TGA Managing Editor Emma Backe interviewed Dr. Andrew Alan Johnson, an anthropologist who also serves as the Senior Historian for Sid Meier\u2019s Civilization VII.<\/a> They talk about working in the gaming industry, infusing anthropology into narrative gaming mechanics, and what it means to do \u201cweird anthropology.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Dr. Johnson, thank you so much for talking to The Geek Anthropologist. Can you tell us a little bit about your background?<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m Andrew Alan Johnson, both an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University and a Senior Historian at Firaxis Games<\/a>. I\u2019ve had a kind of dual life between games and academia. I got my PhD from Cornell University in 2010 in Cultural Anthropology with a specialization in Southeast Asian history, and have worked a number of places afterwards: Columbia University, Princeton, Sogang University in Korea, Ashoka University in India, and for a while in the short-lived Yale-NUS College in Singapore.\u00a0<\/p>\n My academic work is concerned with disaster and excess. By that, I mean how people experience\u00a0calamity in ways that can challenge what we understand as space and place \u2013 what exceeds the definition. It\u2019s better with examples: the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s led to a rash of abandoned buildings all around Chiang Mai. This is a clear story of overspeculation, of property bubbles, of newly rich Bangkokian investors buying up land and building way beyond their means in the northern city. But it\u2019s more than this \u2013 the sites are also haunted. I take those stories of haunting and look into the relationship between Chiang Mai and Bangkok (a relationship that one could see as internal colonization), between imagined progress and its eventual failure, and the questioning of \u201cdevelopment\u201d as some kind of inevitability. That led to\u00a0Ghosts of the New City\u00a0<\/em>(2014). Then, I did my second book on the Mekong, looking at similar questions in the wake of hydropower projects that led to an alteration of the river, how it worked, and what lives in it, via a deep ethnography of Thai-Lao fishers. The river is not just flow and fish; instead, it\u2019s also a relationship with beings that also exceed our understanding \u2013 nagas, spirits, etc., but also who speak to potential, to \u201cmaybe.\u201d This turned into\u00a0Mekong Dreaming\u00a0<\/em>(2020), and I\u2019m now working on a new project pulling from these two and trying to turn that idea of open-ended, incompletely-understood potential into something else (see \u201cEncounters at the Edge of Nigh<\/a>t\u201d in\u00a0Cultural Anthropology<\/em>).\u00a0<\/p>\n But that\u2019s the academic view. Since 2020, I\u2019ve also had a foot in games. I grew up with games, like a lot of people of my generation \u2013 Dungeons and Dragons, Star Control, Master of Orion, Ultima, Thief, and way too many. They were kind of a comfort for a nerdy kid who always felt out of place in a hyper-masculine, hyper-conservative southern town \u2013 an escape before I could actually escape. But starting in 2020, I was hired on by Firaxis to be a historian on\u00a0Sid Meier\u2019s Civilization,\u00a0<\/em>and I\u2019ve done some contract work with Paradox on\u00a0Crusader Kings 3\u00a0<\/em>as well. I was part-time in academia for a few years, then went back to academia full-time and now do contract work part-time on games.\u00a0It\u2019s a lot. I compensate by having little to no social life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019re a cultural anthropologist who predominantly works in Thailand but you\u2019re also working as the Senior Historian for Civilization VII.<\/a> What brought you to working in the gaming industry?<\/em><\/p>\n Both the games industry and academia are in a rough state at present. It\u2019s like putting your foot on two ships that might sink at any minute \u2013 yes, nothing is stable, but if one starts to go down at least you have a chance on the other. That\u2019s what it was for me; my tenure prospects had hit a snag, and so I started to look around for other options as a way to get a fresh start somewhere.<\/p>\n Firaxis was also looking to expand its historical expertise, so it was a pretty fortunate time. The earlier Civilization (\u201cCiv\u201d) games had taken a kind of shallow read on history, but as the games grew more and more complex (Civ has been running since the early 1990s), they started to run into the limits of what a lay history enthusiast could deal with. At the same time, the player base expanded to include a much more diverse audience, who demanded a better representation for non-Western histories.<\/p>\n So it was a confluence of things: I needed employment, and Firaxis needed an academic. I long had feet in a few different communities \u2013 like any anthropologist, I had pretty broad interests outside of academia. Games were always one of these, and I had friends scattered across a few game studios just like I have friends scattered across different universities. One of these was Zach Bush \u2013 a writer (and now narrative director) at Firaxis. He had been consulting with me with questions about especially Southeast Asian cultures for Civilization, and when the management at Firaxis was speculating that they needed a professional academic on staff, he floated my name.