Kline (ed): Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages
Kline, Daniel T (ed.). Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge,
2014.
Reviewed by Helen Young (h.young@latrobe.edu.au)
Digital
Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages is the first, and to
date only, edited collection dedicated to the vast and expanding field of
medievalist (or neomedievalist) digital games. It is a well-structured and
comprehensive entry point into the body of scholarship on such works, and an
important intervention into the broader field of studies of history it is
constructed in digital games. The book has eighteen short chapters, divided
into six unequal parts. The breadth of coverage that this structure enables is
an important feature of the book, which is might be best thought of as
beginning a number of conversations about medievalism and gaming rather than
seeking to contain any one aspect of the field. This review takes parts rather
than the chapters as its points of departure.
Kline’s introduction draws lays out the theoretical
structures which underpin the chapters, drawing on concepts of neomedievalism
and game theory. The introduction balances the needs of its probable
audience—scholars who are specialists in either field encountering the other
for the first time—admirably, introducing potentially new terms and ideas
without oversimplifying or being overwhelming. It is a good introduction to the
overlapping fields as well as to the book.
Part One, “Prehistory of Medieval Gaming,” has only
William J. White’s contribution exploring the legacies of table-top
role-playing games (RPGs) in medievalist digital games. The chapter offers some
interesting insights into the ways ludic structures move from the analog to the
digital. If there is one criticism to be made it is that Dungeons & Dragons, the most widely played RPG of the
pre-digital era is mentioned only in passing. This chapter doesa not consider
fantasy games as such, leaving a significant gap in the history given that Part
Three is devoted to the fantasy behemoth World
of Warcraft.
The four chapters of Part Two, “Gaming Re-imagines
Medieval Traditions,” admirably avoid merely bemoaning historical inaccuracies
without simply ignoring them. The collectively reflect the current tenor of
adaptation studies—albeit none use that frame explicitly—exploring the
significance and meaning of changes from source texts in the case of Candace
Barrington’s and Timothy English’s chapter on Beowulf: The Game (based on Zemecki’s film not the poem), and from
history and historical material in the other three which thematically explore
empire-building, warfare, and the re-making of romance heroism for
twentieth-century audiences each focusing on a single game or series.The
resulting explorations of the tensions between game-play and history are
enlightening, highlighting the particular challenges and affordances of constructing
history through the medium of digital gaming. The chapters, both separately and
together, illuminate the filtering imposed by the history which is intermediate
between the medieval and the contemporary, a core tenet of neomedievalism.
Parts Three and Four are case studies, each
containing four chapters, of the fantasy RPG World of Warcraft and the action-adventure game Dante’s Inferno respectively. Given the
vast number of medievalist games available in the past decade or so,
considering some in detail and from varying perspectives is a useful approach.
World of Warcraft
is said by game-maker Blizzard to be the most played RPG ever with about 12
million subscribers at its peak, although that number has now at least halved.
The size of the player base (past or present), its influence on other fantasy
games, and the wealth of existing scholarship warrants the in-depth treatment
given in Part Three. The first chapter examines the treatment of digital
objects in the game world, and the second takes the 2008 expansion pack “Wrath
of the Lich King” as a subversion of Arthurian romance. The explorations of gender
and sexuality in the third and fourth chapters take up significant themes
around identity which are current in videogame studies and divisive among
players and within the industry at present. Nonetheless, one criticism of this
Part is that no chapter engages with the large body of scholarship on race in World of Warcraft. This lack of discussion
of a significant structuring dimension of most RPGs extends throughout the
collection.
Dante’s
Inferno is a less successful game in terms of player
numbers and critical reception, but offers a useful counterpoint to World of Warcraft in Part Four because it at least
purports to be a direct adaptation of a medieval source text. The majority of
medievalist videogames—whether situated in the historical or fantasy genre—do
not do so. Bruno Lessard’s opening chapter in the section addresses the
question head-on in its opening paragraph, arguing that the critical dismissal
of the game as “an unsuccessful attempt” at adaptation represents a failure of
understanding, not of the game itself. This takes up a point made more or less
obliquely in multiple chapters: that ‘accuracy’ is a false goal when it comes
to digital games; they are always simulacra which seek to do more than merely
simulate the medieval. Chapter eleven examines masculinities, the next
embodiment in the virtual world of the game. The final chapter argues that the
game has teaching potential not despite but because of its anachronisms as it
presents that past as a simpler time with its own possibility for pedagogy in
the present, a treatment of history the authors also find in medieval texts.
Part Five, “Theoretical and Representational Issues
in Medieval Gaming,” is perhaps the least coherent of the sections, with
chapters taking various approaches to what Kline terms “broad thematic
concerns” in his introduction: maps; books; technology; and the Templars.
Nonetheless, a broad interest in game knowledge and epistemologies can be
discerned among them. The closing section, “Sociality and Social Media in Medieval
Gaming,” has only a single chapter. Serina Patterson examines the relatively
form of digital gaming which exists on social networking platforms, such as
Facebook and Twitter.
Each of the chapters in Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages makes an interesting and
valuable contribution individually, while the whole offers a detailed overview
of a complex and vast field of study. The authors are approximately evenly divided
between specialists in medieval studies and medievalism, and game and cultural
studies, resulting in a breadth of approaches and theoretical positions. The
collection has been admirably edited to manage this variety with the result
that it forms a coherent whole from chapters that are accessible from both
fields.
Helen Young
La Trobe University
