I think there's something fundamentally wrong somewhere important if a video game has to be a medium of education
Hyperbolic claim aside, it's not that a video game "has" to be anything at all. It's that Civ clearly has a strong educational element to it, and has a great
opportunity to leverage that element. To deny the game's educational components is to willfully deny a very large part of the game. ...I'm not going to try to tease out the myriad ways in which this game is educational, teaching players about the "ingredients" of history and encouraging them to combine them in different ways to appreciate their importance. Their existence is pretty self-evident. And, heh, after all, the very best educational tools are those whose educational qualities aren't even recognized.
And if Civ indeed strives to be, it's approaching it wrong in my opinion - it is implied that whoever leads a civilization is that civilization's greatest leader and best hope for it "to stand the test of time" and filling this role with the wrong person is bad education
Furthermore, if educating the players about neglected or lesser known entities is the point of the exercise, why use any well known civilizations and leaders at all? Let's get rid of England, Germany, France, America and the likes and replace them with Zimbabwe, Macedonia and San Marino
Educating the players about neglected/lesser-known individuals is not the sole point of any "exercise", no, but it certainly is part of the game. I recall an interview with a dev several years back that talked about explicitly this. See, you're clinging to a simplistic, monolithic interpretation of "education", suggesting that the game must either educate players about real history
or educate players about lesser-known aspects of history...as though the game can't do both at the same time. Of course the game will, and must, strike a balance between hitting "the big names" and working in some lesser-known names, but your claim that it should logically do one or the other--"either use all the big traditional names, or use all obscure ones!"--that just doesn't follow at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not annoyed that they included women and I'm not against certain leaders because they're women
I'm annoyed because I believe there are far more interesting and deserving candidates that got shafted solely based on the fact that they're NOT female
Well, you're right in a way. Everything you're saying about the devs' choice of less prominent names, etc., has been healthily argued and examined ever since the advent of Civ I. But you explicitly made this about women. And that opens up a very dangerous, and dangerously sensitive, can of worms. You have since said "this isn't about women", yes, but if that is the case why have you specifically chosen to focus on the female leaders? Your first post began "I still can't get over most of the female leaders", and everything that followed talked about the women. Even in your single post that says "it's not about women", you're
still focusing entirely on the women.
I'm not going to try to judge what you "really meant" or what you believe, but at the very least you need to understand the implications of how you phrased this. That was the source of Evie94's reply; the way you phrased this "irksome thing" was highly misogynistic. Maybe you don't care about that, and surely I'll be flamed for daring to mention feminism in a video game forum, but, oh well. You should know that your posts are
not coming off well, from this angle.
I don't mind having female leaders if they actually had the accomplishments to make them a good pick. But having them just for the sake of having them and some forced variety? No, it most certainly is not a good thing
As I've said time and again, I'd be fine with women who get to be leaders based on their accomplishments rather than based just on their gender
So we should alter history? How is that good for education? It's a historical fact that women were taking a back seat in pretty much all fields of consequence There's a reason why the emergence of the suffragettes was a big deal - it changed the status quo
Ah, now
this is really the heart of the matter, right here. There is a great deal of patriarchal bias that you're overlooking in making these statements. It has been (white) men who have written the history books, and though it's hard for guys to hear this (and I'm a guy), it is also a proven and inarguable fact that the recording of history has systematically downplayed women's accomplishments and influences -- either innocently, out of an attempt to "correct" the facts of history from those that have seemed unreasonable (to men), or intentionally. The accounts of medieval scribes systematically altering and excising the names, details, and outright doings of women are utterly fascinating (and horrifying), to name just one example. I won't get into all the theory here; the point is, history has not kept anything
close to a "true record" of women's influences on even the Real Big History of the world. Concerning Theodora, for example, I was particularly impressed by CiV's civilopedia entry, which emphasized how much we just don't know, because of the overwhelming male bias possessed by the historians and archivists who recorded the magnitude of her influence. (You refer to her as merely "Justinian's concubine"; are you even familiar with her? I mean, yikes.)
I'm not arguing that men have had a greater opportunity to influence history, of course. That's definitely true. Opportunity bias is a powerful thing; it's not ALL presentation/recording bias. But that presentation/recording bias has been instrumental in erasing women from history, even Really Big World-changing History.
What do we do about this? We could do nothing, of course. As you yourself say, it's a game, it's not like it "has" to do anything. But just because it doesn't "have to" doesn't mean that it can't -- or that it shouldn't. Civ is ideally positioned to both acknowledge this massive presentation bias and work to counterbalance it, in a genre/subculture that rarely has to wrangle with such difficult issues no less, and that's what it has done. It has purposely presented the players with some remarkable women from these cultures, instead of the more traditional male figures. It allows players to get used to these women's names and existence. To, y'know,
learn some new things. To even become familiar with these women's stories, in summary fashion, if they are interested.
Does it do this at the expense of the traditional male figures? Yes, it does. You are absolutely free to list this as something that irks you, and express preference for the more """""correct"""" (insert a billion sarcasm quotation marks) version of history. Absolutely. Anyone is free to answer the question "Is this a bad thing?" however they like. I haven't been trying to exclude this as something that you have the right to be irked by; I'm just presenting the opposite view, because this is something that is desperately important.
I personally feel that substituting the """""correct"""" leaders from history--to the extent that "correctness" can be objectively ascertained among even male leaders over hundreds or thousands of years, which it can't--with lesser-known yet still monumentally important women is something that should be championed. Forget tolerated or condoned; it should be heartily supported. It serves the purposes of both education, because these ARE real, and really important, leaders, and of equitability, taking a small step toward counteracting a monstrously overwhelming bias. You clearly disagree with this; fair enough. It's entirely subjective, as I said.
