Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia. Review

Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia. Ross Clare. (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). pp 227. ISBN 9781357194. £85. Also Available as e-book.

Review by Jennifer Cromwell

Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames is Bloomsbury’s second volume to focus on the ancient world in videogames, in their series Imagines: Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts (after Rollinger’s edited volume Classical Antiquity in Videogames; read our review of it here). What more, Clare’s book – based on his 2018 PhD thesis – is the first monographic treatment of the use of ancient Greece and Rome in this medium. Through the examination of games across three different genres, Clare proposes a new approach to games as reception, presenting interesting case studies in this exciting new addition to the field.

The volume is divided into four core chapters. The first of these provides a general overview of the study of videogames, including a brief historiography of approaches to their study, as well as other information about games and gaming, aimed at ancient history rather than game studies scholars. The following three chapters are organised around genre: action-adventure, strategy, and first-person games respectively. Within each chapter, focus is given to both big budget, well-known games (the God of War series; Age of Mythology) and to indie productions typically less-well known to a general gaming audience (Apotheon; Eleusis; Helena’s Flowers, for example). While Assassins Creed: Origins is mentioned at the beginning and end, it – as well as its successor Odyssey – was released too recently to be incorporated into this study.

Cover Image for Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames.

Clare’s main argument is that these games are best understood as part of a broader transmedial world that draws on cultural memory (including film, TV, comics, literature, art) to create what he refers to as ‘popular antiquity’. In some cases, these links are clear. For example, the first-person horror-adventure game Salammbo: Battle for Carthage (2003) is based on the comic book by Phillippe Druillet (1982), which is based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert (1862), which itself drew upon Book 1 of the History of the second century BCE Greek historian Polybius. Other games rely more heavily on general tropes, with Kratos, the protagonist of God of War, echoing Russel Crowe’s Maximus (Gladiator), not only through their strength and violence but through the revenge-narrative devices that drive both characters (and which also connect them with Euripides’ classical Heracles). Not only do characters draw upon such themes of popular antiquity, but places are also created through these same processes. The Rome of Rome: Total War, Caesar III, CivCity: Rome, Imperium Romanun is clinically clean and unhistorical, a ‘dream of an empire that never was’, which reflects what Clare identifies as a specific ‘Roman language’ shared by the developers of these strategy games. Furthermore, the economic systems in these games is also unhistorical, reflecting instead modern neoliberal ideas and contemporary capitalism. Together with their transmedial conception and context, this point is also key throughout this volume: while the games draw upon the ancient past, they are entirely reflective of the modern world in which they are created.

Popular memory and modernity do not always manifest in the same ways. Even within a single game they can impact upon aspects of the ancient world differently. In God of War III, the developers partially undo the figure of Pandora, for example, modernising her to fit within a narrative of self-sacrifice and redemption, reflecting modern attitudes of equality. Conversely, Aphrodite in the same game is portrayed in an entirely one-dimensional manner, as an overt sex-symbol, conforming with expectations about this goddess in popular perception. Transmedial understandings can thus straight-jacket presentations, as in the case of well-known figures such as Aphrodite, but can also free developers when dealing with less familiar individuals, as with Pandora here, as well as the poet Sappho (Melos) and the Iliad’s Helen of Troy (Helena’s Flowers) who Clare also discusses. As a sidenote, 2022 will see the publication of a volume on women in historical and archaeological video games, edited by Jane Draycott and published by De Gruyter, which promises to be an exciting new addition to this area of study.

Aphrodite. Image from Unsplash.

