“Or Perish in the Attempt”: Choice versus History in the Videogame Meriwether

"Meaningful choice" is a foundational concept in game design; it exhorts designers to present players with a variety of decisions that do not have predictable, telegraphed outcomes and offer the opportunity to experiment with and develop various winning strategies in the game. An immediate problem arises, however, when designers attempt to apply the concept of "meaningful choice" to historical games. What "choice" can players be allowed in such a game without creating revisionist, anachronistic, or patently ahistorical interpretations of past events? This presentation by Carlos Hernandez, game designer and lead writer on Meriwether, a computer roleplaying game that follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition, will explore some solutions the design team made as it balanced meaningful choices with historical rigor. Those solutions include: 1) Using lacunae in the historical record as places to insert player choice; 2) Turning current historical debates into "test-cases" the players may experiment with in-game; 3) Focusing on creating an experience of "encountering the unknown" by creating mechanics that allow for re-playability; and 4) Leveraging the "metagame"--the out-of-game conversation between players--as a point of departure to debrief and continue discussion about the game's representation of history. Together, these four solutions show that games can offer new opportunities for presenting historical concepts and new methods that can enhance the cultural conversation surrounding past events.