Age of Empires III
Game
Documents about Age of Empires III
Article
Strategy Computer Games and Discourses of Geopolitical Order
Nohr's article examines how strategy computer games such as Dune II, Age of Empires, Command & Conquer: Generals, Age of Empires III, Civilization IV, and 1701 A.D. encode geopolitical knowledge into their design.
- Nohr argues that strategy games such as Dune II, Age of Empires, Command & Conquer: Generals, Civilization IV, and 1701 A.D. present politics as the conquest and control of territory, and that this spatial logic is ideologically loaded rather than neutral.
- The article traces the games' geopolitical assumptions to classical German geopolitics, including Ratzel's Lebensraum and "big space," the "lore of blood and soil," and Christaller's central place theory, as well as Hellwig's 1780 war game.
- The games naturalize political hierarchies by framing politics as physical, territorial, and resource-driven rather than social or economic, and several reinforce a reductive "clash of civilizations" worldview paralleling Huntington's 1996 thesis.
Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game CultureNov 2010
Article
Signifying the West: Colonialist Design in Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs
Dillon's 2008 analysis in Eludamos argues that Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs embeds a colonialist, Western design logic that persists even when players take the side of Native characters.
- Dillon's 2008 Eludamos analysis argues that Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs embeds colonialist, Western design logic that persists even when players side with Native characters.
- The critique holds that core RTS mechanics of resource extraction, territorial expansion, and conquest treat land as ownable territory and unmapped land as effectively nonexistent, misrepresenting Indigenous relationships to land, time, and community.
- Native-faction features such as Fire Pit dances and a trade-based economy are constrained by gold-based progression and conquest, which the author views as incompatible with Indigenous principles of reciprocity with nature.
Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game CultureFeb 2008