Are historical video games political?

In a recent interview conducted by GameFile, five current and former anonymous Ubisoft employees discussed their frustrations at the cancellation of a planned game in the company’s hugely successful Assassin’s Creed series.

This unnamed instalment would reportedly have been set during the American Civil War, following the Reconstruction Period of the late 19th century. The player would follow the story of a black man who was previously enslaved in the South, returning to the region from the West to join the fight for justice in the changing society of the time, including a struggle against racism and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan.

This concept, following the Assassin’s Creed template of being set during a real period of history, would not have been the first game in the series that mentions slavery in the US. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has a storyline in which the player character assists an ex-slave named Adéwalé in the fight for liberation on the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) in the Caribbean.

This title is also by no means the first historical video game that has planned to confront difficult political issues

This title is also by no means the first historical video game that has planned to confront difficult political issues. Mirror’s Edge, a series of adventure games by EA, features the player character, Faith, as part of a group of outlaw activists who break the censorship laws of a totalitarian government to spread information. Though the second game in the series was now released almost a decade ago, the themes of governmental control and censorship are increasingly relevant to today’s political climate.

Indie puzzle game Papers, Please also has the player act as an immigration officer in a strict dystopian country with hostile relations with nearby nations. Again, playing this game as new immigration controls take effect (especially in the US) gives the storyline an entirely new realism.

Côté would be leaving the company after 20 years

So why was this new Assassin’s Creed title scrapped by Ubisoft? The anonymous employees cited multiple reasons, including online criticism of the recently released Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, which focuses on the decision to make the player character an African-born samurai rather than an indigenous Japanese one.

Names as famous as Elon Musk offered their thoughts on this decision, accusing Ubisoft of allowing forced diversity to diminish the historical impact of their games. The employees also discussed financial problems, making Ubisoft executives reluctant to take risks, as the company reported a significant drop in their revenue and net bookings in July.

Possibly the most questionable reason for the cancellation of the game was concern about tensions in the current US political climate. This combination of criticism and self-censorship has led many to wonder whether Ubisoft is being overly cautious, or whether video games set in historical settings are inherently political.

In response to the online criticism of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, the franchise head Mark-Alexis Côté staunchly defended the creative choices of his team, arguing that “democracies crumble when good people decide to stay silent” and that “the same is true, I think, of our creative freedom when we allow fear to stifle our voices.” Côté intends to “stand firm on our commitment to our values, by telling stories that inspire, that challenge and help people connect.”

On October 14, it was announced that Côté would be leaving the company after 20 years. Three days later, on a LinkedIn post, he revealed that “the truth is simple: I did not make that choice.”

This series of events raises obvious questions around Côté’s defence of his creative decisions, and whether he was involved in the choice to cancel this new addition to the Assassin’s Creed series. Was his removal from the company related to his opposition to this cancellation?

When a video game is set in real-world history, it is inherently political

The world is becoming increasingly censored, with many withholding their opinions or denying creative decisions due to fears of online criticism or even real-life consequences.

When a video game is set in real-world history, it is inherently political, and as history always does, it will almost always reflect on the situations we face in our current lives. If a game studio (especially one as influential as Ubisoft) decides a narrative is too risky to release publicly, choosing to deny creative freedom due to fear of controversy, they contribute to the increasingly prominent issue in the modern world where media slowly loses its freedom of speech.

Avoiding topics that could challenge controversial concepts because of possible lack of revenue means that video games, just like any other kind of creative media, will slowly become devoid of purpose. Game studios, from those run by a single person to huge companies with thousands of employees, must prioritise the telling of difficult stories to avoid the otherwise inevitable descent of their art into meaninglessness.