The Importance of Historical Accuracy in Video Games with Historical Settings
Though I am not sure how much of a fruitful pasttime it is to play the game at this point especially when it comes to single player there are important reasons why games such as Age of Emires II have significance. They create an impact in three areas which I see. Firstly they expose people to cultures and in a limited way even languages(mainly through unit speech) other than their own within a historical setting that is centuries removed from our own. As such they create important culture l representations which will make a lasting impact on the minds of the users. Secondly they provide artists a platform in which to recreate historical buildings, settings and other elements such as .
With the creators' and game development team's permission such elements may be repurposed to great effect to form part of historical documentaries. They may be especially useful when producing such documentaries as those made by smaller independent Youtube creators such as Maioranus who focuses on the history of the late Roman empire though others may make use of them as well. We have seen this already done when a total war game was used to recreate a battle scenario which was used to create video footage for a historical documentary.
A lot of work goes into creating media elements for video games based in historical settings and film and video game makers have started to pay much more attention to historical accuracy in more recent years. A notable example is the role playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance which in my opinion has had a major impact as a historically accurate video game while being a quality role playing game. It took many years of patching though before the game could be called a quality role playing game, but I believe the end result was worth the wait. I have not played the game but I have watched review videos discussing the game made by Youtube creators who focus on history and historical weapons. Youtube creators as the ones I've mentioned believe that when historical accuracy is emphasized in video games or films that the resulting media has a much higher entertainment value. Also important to note is that consumers are often times inspired by historical media to explore historical facts, weapons or fighting techniques on their own. However when they find that there is a broad disconnect between historical fact and the media that inspired them there can be frustration. They may also find that much time and effort was wasted approaching historical research wrongly by focusing on the wrong topics, ineffective battle strategies, weapons or even attempting to emulate fighting techniques from such media which tend to be absolutely inaccurate and wholly ineffective.(note to self: insert source from Shadiversity to back this up later)
That said if video game makers and film producers were to continue in this trend we could help a new generation to enjoy high quality immersive experiences
