[eropple]

Colonization, as a game, is a lot of fun, has mechanically held up superbly over the last two decades, and is probably my favorite Civ-family game as well, but I have a beef with the way it actually presents itself as a piece of art. Eliding such things as, oh, Europeans enslaved a shit-ton of people and killed a lot of others[1] bothers me as a student of history and as somebody acutely aware of the ongoing consequences, both for Native Americans and African-Americans, that reverberate through American society to this day.

The Rise of Revolution mod for Civ4Col is a little better (it's also just really good in general, aside from being better about its recognition of marginalized people), but...there is a fundamental "ick" to colonizing other people's shit that I don't think this game properly grapples with. Because there's a moral issue to European colonization, and while I can see that being surfaced very well in a hypothetical game (I noodled on one for a while) I don't think either Colonization or Civ4Col even tries. And that's a real shame.

[1] - Yeah, you can go play the Spanish and knock over a bunch of native settlements. But you almost never will after you get to a certain level of play. Instead, you will find yourself near the Arawaks or whatever, who have their AI ramped up to turbo-aggressive, and suddenly you'll just have to roll out your army at them, it's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault...ew.

[ekianjo]

> slave trade

Sure, but it's not extremely relevant to the whole era covered by the game. From Wikipedia:

> It is estimated that more than half of the entire slave trade took place during the 18th century, with the British, Portuguese and French being the main carriers of nine out of ten slaves abducted in Africa.[42] By the 1690s, the English were shipping the most slaves from West Africa.[43] They maintained this position during the 18th century, becoming the biggest shippers of slaves across the Atlantic.[44]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#16th.2C_1...

While slave trade started early, it was still minor in the early stage of colonies. But you are right, the game completely ignores slave trade even in the 18th century, while it technically should not be ignored. But it's an American game, and it would never have been published if it "featured" slave trade in its mechanics.

[eropple]

You might have noticed that I never actually said "slave trade". Because that's only a small part of it. Slavery in the America goes considerably beyond the triangle trade, etc., discussed in social studies classes. Consider the enslavement and exploitation of the Taino in Hispaniola in the sixteenth century, for example, or the literal thousands of enslaved Inca and the various tribes often collectively known as the Aztecs. I mean, what do you think "Indian convert" units really are?

I am not unsympathetic to the notion of addressing publishing concerns. I'm fully aware that the designers of the game were aware of this; if you read the (very good!) manual, there are nods there. But enslavement and exploitation of native peoples (as well, of course, as Africans) is literally-literally central to the story of European colonization of the Americas. It is inescapable. I tend to think, despite my nostalgic fondness for Colonization, that if you can't get a game published that's honest about this sort of thing, maybe you shouldn't make it at all. (This is why I abandoned my own attempt at a derivative of Colonization: because I couldn't make the mechanics work and still be honest and respectful towards the subject matter.)

[douche]

They do sort of cover this in game, with the indentured servant class of colonist, as well as the convicts - which fits for the early stages of North American colonization, particularly the British angle that Colonization is mostly playing to. Not to mention the "converted" natives that you could obtain, for instance, by sacking their villages...

I'm not sure how you would introduce slavery into Colonization without making it a cliche. Slave colonists are twice as skilled at picking cotton, but can never produce liberty bells? That would go over real well.

[ekianjo]

> with the indentured servant class of colonist

Actually this has nothing to do with slavery. Indentured servants were a real thing back in the days, with poor people accepting to work for x years to pay for their passage to the New World, and after that they were usually granted their freedom (not 100% always the case, I know). Slaves were, for the most part, never able to gain their Freedom back, and were slaves for generations.

So indentured servants were really under a limited term contract, while slaves were slaves forever.

[douche]

Oh, I'm well aware - my family tree traces back to an indentured servant that bailed on his master before his term was up and ran away from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to live in the wilds of Vermont.

And some of the first Africans were brought to the colonies under terms of indentured servitude, and became free the same as the poor whites after some years.

[ekianjo]

Yup. And there are cases of indentured servants who were abused into slavery because of their illiteracy too.

[eropple]

> They do sort of cover this in game, with the indentured servant class of colonist, as well as the convicts - which fits for the early stages of North American colonization, particularly the British angle that Colonization is mostly playing to.

For the British, sure. But the Spanish practiced human slavery pretty much from the jump. The Taino of Hispaniola, the various Mesoamerican tribes--this was a thing, and eliding it is, in my view, at best unethical. I fully understand why it would be done from a commercial standpoint, and I am not unsympathetic to the problems that involves. But sympathy for a game developer must be placed on the scales against empathy for the people that the game erases from its presentation of history.

> I'm not sure how you would introduce slavery into Colonization without making it a cliche.

Neither am I, as it happens. Religion and Revolution treats both African and native slaves similar to petty criminal units, which is unsatisfying too--but at least it acknowledges that they exist.

Don't get me wrong--Colonization is in my top ten games of all time. I've bought the game at least five times, for myself and other people, and Civ4Col was a day-one purchase for me (which was a mistake, at least until TAC and RoR came out). I wouldn't give them money if I thought this was an insurmountable ethical problem. But it is problematic (turns out that it's possible to really like a work and still feel this way!), and I think it's also important to acknowledge that and figure out how to be better.

And there's a core ethical question here: if something so fundamental to the problem cannot be fairly addressed because of the perception of market realities, is it better to make something that casts the marginalized people of history in not just a bad light but one that attests that they don't exist at all, than to not make it? Reasonable people can argue both sides of that dilemma; I'm honestly not sure where I stand. But it is always and emphatically worth thinking about how one treats people worse off than you.