"Was Barbarossa Not German?!": Nation, History, and Identity in Civilization Players' Online Discussions

Trattner's 2025 study examines how players of the Civilization series conceive of nation, history, and identity in discussions on a German-language forum, the Civilization Webring Forum, drawing on roughly 59 threads from 2001 to 2023. Its central claim is that prior scholarship, which has analyzed Civilization's primordialist, essentialist, and nationalist rule systems, has assumed players passively absorb these ideologies. The author argues that players' own discourse, shaped by their national identities, must be examined to test that assumption.

Qualitative content analysis yields several key findings. Players use "nation" and "civilization" interchangeably, applying both terms to in-game civilizations and to the abstract concept of nationhood. A "real" nation is marked by historical continuity and cultural cohesiveness, criteria that lead players to disqualify the United States as a civilization. Players also draw a firm line between the nation, understood as ancient and enduring, and the state, understood as recent, and it is at this boundary that discussions of game design and historical identity most clearly intersect. Friction emerges as players criticize the games' ahistorical, primordialist mechanics, even as they maintain transhistorical conceptions of their own nation.

Evaluations are shaped more by identification than by abstract historical accuracy. Players often apply inconsistent standards, accepting simplifications for their own nation while condemning them for others, and German players in particular tend to be dissatisfied with Germany's portrayal regardless of its content. Reactions to Civilization VII's "ages" mechanic, which dissolves the unchanging-nation model, were split roughly evenly in a forum poll, yet criticism did not diminish players' desire to continue playing. The author cautions that these conclusions reflect a specific German-speaking community and that its discourse is far from uniform, so they should not be generalized beyond it.