<\/p>\n This is the way that I found a lot of the games industry works \u2013 personal connections matter far more so than academia. It\u2019s difficult to get in the door without a personal introduction \u2013 although it certainly happens (the historians that we hired after me were largely new to the industry). Being known at Firaxis has meant getting links with other studios as well \u2013 you want to have your name be on peoples\u2019 mind as they run into a problem you might be able to help with.<\/p>\n I worked on the tail end of Civilization VI and have been working on VII since its development, since 2020. In 2023, I went back to doing Firaxis work part-time as I went full-time at Stockholm University. A tenured academic position is just too tempting a thing to pass up.<\/p>\n For those who might not be familiar with the game, can you tell us a bit more about Civilization VII?<\/em><\/p>\n The Civilization games are a sub-genre of \u201cgrand history\u201d strategy games, where you\u2019re simulating \u2013 or playing with \u2013 global history for a very broad span of time. You take charge of a polity at a point in history and try to guide it through all the vicissitudes of history.<\/p>\n There are a number of other games in the genre, and each does something a little different. Paradox Interactive (for whom I\u2019ve also done a bit of work) makes games focus on simulating historical processes, really getting into how different societies worked and having history or alt-history play out on the map. There\u2019s one that\u2019s a deep dive into feudal politics, one that\u2019s about colonialism, one that\u2019s looking closely at 19th<\/sup> century economics, etc. These are not \u201cgames\u201d in that you\u2019re not on equal footing with other players \u2013 depending on who you choose to play, your goals might be very different: play as a travelling poet across 10th<\/sup> century Tibet, destroy the Papacy as a Viking kingdom, build a Mississippian state that can resist European colonialism, etc.<\/p>\n Civilization (\u201cCiv\u201d) is a little more of a traditional game than this. You choose a civilization and a historical leader, but each player starts on an equal footing as every other \u2013 there\u2019s less of an attempt to simulate history in this way, and more of a game that one can have a defined victory. You can win a few different ways \u2013 you can have the most vibrant culture, the most advanced technology, or you can win by conquest. Your strategy is up to you.<\/p>\n As I mentioned, you also choose a historical figure \u2013 a leader \u2013 in the game. These are figures like Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Ashoka, Catherine the Great, Trung Trac, Tecumseh, among many others. So, for instance, I might play as Ashoka of Maurya and face off against Hatshepsut of Egypt and Augustus of Rome, even those these characters lived in very different times. It used to be that the leaders were tied to particular civilizations, but in Civ 7 we de-linked these to allow for new combinations and to bring in figures that might not be political leaders, but rather artists or visionaries that weren\u2019t necessarily associated with a particular polity.<\/p>\n I think of the leader as the ideology that you\u2019ve chosen, and the civilization as the infrastructure. So if I choose Ashoka and Khmer (an ahistorical combination, of course), I\u2019m going to have a peaceful focus on growth and prosperity, along with cities that adapt well to floods. If I choose Genghis Khan and Mongolia, I had advantages to mounted warfare (but I can be peaceful if I like).<\/p>\n It\u2019s more \u201chistory flavored\u201d than \u201chistorical simulation\u201d. But in the areas where there can be accuracy (in architecture or language, for instance), we try to be as close as we can to historical verisimilitude: Khmer architecture is pretty well researched, Ashoka speaks what he would have in life, and there\u2019s an attempt to get the personalities as recognizable as possible. In addition, there are small stories that you can find in the game, most of which are triggered by a certain situation, a certain character, or a certain civilization. I\u2019ll talk more about this in a bit.<\/p>\n I was hired on as a writer, but quickly found myself doing a lot of things other than writing: answering questions from art and design, for instance. So I kind of proposed a dedicated Historian role, and we now have two full-time historians on staff who do this sort of work.<\/p>\n Describing what I do means describing in general how things work in a game studio. You\u2019ve got different departments that are focused on different aspects of the game. Design, for instance, makes sure that the game works as a game: the pacing is right, the numbers work out, and ultimately that it presents fun challenges to work towards: how do you win, what interesting challenges might you face? Where I might work with them would be in deciding what cultures and figures are interesting for the game and how these might work in terms of design. For instance, we have three versions of Japan in the game: a Heian-era civilization, a Sengoku-era civilization, and a Meiji-era one. Each of these are radically different historical moments in Japanese history, and it\u2019s my job to talk to design about these times and work with them to get to a gameplay that both feels historically right and is fun. Heian, for instance, is historically a time when a elites turned inward \u2013 we have beautiful writing and art from that time, amazing city planning, but a great deal of rural neglect. How might this work in a way that is playable? What historical figures should pop up in your civilization?