Story versus history: the contentious creation of the historical videogame Versailles 1685

Abstract

Story versus history: the contentious creation of the historical videogame Versailles 1685 Story versus history Versailles 1685: A Game of Intrigue was a historical videogame released in 1996. It claimed to be the first ludo-educational videogame. This paper intends to highlight the conflictual creation of the game Versailles 1685 through the study of its creation process. During the design of this game, two visions were at odds with each other: a historical approach versus an entertainment approach. According to our findings, this conflict shaped the final gameplay of the game, which led to inconsistencies and the limitation of the players' "historical agency." Although, in 1996, the debate between story and history was private for Versailles 1685, the question of the scientific authenticity of historical games is now a topic of interest for both scholars and videogames players. We hope that this paper will help understand Versailles 1685 and shine a new light on this question. Versailles 1685: Complot à la Cour du Roi Soleil est un jeu vidéo qui a été publié en 1996. Il affirmait être le premier jeu vidéo ludo-éducatif. Cet article a pour but de mettre en lumière la création conflictuelle du jeu Versailles 1685 à travers l'étude de son processus de création. Pendant la conception du jeu, deux visions se sont opposées: une approche historique contre une approche de loisir. D'après nos conclusions, ce conflit a façonné le gameplay final du jeu, ce qui a conduit à des incohérences et à la limitation du "pouvoir historique" du joueur. Si, en 1996, la place de la fiction et de l'histoire fut un sujet de débat privé pour le jeu Versailles 1685, la question de l'authenticité scientifique des jeux historiques est maintenant un sujet important à la fois pour les chercheurs et les joueurs de jeu vidéo. Nous espérons que cet article permettra la compréhension du jeu Versailles 1685 et permettra d'apporter un nouvel éclairage sur cette question.

Playing (Against) the Heritage: Absolutism and the French Revolution in French Digital Games Before 2000

“…Another title set in the ancien régime , much more explicit in its appraisal of royalism, was Versailles 1685 . Institutionally supported by Canal+ and Réunion des Musées Nationaux, with a budget reaching 2.3 million francs (Lelièvre, 2019, p. 65), Versailles 1685 nominally focuses on a fictional plot against Louis XIV. The player’s task is to uncover the plot and disarm a bomb that would explode the Versailles Palace.…”

“…However, the story serves merely as a pretext to show a typical day in the royal court, especially the daily routine of Louis XIV. Versailles 1685 ’s leading writer and Versailles custodian, Béatrix Saule, aimed to provide a historically accurate digital museum tour instead of a game (Lelièvre, 2019, pp. 64–65).…”

Games Versus Reality? How Game Designers Deal with Current Topics of Geography Education

“…The principle of 'historical accuracy', pursued in the conception of Versailles 1685, is also deemed to be external realism in actions (and applicable to disciplines other than history). In this case this form of realism predominantly applied to giving players a role appropriate for the (historical) context whose range of actions do not exceed the limited power of this role [32]. External realism in that subcategory is therefore about designing players' roles and actions comparable to roles and actions in reality, including typical social relationships and power structures.…”

“…External realism in that subcategory is therefore about designing players' roles and actions comparable to roles and actions in reality, including typical social relationships and power structures. For example, the players' role in Versailles 1685 is the head of security, a Blue Guard, who has access to everywhere in Versailles, such as in the real one at that time, except the chambers of the King and the Court-so the player is given "limited but legitimate agency" [32] (p. 70). A breach with this type of realism would be the god-like roles found in many strategy and simulation games, such as Cities: Skylines, in which players control almost all aspects of the gameworld on their own.…”

“…Our interview guidelines consisted of open-ended questions that allowed the participants to share their experiences and views as freely as possible, as suggested by Meuser and Nagel [41] (pp. [31][32]. Most important for our geographical perspective on game realism in this study, and thus for our guidelines, was external realism, as this kind of realism is needed to depict geographical content, specifically the socio-ecological challenges we focus on in this paper, and it needs to be based on researched information.…”