 These reconfigurations of ancient myths are particularly reminiscent of the oral transmission of ancient literary works, which allowed for the co-existence of multiple versions of the same text. And within these productions, videogames differ from other media in that the player fulfils the role of co-producer, as it is through them and their choices that help shape characters and drive the plot, a point Clare returns to in several places. Videogames generate an immersive experience, whether through involvement in world-building or seeing through the eyes of the character in first-person games. More than this, the actual physical act of playing many of these games involves creative ways to draw the gamer into the acts they commit. Clare highlights a specific event in God of War III. During the fight against Poseidon, Kratos jams his thumbs into the god’s eyes, temporarily blinding him. The player achieves this through pressing the L3 and R3 buttons on the Playstation controller – analogue sticks manipulated with the thumbs – and so the player’s own experience mimics that of the onscreen character. With the development of even more sophisticated controllers for the most recent generation of consoles, the potential exists for greater immersion still through haptic feedback (with both vibration and sound emanating from the controller itself).

Recent discussions on historical videogames have been somewhat fixated on the question of authenticity and accuracy within these games. Throughout, Clare typically writes both terms within inverted commas and generally cautions against searching for both, reminding us that, first-and-foremost, these games are designed for entertainment, not as learning tools. As such he also moves away from games as historical process and their ‘historying’ elements (as proposed by Adam Chapman, Digital Games as History). Instead, how videogames present antiquity – and the type of antiquity presented – is best understood through the transmedial approach that Clare expounds throughout, which reflects myriad cultural processes. This approach is highly useful and allows broader questions to be asked about how ancient history is received, conceived, and transmitted. However, while Clare generally cautions against the repurposing of ancient history-based videogames by academics, games do offer the chance to have your cake and eat it, to enjoy the gaming experience while also using them as creative means to explore your own questions about the past. In this respect, the most recent Assassins Creed games muddy the waters through the creation of their Discovery Tour modes. While these Tours aren’t ‘games’ by themselves, being stripped from narrative and combat, etc., they provide the gameworld for players to explore at will, with the integration of ancient objects and other works as educational materials. A situation is therefore created in which the game itself draws upon ideas inherent in popular antiquity but also addresses the historical process through embedding real artefacts that historians work with. The role of popular antiquity in Origins is clear. It is set during the reign of Cleopatra, the most famous female of Egyptian history, in late Ptolemaic Egypt (not Roman Egypt as Clare describes it) when Egypt was embroiled in the larger machinations of Julius Caesar. Few historical figures have been on the receiving end of modern receptions as these figures have, while Egypt itself provides an even greater wealth of cultural memories for developers to draw upon. Clare offers much food for thought in how to approach these games, but such studies are still to come.

Assassin’s Creed Origins Cover Image

Indeed, exploring Origins is just one possible route of enquiry in historical videogame studies. The volume concludes with some suggestions for the future, and now is certainly a very rich time for this field. Clare in particular highlights games in which antiquity is not the priority, but which draw upon ancient materials to build fictitious worlds (a personal favourite of mine that’s ripe for study is Tequila Work’s RiME from 2017). Recent games that draw heavily on antiquity, especially Greek mythology (e.g., 2020’s indie rogue-like game Hades by Supergiant and Ubisoft’s action-adventure game Immortals Fenyx Rising), are symptomatic of how much material is available for study. This is to say nothing of genres that Clare doesn’t mention but which are also deserving of treatment, notably mobile games, which are more accessible than the console and PC games discussed in this volume.

Clare’s approach is not only useful for those studying the ancient world, but other historical periods as well; for example, medieval history is currently the focus of fertile academic discussion (see, for example, ‘The Middle Ages in Modern Games’, which tackles digital as well as analogue games). Indeed, the primary audience for this book is going to be those interested in the reception of the ancient world, rather than those coming from other disciplines, e.g., games studies. This is not to say that the latter will not find points of interest, but the volume is targeted more at those with knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome rather than videogames. As such, there is more explanation of video games than there is of history and mythology. However, as Clare argues persuasively for the role and importance of ‘popular antiquity’ in the development of these games, how much detail about the historical source material is actually required? Instead, this book, like the games it discusses, relies in part on the cultural memory of the reader, and their ‘shared mental warehouse of impressions of antiquity’.