Playing (Against) the Heritage: Absolutism and the French Revolution in French Digital Games Before 2000

Abstract

This article demonstrates how digital games can confirm or subvert national historical discourses. The author analyzes selected 20^th-century French historical adventure digital games about absolutist France and the subsequent French Revolution. Although most of them focused on reconstructing the era (e.g., the state-funded Versailles 1685), the emphasis is placed on two games by Patrick Beaujouan (Le Passager du temps and Conspiration de l’an III). Their subversive content undermined the sense of reconstructing historical events on the screen. However, as the author concludes, the subversive content of Beaujouan’s games had its prize because they lacked the technical and institutional support that restorative projects such as Versailles 1685 had. However, Beaujouan’s games show that every “historical” game tells us more about contemporary discourses than past events.