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Souvik MukherjeeCentre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Dr. Souvik Mukherjee is assistant professor in cultural studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India. Souvik’s research looks at videogames as storytelling media through a broad spectrum of topics in game studies ranging from postcolonialism, identity, and temporality in videogames to videogame cultures in Southeast Asia. Souvik is the author of three monographs: Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Springer UK, 2017), and Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent: Development, Culture(s) and Representations (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) and is currently working on a book project on Indian board games and colonialism. His other interests are (the) Digital Humanities, poststructuralist theory, posthumanism, and early modern literature. Souvik has been named a Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Distinguished Scholar in 2019 and a Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) fellow in 2022.
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Abstract
Age of Empires, the cult strategy game that has entertained millions of fans since 1997, recently published its fourth official iteration, Age of Empires 4 in 2021. With the amount of downloadable content (DLCs) and expansions that the game franchise keeps introducing with steady regularity, commentators observe that the logic of the game remains the same: exploiting natural resources, creating labor for exploitation, and imperial expansion. One question that comes to mind is why the latter is such a common and persistent gameplay mechanic for real-time strategy games and whether any alternative mechanics can be considered. Viewing the issue from the perspective of code and the very algorithm of the game, one could argue that a critical study of the code itself is necessary. Drawing on recent positions in critical code studies, this paper will argue that the problems of colonial thinking are replicated in the algorithm and the logic of real-time strategy games such as Age of Empires. With the understanding that code is not neutral, this article aims to reassess the gameplay mechanic of the patches and DLCs of Age of Empires. Instead of repairing the problem, the software code or patch that is added to these games merely extends the context of inequity and colonial thinking. This article will focus on The Forgotten Kingdoms expansion of Age of Empires 2 as an example of how even additions to the original games perpetuate the inequities in the very algorithms of these real-time strategy empire-building games.