Ninteenth Century Everything, and Gotham
Victoria 3 and Gotham Knights, together at last
Welcome to my newsletter! Like a lot of people, the current state of affairs at Twitter (read: Musk's takeover and ensuing hilarity or, frankly, anything you did not like about the platform prior to that) actually inspired me to go back and use the Internet the way I used to. For me, that means writing - typically about video games and history and the intersection between them.
This week I have been mostly playing Victoria 3 and Gotham Knights.
Not the likeliest of combinations I suppose, but they complement each other in interesting ways. Of the two, I am by far more frequently drawn to Victoria 3. That is not good news, in my little game playing universe, for Gotham Knights, which seems built for a loop of venturing forth/gathering resources/crafting stuff/look at big board with photographs on it/venturing forth. Those games tend to work best when you find yourself asking questions like "why am I playing this?" or "when did I start playing this?" or "why am I not in bed?" And Gotham Knights has not really done that for me.
Victoria 3, though? Oh, yes. You better believe I have stayed up way past my bedtime (I have young kids and a job, which means that I do in fact have a functional bedtime) just trying to see if I can get the Two Sicilies' furniture industry to crest that wave and get me a sweet prestige bonus. I've never been so familiar with the geography of southern Italy. I have never been so incredibly focused on getting the price of groceries down for an entire society. And why is the standard of living so LOW, for crying out loud?
Over at History Respawned Bob Whitaker tackled the question of Victoria 3's dedication to macroeconomics and giving the world the prettiest spreadsheet imaginable by diverging into a contemplation of the contrasts (and conflicts) between visions of history that view numbers - and statistics, and other things - as Gospel and historical ideas that have grown, evolved, worked through puberty and moved into full mid-life crisis in response to the numbers people. Ah, economic history, it is dad, and the rest of us are angry, emotional teens. Except all that happened a long time ago, in the 1980s. We just can't seem to let it go, or realize that it was actually a long time ago now. Like the 1980s.
Anyway, as Bob does a very good job of explaining, Victoria 3 loves numbers. I mean, that game just loves numbers. Or rather, it loves when numbers move and interact with each other. This, in and of itself, is in fact genuinely historically interesting. The fact of the matter is that the field of economics is not just an excuse to get you to drop out in your sophomore year and major in something else, nor is it quite as obsessed with differential calculus as you might assume. Economists tend to be very interested in human behaviour. That's the point, that's what they do. And Victoria 3 might be the best advertisement for the field of economics - and more specifically macroeconomics - than anything else I've ever played, watched or read voluntarily. Its mechanics are rock solid, and as with all Paradox games the barrier of entry is a lot lower than it seems at first. Keep an eye on prices and figure out what needs to stay low and what you can export. Before too long you will have reached a balance and your GDP (which may as well be your game score) will rise steadily. Come back in a couple of hundred hours of play time and we'll figure out the next thing, like colonizing western Africa or picking a fight with a European country without getting completely owned. The DOTA learning curve, basically.
Really, all their games do this. Hearts of Iron IV is an insane logistics simulator that makes a lot more sense when you start thinking of factories (first civilian, then military) as currency to be spent. The Crusader Kings games remain their best and their most accessible because you basically need to figure out a good rhythm of growing your kingdom and keeping everyone relatively happy. If you can find your happy place in all that it is amusing rather than frustrating when your uncle takes away the eastern half of France that you have been slowly accumulating since last Thursday.
So, anyway. Victoria 3. I am in that odd Paradox loop where I am spending a ton of time playing a game I do not really know how to play yet, but enjoying it just the same. What about Gotham Knights? Where is the issue?
You know, I like Gotham Knights. It lies in that strange place where I am not playing it as often as I could be, but I have nothing but warm feelings about it. The game did not review well, but Ian Boudreau had a good comment about that:
I have found this to very much be true with Gotham Knights. It seems like the developers wanted you to get yourself into a loop playing their game to the point that food became a secondary concern, but it just does not really play that way. Instead, you get a perfectly good chill out game with some really cool moments in the campaign. And... I like that! It all feels very low stakes without being superfluous.
I can't help but think of Marvel's Avengers and the game that could have been. I enjoyed the campaign in that game but I was bitterly disappointed by its failure as a co-op hang out game. I wanted it to be a Diablo and a Destiny and something new and appealing. It just, kind of, wasn't. In part because actually playing with your friends was for some reason incredibly complicated and frustrating. Gotham Knights is far better in that regard - just invite, and then you both do whatever - but it also manages to feel more fun and more immediate. The whole thing is just more involved, too. Come to think of it, I've had good luck with DC games. Video games seem a world away from film, which I guess they are; the occasional DC movie is fun by accident whereas a DC video game is typically worth your time.
Gotham Knights excels in its tone, in my view. You're playing as one of the Batkids, and everyone is reliably a walking template but fairly interesting all the same. Well, except for Nightwing, I guess. Gotham is full of hoodlums: not gang members, despite the Mob being an antagonistic faction, not maniacs, despite the Freaks being another; Gotham is kind of a hokey city and the Batkids are kinda hokey superheroes and the whole subplot about corrupt cops is kind of hokey. And I'm here for it, and it is fun.
Even if the Batbike (yes, I know) truthfully is kind of not great, and the traversing across the city is fun but a bit too staccato, fighting against you as you basically try to play Spiderman. The combat I like - I haven't had the adverse post-Arkham reaction many have had - but I can see why people get annoyed. Maybe that's why I find myself coming back to Victoria 3 so much. It's arcane, really. The game is not trying terribly hard to get you into it. But if you cross that line, as I did at some point while playing Belgium in one of the tutorials on offer, you could be in trouble. In its own way it is somehow easier to play. I assumed I would like Victoria 3 because I am a nerd for Paradox games and it's set in a fascinating time period (1836-1936) but that has not proved to be the case. I'm not even sure I have much to say about how the game treats things like slavery and fascism - at least, not yet. I am too busy trying to swim to the surface through the waves of UI and mechanics, but somehow enjoying it.