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Jordan Voltz

ENGL 383- Eras


Logics of History
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Interactive Historical Narratives: Lets Talk About Nazis
Premises:
1. History is ultimately inaccessible. (Hutcheon. A Poetics of Post-Modernism)
2. Any Historical representations contain elements of fictionality. (White, Hayden.
Metahistory)
3. History is perceived of as moments of agency and action. (Benjamin Harshaw,
Fictionality and Fields of Reference)
4. Individual and Consensus realities are composed upon Individual and Consensus
histories.
The rise in the popularity of interactive media is staggering. In the past decade, the American
video game industry has grown tremendously, expanding both its demographics and its subject
material. The European board game scene has begun gaining the type of academic and public
recognition that is usually reserved for non-interactive media. However, within each of these
fields, the question of historical games (games which contain direct historical references) has
been met with a large amount of interest and controversy. For example, Brenda Romeros Train
is a board game that has players assume the role of Nazi bureaucrats who must ensure that the
deportation of European Jews via trains is executed as efficiently as possible.1 Although Train is
arguably a well-intentioned game that provides an acute criticism of Nazi policies, other critics
are concerned with the potential for interactive historical media to allow the player to play it out,
as it should have been.2 Given the video game industrys fascination with World War 2, the
introduction of playable Nazis raises many problems, especially in games like Axis and Allies
and the Hearts of Iron series, where it is possible play as the Nazis and complete their
1 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63933/train
2 Flamethrowers, 361

domination of Europe. While the overwhelming majority of these games dont explicitly promote
or condone Nazi ideology, its apparent that the potential for it certainly exists within the format.
For example, Ethnic Cleansing, a Neo-Nazi video game, has become infamous for the virtual
atrocities it rewards the player for, such as giving the player points for murdering Jews and
homosexuals. Even Joseph Goebbels also recognized the power of interactive media, creating
board games such as Judenraus and Bombers uber England, and wrote in his Diaries, To be
perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through
an attention-getting communications medium.3 Needless to say, there are a large number of
public anxieties, justified or not, about the position of interactive historical media, even within
the already controversial field of games. The potential for historical media to vindicate the
audiences beliefs have been translated into the vindication of action (signaling the shift from
audience to agent), which if the agent desires it, can seem like counter-factual wish-fulfillment.
The potential for interactive historical media is, if anything, incredibly dangerous.
This, however, is not the focus of my paper. Rather, I am concerned with understanding
the cultural context surrounding interactive historical narratives, as well as analyzing how their
form separates them from other historical narratives. Like any historical narrative, interactive
historical media (IHM, henceforth) requires fictionality to function. As it is impossible to
accurately represent a historical situation within any form of media, fictionality must function to
provide the agent with a sense of causality, as the result of the agents actions must have an effect
upon the historical narrative. However, within IHM, this fictionality is privileged; it is under the
pretence of fictionality that agents within IHM are permitted to engage with the medium. Since
the agent is inherently ahistorical in the narrative, this anachronistic fictionality allows the agent
3 Joseph Goebbels, Diaries

to make meaningful decisions within the medias social context. As I will demonstrate later,
regardless of whether or not the agent is participating in the media with other agents, IHMs are
inherently social experiences. Because of this, the understanding the context of the IHM is
perhaps the single most important facet to understanding the IHM as a narrative form.
The Social Context: Mass and Individual Histories
Since the IHM requires the agent to engage in a social experience, it requires a different
understanding of the relationship between mass and individual histories within historical
narratives. Most importantly, these histories are not diametrically opposed to each other and in
fact require each other in order to function. Quickly, some definitions:
Individual histories: Individual histories rely upon elements of personal value and meaning a
person constructs towards a specific history that diverges from a Mass history (or, it can
represent the convergence of 2 separate Mass histories). Furthermore, these individual histories
play an integral constructing a fragment of the individuals perception of reality as divergent
from a consensus reality. For example, in W.G. Sebalds Austerlitz, Jacques Austerlitz forms an
individual connection with The Battle of Austerlitz, assigning meaning to both the historical
event and his own reality in relationship to it. This individuality is based entirely upon the
relationship between the characters identity and the historical event, supplementing his already
growing interest in historical scholarship.
Mass histories: Mass histories rely upon communication between more than one individual that
concludes with them collectively assigning the same value and meaning to a specific historical
event. These Mass histories construct a consensus reality in the form of a culture or sub-culture,
as there is a predicated relationship between the historical referent and the signifier the culture