<\/p>\n Art is the other department we work closely with. What should Heian-era soldiers look like? Poets? Diplomats? Buildings? Sometimes this requires some creativity, especially with places where the historical record is scarce, or where the categories that the game uses don\u2019t exactly fit. For instance, if you\u2019re in the ancient era and research literacy, you can build libraries to increase your scientific knowledge and house works of writing. But we have a few civilizations in the game who did not have writing, and many where libraries as such didn\u2019t exist. Here, I might work with art to see what a library would have looked if it had existed. I suppose another option would be to work with design and ask: if this civilization cannot develop writing, what kind of gameplay would that look like and what other strategies might a player use in that case?<\/p>\n Finally, the historians are housed in the narrative department. Here, we do a few different things. First of all, there\u2019s an in-game resource with short historical articles describing each of the features in the game. There\u2019s two pages on Khmer history, or a few paragraphs describing what a baray (Khmer reservoir) is, or the history of the library, or rocketry. If you printed all of these out, they would be several thousand pages in total \u2013 it\u2019s really a lot. And it\u2019s all written by someone with a PhD.<\/p>\n Then, there\u2019s narrative events. As you play, the game reads what you\u2019re doing and looks for places where we might tell a small story. Sometimes this is taken from a historical moment, sometimes it\u2019s about the technology you\u2019ve researched or your relationship with other players, sometimes it\u2019s tied to the character you\u2019ve been playing. For instance, if you\u2019ve chosen communism as your ideology later in the game, but you\u2019ve stuck to a monarchical government, there\u2019s something to be said there about what exactly that looks like on the ground. Or if you\u2019re struggling with a foreign invasion as the Mughals, you might trigger an event talking about the Sepoy Revolt that could give you an extra boost to fight back. Or perhaps it\u2019s a larger, structural issue: the enclosure of the commons, the rise of the bourgeoisie, industrial living conditions. These are moments where we can tell the player \u201cthis is how you\u2019ve been playing, and this is what the society you\u2019ve made might look like on the ground.\u201d Sometimes these are fun, sometimes they\u2019re tied to pushing you to play the game in a different way, and sometimes they\u2019re ways into real history in ways that might draw players in.<\/p>\n There are also quotations that we display when you research a certain technology, civic, or when you build a world wonder. I try to make these as global as possible, and have each give a kind of perspective on the changes your society undergoes as a result of that technology. We have quotes by Basho, by Walter Benjamin, by the Buddha, from the Preah Khan inscription, by Suzy Eddie Izzard, from Slavoj Zizek \u2013 and then we have these quotes read by Gwendoline Christie (from Game of Thrones<\/em> and Severance<\/em>).<\/p>\n Finally, within narrative we write the leaders. Each leader speaks the language they would have spoken in life. For Ben Franklin, this isn\u2019t difficult, but for some we really had to dig deep to find native speakers (or linguists if we\u2019re dealing in Ancient Egyptian) and local experts that might give us a tip on language, mannerisms, etc. For each of these, we bring in another expert: often a biographer of the person or another academic with an expertise in the time period or the figure, so that we can really get something that\u2019s based as much as the game allows on a real person.<\/p>\n The whole process is an exercise in ADHD. I might be writing a two-page article on Sengoku history and get asked a question like \u201cwhat kind of shoes should Xerxes wear\u201d or \u201cdoes this look like an accurate Tongan ship?\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of the civilizations that I work on, during the later part of Civ 6 and the early part of Civ 7, I worked on everything. As we hired more historians, we were able to divide up the work somewhat. Now, we have Finn Taylor<\/a> who specializes in Scandinavian Studies and Emily Bembenick, who is a Classicist. So I leave Europe and the Middle East to them and do most of the work on Asian cultures, and we will split things where no one has a clear point of expertise.<\/p>\n Within the game, there\u2019s always the chance to really advocate for one or two places that are a passion. Finn, for instance, did the writing and design consultation for Iceland; I put a lot of my own work into Siam.<\/p>\n What about the Civilization games appealed to you as an anthropologist? How has your anthropological training and background informed your work on the game?