Historical video games can often serve to transport players into an entirely different world through means of immersion. With beautiful and highly detailed 3D graphics, excellent sound design, and realistic three-dimensional characters, many big-budget historical video games have done magnificent jobs at immersing the player into its worlds. Games like A Plague Tale: Innocence, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Ghost of Tsushima are all technical marvels, each offering breathtaking visuals and an immersive world for players.
But do all historical games necessarily have to feature the same level of polish and big-budget feel to be good?
Alternative Graphical Art Styles
While many AAA developers will often try to make their game look as graphically impressive as possible, with realistic visuals that attempt to push the boundaries of what’s possible, smaller indie developers tend to choose to go with an alternative route. Games such as last year’s Through the Darkest of Times features 2D art, which manages to evoke strong emotions and helps to define the game’s overall tone, though it’s clearly made on a tighter budget.
The upcoming historical indie game Going Medieval also uses an alternative graphical art style, going for a retro pixelated look similar to old school Runescape. While the game’s graphics could be described by some as basic or rudimentary, it arguably works very well as it evokes feelings of nostalgia from many gamers and can be more appealing. Beautiful graphics don’t have to look realistic, and there are many different indie games that have managed to engage players with even the smallest of budgets.
Valuing the History Above All Else
While many AAA historical video games might feature breathtaking visuals and bombastic action sequences, many of them (including the Call of Duty franchise) focus on their visuals and gameplay over the actual historical aspects of the game. One thing that indie studios can do is value the history above the other elements of their game and elevate it in a way that bigger games sometimes do not. Games like Verdun feature solid 3D graphics but fail to stack up to AAA first-person shooters. To compensate for its smaller budget and inferior visuals, the game goes the extra mile when it comes to historical accuracy and close attention to detail and manages to give history lovers much more to appreciate over other war shooters.
Education at the Forefront
And of course, for many, the most important part about historical video games has to do with how educational and informative the game truly is. Many AAA video games that are rooted in history fail to actually teach the player anything, however some of them stand above the rest by becoming a learning tool in addition to being a source of entertainment. The Age of Empires and Civilization games both feature considerable amounts of educational material and are arguably some of the most widely loved historical video games ever. Games of this nature don’t need to feature ground-breaking gameplay or breathtaking visuals, as the history itself is at the forefront.
Game developers don’t need high budgets or need their historical games to be technical marvels to succeed. With more and more indie developers producing games these days, smaller projects now have just as much of a chance at success than the big guys. With a lot of creativity and a bit of luck, your historical video game could become the next indie hit.
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At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.
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(This article is credited to Ben Price. For as long as he can remember, Ben has always loved playing, discussing, and writing about video games. Since receiving his B.A. in English, he now writes about them for a living.)