uses to express it. Perhaps the best example of this is the American popular opinion of Nazism,
which sees it as almost universally reviled, or as Ive heard it referred to as, proof that evil
exists. However, Mass histories are not monolithic and are often in competition with each othercertainly there are multiple Mass histories surrounding the issues in Ferguson, with the sides
opposed to each other perhaps being the largest rallying point (it is impossible to talk about Mass
histories and not talk about Mass Media). This is meant to be an intentional divergence from 20th
century cultural theorists like Siegfried Kraucauer, when Mass Media is no longer an explicitly
state controlled endeavor (regulated, perhaps, but not controlled).
As I said previously, these histories usually require each other to function. Individual
histories typically require a degree of mass historical knowledge before the individual is able to
diverge from the mass historical narrative, while mass history requires the creation of Individual
histories for new mass histories to be created- most shifts in historical scholarship are usually
achieved in this manner (i.e. Paul Fussells The Great War and Modern Memory).
The format of the historical media also largely depends upon the interplay between
individual and mass histories. In most of these formats, the relationship involves one history
subsuming the other, playing a dominant role in the narrative.
-Mass > Individual: History textbooks, Chronicles, etc.
Narratives which privilege mass history are concerned with explicating the meaning
which the culture has assigned to it and are usually designed to be informative of that cultures
ideology. This isnt to say that theres no room for individual histories within it, but they are
always subservient to the groups narrative.
-Mass < Individual: Historical Fiction with one author, Historical Criticism, etc.

Narratives with an emphasis on individual history are almost always written by a single author
unpacking their values regarding the history. They will frequently include elements of mass
history which are juxtaposed with elements of their individual history, but the individuals values
will always be champion over the collective.
-Mass = Individual: Interactive Historical Media, Historical Fiction with multiple authors,
Wikipedia Articles, etc.
Finally, narratives which attempt to balance or mediate between mass and individual
histories compose this final category. All of these media require the author/agents social
interaction with another individual history in order to complete the production of the narrative.
This requires the collision of individual histories which, in turn, creates a form of mass history
which instead privileges the individual history, or vice versa.
Within IHM, this manifests through the agents decisions made in response to the
historical situation. It requires collaboration and interaction with the author or other agents in
order to function. In the video game Victoria II, the agent manages a nation from 1836 to 1930,
dealing with war, politics, population management, and the revolutionary tide of liberal
democracy and socialism. In doing this, the agent navigates a series of mechanics which mediate
between the game and them- elements the designers of the game considered important enough to
create interactive abstractions of within the game. Creating a sense of historicity, the decisions
the agent makes are meant to provide a simulation of that historical period. However, the agents
interactions with the past are entirely mediated by a series of mechanics created by the designers,
requiring the agents acknowledgment of and collaboration with the designers product.

What differentiates this IHM from a depiction of mass history lies within the role of the
agent who is able to create their own narrative given the tools supplied by the designers. One of
the critical pieces of structural difference between interactive and non-interactive media is the
destruction of the dichotomy between the author/audience. In the case of Victoria II, the designer
constructs a playground of possibilities, yet places the agent in the role of both the author and the
audience. The format of IHM implies that the agent is a form of historical actor, able to take any
number of actions and have the results of them represented. This collaboration privileges the
agents narrative over any of the other potential narratives within the game, creating a mass
history with a special focus on the individual history, even though all of the possible experiences
are already programmed into the game.
A similar, but inverted dynamic can be seen in more performatory, live-action IHM,
such as Barnards Reacting to the Past program, Model United Nations, and historical tabletop
roleplaying games. These types of IHM have more than one agent within the historical setting
and (usually) none of them have an especially privileged role. They require active collaboration
between individuals in order to perform the reality which composes the media. For example, the
Weird War 2 setting for the tabletop historical fantasy roleplaying game Savage Worlds, has
agents adopt historical personae (like werewolf Nazis, mecha-Americans, psychic Russians, you
know) with a system designed to streamline any interactions with the games mechanics, as these
IHM typically substitute more complex mechanics with the challenge of collaboration. While
there is a mass historical narrative that is constructed amongst the interactions between agents,
creating a mass history, each individual experience of that narrative is markedly different and
pronounced from others based upon their individual history.

What has caused most of the controversy surrounding IHM is its ability to vindicate the
agents actions so long as they conform to the abstractions created by the designer. The format is
able to validate or invalidate specific historical opinions in a way that previous historical media
have been unable to aspire to. These media require a unique social interaction with the designers
of the historical media, who are able to populate their media with abstractions that meet their
own values regarding the past. The individual histories which can be derived from this
reenactment or performance of the past are potentially terrifying and lend themselves to a greater
application of the past within our daily lives. While the glorification of militarism depicted in
Fredicus Rex is not nearly as effective as it is in Call of Duty, empathy with the past has never
been more accessible then through games like Brenda Romeros Train.

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