Video is by a friend of mine, takes a dive into the music of Civ from a critical leftist perspective, specifically how it reinforces the games' Eurocentric view of history.
Civ was one of my favorite games and I played it for like 6 years. It got me interested in history, and I became infatuated with empires. I was really into the Ottoman and Byzantine empires, and I thought it was so cool that England was the empire where “the Sun never set” because they covered so much of the globe.
Then when I got into leftism, it really shifted the lens I view life through, and realized how Eurocentric and whitewashed Civilization is. Civilopedia doesn’t go into the atrocities that imperialism always brings and commits. And western media and education don’t touch that subject either. In any media I view now, I’m always rooting for the revolutionaries and the anti-imperialists.
Civ is not leftist, but not a history class. As a strategy game I love it. And I think Rise&Fall and Gathering Storm have brought a more realistic dimension than the classic "the history of civilization is a constant progress led by the decisions of great leaders".
Do you know any game in the same genre that would have a more leftist perspective?
Right, I took what interested me from Civ and did more reading on Wiki and watching whatever documentaries I could find on the civs. But I did have a ton of fun reading the civilopedias, finding the rival civs mentioned, and then playing on a regionally-accurate map and duking it out.
And I agree, I love gathering storm. Balancing production and military makeup with climate change effects brought a cool dynamic to the series.
Lol the only “leftist” game I can even think of would maybe be Tropico. They make the capitalists and imperialists look extremely greedy and corrupt. But it’s not a 4X empire-building game, it’s a city manager.
Tbf, it also doesn't villainize communism, at least before Civ 5. Civ 4's descriptions of Mao and Stalin are really generous, even from a left perspective, and the description of communism actually started me on the path towards radicalisation.
That’s cool, I didn’t know that. Civ V was the first game I played, and then I just got Civ 6 last year. I don’t think Civ V has any communist leaders, most of the leaders are pre-Victorian except for a few, from what I remember. The only mention of communism really is when you pick an ideology, and I don’t think they went into any of the ideologies‘ histories or theory.
