The thrust of this article’s argument is that Civilization is ultimately a game that claims the Western model of development that lead up to the United States is the ultimate method of development. The reason for this claim is that there is only way to advance in the game, through the pre-determined “tech tree” that leads a civilization from knowledge of the alphabet to knowledge of missiles. While the player can determine in what order a few various technologies are researched, in general there is only one way to advance and that way is the one that Western civilization went.
Near the end the author gets into some embodiment questions about what it’s like to be virtually embodied as “The State”. First of all the author claims that the game implicitly argues that almost all economic, cultural, and military power is concentrated in the hands of a like minded cabal of capitalists or aristocrats since the player can command their civilization with little to no problems. So this means that actually the player is not being embodied as “The State” but as the cabal of rich and powerful who run the state and civilization.
It was an interesting look at how something that is not explicitly argumentative like Civilization, because Sid Meier constantly speaks about how he doesn’t let his views influence his programming in interviews, can still be arguing something with procedural rhetoric. The author wrote before Civilization 4 came out, and Civilization 4 does include religion which would have been good for him to discuss for our course but alas he did not. As it stands now when I look at religion and look at his work I would think the author would argue that Civ 4 argues for religious pluralism. Each religion is equally mechanically advantageous for a Civilization and “collecting” religions by founding as many as you can is good for your score, culture, and diplomatic relations. Thus the game implicitly argues that one should try and get as many religions as possible, but you still have to choose one to be your “state religion” even under a “democracy”.
