Sid Meier's Civilization V

"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.

• The study analyzes roughly 59 threads from 2001 to 2023 on the German-language Civilization Webring Forum, using qualitative content analysis to examine how players conceive of nation, history, and identity.
• Its central argument is that prior scholarship assumed players passively absorb Civilization's primordialist, essentialist, and nationalist ideologies, whereas players' own discourse, shaped by their national identities, actively interprets and tests those ideas.
• Players use the terms "nation" and "civilization" interchangeably, and they define a "real" nation by historical continuity and cultural cohesiveness, which leads them to disqualify the United States as a civilization.