For those of you who don’t play video games, I promise, I’m making a broader point, here. I had a sudden realization on my most recent play-through of a Civilization 6 domination campaign. Civ6 offers some insight into modern geo-politics in a way that I didn’t expect. It can help us understand how aggressive countries behave in the real world. The lessons I learned as I became a superpower, holding a gun to the head of the world, can be applied to modernity. By understanding how powerful nations react to weaker nations in Civ6, we can understand the mindset shared by the United States and other aggressive nations. And as a side-note, it also helps us understand ourselves.
In Civ6 you can’t play as Hitler or Musolini, which is for the best, but you can still inhabit the same power-at-all-costs thought processes of these fascist dictators. Perhaps, that’s part of what’s fun about the game. It’s only when you realize that reality isn’t too different that you begin to question what you’ve done. But only briefly, and it doesn’t stop us from nuking our enemies (or even friends) in play-throughs, does it? After all, it is only a game.
My favorite way to win the game is through a “domination” victory. It may be the most basic way to win, as the game suggests, but it’s the most fun for me. And because the game lacks what I feel could be a robust system of diplomacy to manipulate and bend other civs to your will, the military route has always been the most enticing.
Setting the domination victory type as your initial goal means you’ll have to be ruthless and bloodthirsty. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that you will get to be ruthless and bloodthirsty. It’s satisfying, for example, when I level up my veterans after crushing an unsuspecting enemy, and pump out new units to throw into the next meat grinder. It feels good to know that these soldiers will throw their lives away for me if I ask them to, all so we can punish our enemies and expand our empire. They never complain or ask why you’re sending them into territory owned previously by our “friends.” They are the perfect soldiers: loyal and courageous.
I grin as neighboring civs who never meant me any harm crumble under the crushing weight of my military industrial complex. There comes a moment in every game I play, though, where I feel I’ve been the victim of foreign aggression. Maybe another Civ settled too close to me, or sent a scout to peer inside my border, or their religious zealots proselytize my faithful, obedient populace. And this is where I was struck by similarities to real life situations. When these acts of “foreign aggression” occur, and when I have overwhelming military superiority, I tend to reciprocate disproportionately. I invade, without so much as a denunciation, and my fury is merciless. I raze cities, decimate fleets and armies, pillage their land, and plunder their trade routes. Every aspect of their society collapses under my righteous retribution. When it’s over, I’m left with a few conquered cities, their populations starving, of course, surrounded by a burning wasteland. Smells like victory.
This mindset that I inhabited is similar to the mindset of powerful nations in reality as well. Take for instance the United States’ Record of intrusion and violence in Latin America alone. It doesn’t take much research to uncover the atrocities committed by our government there, acts that we would consider terrorism if they were committed by foreign powers on our own soil.
The United States is the most powerful country in the world. It has been since the end of World War Two, and it acts like it. If you’ve ever completed a domination victory condition in Civ6 then you know what I’m talking about. The most important thing for a country to do when it has the tiger by the tail is to not let go. When we’ve got it, we tend to hold on to power, at any cost. (Just look at Mr. Trump’s attempt to overthrow the most recent presidential election.) It also means that powerful countries operate under a different set of rules than weaker countries do. The US can invade Latin America, assassinate its leaders, launch coups, and commit acts of terror across the region because the land there doesn’t belong to the people who live there, it belongs to us – Americans. Our government can get away with these things because it’s incredibly powerful, and it has a population who, for the most part, go along with its lies, or don’t offer any protest because they simply don’t know about these atrocities.
Take a recent example, and an ongoing one. The U.S. has been bombing so-called terrorists in Yemen. We launch extremely sophisticated weapons that have pinpoint accuracy and high yield explosives to kill our targets and whoever happens to be nearby, usually their families or friends, women, and children.
Is there any ongoing coverage of our undeclared war in Yemen? Does anyone understand what the definition of ‘terrorism’ is? Does anybody care that we’re blowing people up there? Does anyone know about it? In this case the answer is mixed. We heard about our bombing in Yemen because the villains currently in charge of our government accidentally told a journalist about it. Obvious incompetence aside, did anyone question whether we should be bombing Yemen? I heard no hint of the question. And why should Americans question the use of force against a defenseless group of poor peasants with rifles? Yemen belongs to the U.S., but has been loaned to Saudi Arabia, one of our useful allies nearby. There will be no more outrage on behalf of Americans for bombing in Yemen than if we bombed a village in Afghanistan or Iraq, or even Panama.
Civ6 is about gaining power, and Americans are so used to having it abroad, we don’t question our use of it. To the world’s detriment.
As I play Civilization 6 I can’t help but think that I’m acting out a play style that I was raised to believe in. I was raised to believe America was good, always right, and that it had a right to intervene where it thought it should. Our enemies are bad and demonic, our allies are good and righteous. It’s this kind of thinking that enables the worst atrocities of our government. And it’s the same kind of thinking that wins games in Civ6.
I want to believe that the slights I feel perpetrated against me by weaker Civs (in the video game) are innate to all humans, that anybody playing this game, trying for a domination victory would punish their bold insolence as harshly as I know this is the mindset of the masters, and though I have little power on my own, the nation I grew up in molded me in such a way that instead of being encouraged to question what we do, I wind up a blind advocate, or a passive observer. When I can step outside of this mindset, I know, at my core, aggression is immoral and harmful. The pursuit of power and means justifying ends is wrong. So why, then, do I enjoy inflicting it on imaginary people in video games so much?