascinating, endearing, and befuddling. This is a very cyclical vision of history. The Assassin’s Creed games present a fascinating vision of historical agency, where historical change is explained through a hybrid of extreme individual agency-in the form of the game’s protagonist(s)-and the unending trans-historical battle between competing secret societies. The Assassin’s Creed( AC) series, for example, has made a great success of combining beautiful recreations of historical scenery with the sort of conspiracy fueled story lines that propel Dan Brown novels and the Nicolas Cage headed National Treasure series to the heights of popularity.
Historical trappings are extremely popular with video game designers.
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