Despite its grisly undertones, I find myself enjoying New World. From its treatment of workers to its tax avoidance and environmental record, the conglomerate is arguably one of the most exploitative organizations in the world, an aggressive colonizer in its own right.
It’s interesting, too, that New World is developed by a company as controversial as Amazon. It is made, and will be played, by the heirs to that colonization.Ĭrafting in New World. This game is undoubtedly a violent expression of 17th-century Atlantic colonization and ought to be treated as such. You could argue that this is precisely how 17th-century Europeans viewed the new world. “The lore of the game is that there’s a tainted aspect to this world, that it’s a garden of Eden that has fallen from grace.” “That’s not really been a focus at all,” he said. And this is a video game that seems to literalize that disturbing metaphor.ĭuring an interview with studio head Patrick Gilmore, I put a version of this notion to him. To the white men, here was evidence that these wretched men, women, and children had been abandoned by God, marked by providence for extinction. When first encountered by white explorers, they were often found to be in the grip of plague. The indigenous peoples were susceptible to common Old World pathogens. The settlers came to believe that these lives were worth less than their own, because the indigenous peoples did not engage in monotheism or (in North America) the building of cities, or the printing of books or the forging of steel weapons. Amazon Game Studios Old World pathogensĮuropean settlers generally believed that newly discovered lands were forfeit, because the indigenous peoples did not display Eurasian-style ownership and development. But I’m struck by how closely these semi-humans cleave to the exterminative view that most 17th-century colonists held of the people they found in newly discovered lands. The game’s lore says they are “former settlers,” who have been corrupted by the island. They aren’t portrayed like, say, the Wampanoag peoples that the Pilgrims encountered, or the Algonquian-speaking civilizations of pre-invasion Virginia.
They are shuffling zombies, variously called “Corrupted,” or “Withered.” They don’t have identifiable cultures, but they are extremely hostile to settlers. except there are human-like creatures on this Atlantic shoreline. And according to developer Amazon Game Studios, it’s not really about invasion or America.Įxcept. Players can use magic, for healing and such, as well as technologies like gunpowder and flintlock rifles. The world includes ancient artifacts from a lost civilization. The geography feels like an imagined, pre-colonized British America, with woodlands, lush meadows, swamps and mountain ridges. In the player-character creation tool - which I have not seen - I’m told I can select from two genders and a variety of races. That said, the colonists are not explicitly Europeans. New World’s colonists wear the sort of clothes and armor you might expect to see in a fictional account of 17th-century Europe, around the time of the Plymouth Colony. The timeframe is the mid-1600s, which is the same period as the first settlements by English colonists in North America. The game is set in a fictional landmass in the Atlantic, located near Bermuda. Perhaps I wage war, killing them to take their homes and their resources. With my people, I defend our settlement from rivals. I specialize in warfare or building or farming or manufacturing. I team up with others and build a settlement. Here’s the setup: I am a settler, who’s landed on the pristine shores of a “new world.” I own nothing. The game treads unwarily into a Heart of Darkness-like country of racist imperialism. It’s a manifestation of the great white fantasy of virgin territory and new beginnings.
I become part of a guild that creates our own culture, which can range from murderous warmongering to utopian idealism.īut New World is also a sanitized re-enactment of the European colonization of the Americas and elsewhere. It’s a team-based player-vs-player survival game with elements of exploration, resource exploitation, and expansion. But New World is also perplexing and, worse, problematic. This open-world adventure game teems with personality, teamwork, crafting, and combat.
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