In Boellstorff's (2020) study of cultural elements in games, he cites anthropologist Edward B. Tylor's definition that culture is a complex assemblage, stating that culture contains knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Therefore, as a product of the joint creation of sociological and technological progress, the study and analysis of a culture in games is very important and meaningful. A video game work, from the first version created in 1991, has been continuously innovated and has been updated to the VI version, and constantly updated DLC content. These facts can reflect Sid Meier's Civilization's (MicroProse & Firaxis Games 1991-2016) popularity and influence in the global scope.
Sid Meier's Civilization series, often simply referred to as Civilization, led the way with a strategic turn-based 4X video game. The 4X means "eXploration" , "eXpansion" , "eXploitation" and "eXtermination," which players use map resources and strategic deployment wisely based on these X dimensions to control their units and create an empire with a unique blend of cultural and military characteristics. With playing the game, players can learn a lot about history and culture, which can gain historical thinking skills, such as chronological thinking and historical comprehension (Erdem & Pamuk, 2020).
In my paper, I want to analyze the description of Chinese culture in Sid Meier's Civilization. As one of the four most ancient civilizations, China has maintained its cultural heritage and has deeply influenced the cultural development of East Asia and even all of Asia. A Chinese proverb says, "Five Thousand Years of Chinese Nation," which means that China has a history of more than five thousand years. Therefore, Chinese culture is a diverse and meaningful research point. In this game, players can choose a Chinese emperor character to create their own "Chinese-style" empire, and the origin of this character is China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang Yingzheng (259-210 B.C.) His name may be unfamiliar to Western society. Yet, his tomb, the Terracotta Warriors is the eighth wonder of the world and one of the most famous sightseeing in China. Highlighting the power of ancient China in terms of history, culture, military and technology, which attracts archaeologists and paleo-sociologists from all over the world to explore the powerful ancient empire (Zhang, Qi, Zhao, Wang, Tan and Jiao, 2018). Besides, China's inventions and agricultural civilization during the Qin Shi Huang period was at the peak of the ancient world (Srensen, 2010.) He organized the construction of the Great Wall to protect citizens from foreign enemies, unified weights and measures and currency in China, and encouraged agricultural development, which even is just a small part of his contributions to China (Lu, 2015). How such a great character is presented in Sid Meier's Civilization with an interactive game system, and how Chinese culture is represented in it, which are the points I would like to analyze in my research.
Mol, Politopoulos and Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke (2017) analyze the history and heritage in Sid Meier's Civilization with the digital review method. They summarize thehistorical and cultural phenomena in the Civilization series in tables. Such as the country location of cultural heritage wonders appears in Civilization VI, and I notice that 7% of the wonders are from China. In addition, the author mentions that the characteristic buildings and the interesting interactivity of Civilization VI can help players understand the history, origin and culture of humankind.
What is more, my inspiration for this study is from Davies' (2020) research on Japanese seasonal culture in Pokémon Go (Niantic, 2020). In his research, he mainly observed how seasonal gameplay culture in Japan is applied to Pokémon Go, such as seasonal insect collection, seasonal festivals and seasonal location-based tourism. He started from the definition of gameplay elements in Japan and made a deep study of Japanese play culture. Besides, Davies adopted an ethnographic research method and conducted ethnographic fieldwork in southern and central Japan. He talked and interviewed with some relative practitioners in the hope of getting some detailed descriptions of cultural phenomena. To get information related to seasonal insect collection, he collected cricket with local kids in Fukuoka. I get many hints in Davies’ research that some games may contain content from specific cultural backgrounds, such as the Chinese culture content in Civilization VI. Davies’ field investigation, which maximizes the authenticity of the obtained information. However, such a study is difficult to do, especially during the current epidemic, so I chose the relatively more available topic for my ethnographic study.
Further, in Davies’ research, he tried to avoid the exoticism that results from cross- culture studies. According to Jin's (2020) description, participants exhibit a certain degree of "transnational sensitivity," which means they might feel nervous or unconfident because of afraid of offence. I am Chinese, so I can try to use some localized terms in my articles, but I also need to be careful to avoid complex expressions and take into account Western readers' unfamiliarity with Chinese culture. Because Jin points out that researchers need to read and understand participants' reactions when talking about Chinese cultural discourse in case they feel uncomfortable.
Additionally, in my literature review, I found that there is almost a vacancy in the research on Chinese culture in video games. Probably due to the existence of internet firewalls, gaming platforms like Steam are actually not allowed by the official Chinese government. And the development of the game industry has slowed down due to the policy restrictions on video games in China (Feiner and Kharpal, 2021). Moreover, the depth and difficulty of Chinese culture makes it hard for scholars without cultural background and knowledge base to conduct such multidisciplinary research. So, the development of game studies in China is at a relatively slow situation. Therefore, using ethnographic methods to study the embodiment of Chinese culture in a specific game is an innovative research direction, which requires knowledge of Chinese culture on the one hand and systematic knowledge of game studies on the other.
I will combine the online ethnography and field ethnography to conduct my research. The ethnographic research method is flexible (Verhagen, Johansson and Jager ,2017), which means during the epidemic, I can get relevant information from different and available source. With this approach, I hope to get more detailed feedback from players about Civilization VI. Verhagen, Johansson and Jager (2017) introduce the research methodology of gaming and online ethnography and point out that there are three possible perspectives that can be used to conduct game studies: player, game and world.
Verhagen et, al. (2017) noted that studying players in online games must be intertwined with playing the game, emphasizing the importance of participation in game studies. I have been playing Civilization VI for over a year, and the time spend on this game is over 300 hours. For field ethnography, I will interview friends who play the game. Due to the global popularity of Civilization VI, many of my friends have played the game and we sometimes discussed it. For the selection of interviewees, I will interview some friends from non-Chinese cultural backgrounds and some Chinese friends, because it is possible to obtain information with a globalized view. For the online ethnography, I will observe and investigate Zhihu, a Chinese forum site, and Reddit. I found that there are many posts about Civilization VI in these forums, many players share their ideas about the game or ask questions about the operation or hints for the game. Therefore, I will respond to some posts or ask questions in the forums to gain insights into Chinese culture in Civilization VI from online players.
My potential questions for players are as follows:
If you have experienced the Qin Shi Huang character?
If you have consciously built Chinese wonders in your play, such as the Potala Palace?
If you have looked closely at Chinese artifacts mentioned in the game, such as ancient Calligraphy works?
What do you think about the representation of Chinese culture in the game and the depiction of the character Qin Shi Huang?