<\/em><\/p>\n I remember these games from college, and the images that I have in my mind of particular historical moments often came from Civ. So it\u2019s tremendously influential for reaching an audience that might not otherwise be into history, and I take that job quite seriously. In that sense, working on Civ appeals to my teacher instincts more than my anthropological ones, but they\u2019re united in the idea of introducing an audience to languages, architecture, ways of living, etc., that they might not ordinarily have heard of. This might be the only time that a person could hear something in Sumerian, or see the Serpent Mound, or read a quote by Benjamin, and it\u2019s my hope that it sparks a greater interest that people can explore. It certainly did this for me.<\/p>\n It seems like a fair amount of Civilization game play involves conquest and colonialism. How does the game handle sensitive cross-cultural representation in the midst of legacies of such violence?<\/em><\/p>\n This is a good question, and there\u2019s a few answers. The general point is that we take this responsibility for representation quite seriously, and we don\u2019t do it alone. Each representation is done in consultation with historical sources, with outside experts and, where it\u2019s really needed, with the communities themselves.<\/p>\n When we speak of the nastier parts of history, there\u2019s a conflict between wanting to simulate history and wanting to do history better. How do we deal with very real historical practices that would leave a bad taste for a modern audience? In some instances, we avoid it \u2013 there is no slavery in the game, at least not explicitly. Adolf Hitler does not appear in the game (and he won\u2019t). My litmus test is \u201cdoes this thing actively cause damage today, and if we have it in the game, is it likely to be used to cause damage?\u201d Genghis Khan\u2019s conquest of Europe was violent, but it\u2019s long done. Nazi imagery is still used to harm today, and so I leave that out. I don\u2019t want to be in the situation where someone is making a harmful meme using a screenshot from a game that I wrote.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s also the issue of basic game mechanics: this is a game of technological progress, expansion, and competition. To do something that prevented the player from engaging in violent conflict would be to really rethink the core of the game. However, the player can easily win without it \u2013 to make something possible is different from making it the point of the game. \u00a0<\/p>\n Being able to play with themes and as things that you wouldn\u2019t normally agree with is simply a part of play \u2013 we have many games where we play as face-eating aliens. So I don\u2019t feel the need to have every player take on a role that is necessarily morally good. I\u2019d argue that most of the civilizations that we represent here were expansionist and controlling in some sense: the Inca and the Mississippians, Ming China and the Songhai all struggled for power and control, and I might disagree with most of the leaders that we had. I\u2019m not, for instance, going to see eye to eye with Charlemagne or Napoleon, Pachacuti or Genghis Khan. And certain figures I wrote as villains \u2013 Isabella of Castille, for instance, is a less than sympathetic character in my writing (I think, at least).<\/p>\n Finally, there\u2019s the question of representation. Especially if we\u2019re dealing with peoples who have had a history of others telling their stories, this was important. The thing I\u2019m most proud of at Firaxis was how we handled this. We needed to have indigenous North American groups in the game \u2013 it wouldn\u2019t be global history without them, and so we reached out to several groups when we were doing initial planning. I reached out to the Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes. It turns out Chief Barnes is a fan of the game, and this started a long and extremely fruitful cooperation between Firaxis and the Shawnee, where members of the tribe (including Barnes and Karl Meyer) gave extensive feedback, suggestions, notes, and input into how the Shawnee were portrayed in terms of design, art, and narrative, and especially the figure of Tecumseh. We also helped fund a language revitalization school in Oklahoma for the Shawnee language. I\u2019m really proud of how this turned out, and I think they are too. There are some great livestreams featuring the Shawnee in-studio that I encourage everyone to check out.<\/p>\n You can see this attention to detail, too, in the music in the game. Our music is drawn often from local performers, in local languages, and using traditional instruments (where possible).<\/p>\n Finally, one thing that an anthropologist can really help out with in these sorts of things is in avoiding a lot of the traps that a lay writer might fall into. Namely, Orientalism or exoticism. I found myself a constant voice reminding artists and designers to situate in a global context even what an American studio might think of as \u201cdistant\u201d \u2013 to have modern figures from the non-West (Jose Rizal, for instance), and to feature modern versions of non-Western places (e.g. Chulalongkorn-era Siam).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thegeekanthropologist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/title.jpg?w=670\")
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