[MostlyStable]

I will leave the following since so far all the commenters seem to have either not read the article at all, or to have at least skipped the following two sections:

>The third, predictable and annoying argument is “stop overthinking it, it is just a game.” Which is – if you will permit me to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – an unserious ‘boy’s philosophy’ unfit for adults. Video games are cultural products, like books or films or any other – and to say that those cultural products have no impact or importance is to argue against the historically obvious, given how frequently we find such things at the roots of important political ideologies, social movements, and wars.

>I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games – I will almost certainly happily play Age of Empires IV despite this. Instead, I bring it up because I find that this overly simplified view – sometimes, depressing, held to be the truth by some – in its errors, reveals some important things about empires, which again, I should note, seem to have been the dominant very-large-scale organization system for humans generally in the historical period.

First it tends to obscure the necessarily diverse nature of empires – as we have just laid out and perhaps more to the point, it obscures the power that empires derive from being diverse....

[hatthew]

I read that part and I still don't like the article. I have several hundred hours in AoE2. Maybe I am unique, but it has never even occurred to me to call the collection of people and buildings I control an "empire". I think "it's just a game['s name]" is still a perfectly valid argument.

I would like the article better if it took an approach such as "Age of Empires is a bit of a misnomer, let's explore the actual definition of an empire," rather than its current combative approach.

[cauch]

If you have "several hundred hours", maybe you approached the article a bit too defensively. When I read it, I did not see any "combative approach", it seems even to be tongue-in-cheek (the misnomer is qualified as "amusing silliness", this is not at all what you would expect from someone who is combative).

[hatthew]

The article has a good point and is correct. But it gets too far down into the weeds. For example, the paragraph about how priest conversions don't count as empire-building seems like the sort of argument one makes when desperately clutching at straws—a position that's entirely unnecessary given how reasonable the premise of the article is. It's building a straw man for a nonexistent opponent.

[throwaway676712]

The blog's name is "a collection of unmitigated pedantry" and the host is known for playing scores of video games including AOE2 itself. The explicitly avowed purpose of the blog is to talk about pop culture products as a gentle way to introduce the general public to deeper historical knowledge and concepts.

I think you may have missed the point.

[jeegsy]

“stop overthinking it, it is just a game.”

Indeed, you should write about what you wish especially considering the authors usual material. Even so, I didn't have the relationship between distinctively modern ideas of diversity (in a positive light) and traditional empires within a critique of "Age of Empires", a real time strategy game! on my bingo card. These are the sorts of ideas for better or worse that only an "intellectual" will come up with.

[dfxm12]

Videogames rely on gameplay more than storytelling or teaching history. It's not a novel or encyclopedia entry. It's not unserious to expect a videogame to be fun over having a deep exploration over the possible interpretations of one word in its title.

Plus, some films are like Casablanca. Some are like History of the World Part 1. Additionally, if someone relies on media like Age of Empires, The Empire Strikes Back, or the novel Empire by Gore Vidal to gain an understanding of what an empire is, just because the word empire is in the title of these works, there are bigger issues at hand...

[cauch]

But the author, and it is quoted in the comment you answer to, say, explicitly "I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games".

The author, basically, says: I know games are not realistic, but the way AOE illustrates a misconception gives me an opportunity to talk about this misconception because too many people are still seriously believing it.

Of course, movies and games can take all the liberties they want, the author does not care about that. What the author raises is the fact that too many people still have an incorrect idea of what is an empire, and that this idea is a bit ridiculous when you look at the fact.

And it has current real consequences. For example, there are political parties that rely on such misconceptions to sell their fake news (edit: as illustrated below with someone commenting that the correct description of "empire" is the result of the author being "woke").