Thoughts and Questions about the Decades Challenge (Emotions, Ethics and Historical Perspective)

I haven't done the full decades challenge, I've confined my game play to one decade but I have read a few decades challenge stories/write ups and some do cover non-American settings.

The obvious one here is @Daravi 's Kaufman Family Decades Challenge, which is about a German family and is mainly set in Germany. It's been updated recently so should be on the first couple of pages here. I thought that had an interesting take on war and dictatorships.

Other decades challenges I've read begin in the UK so they could use the Henford-on-Bagley setting for the start before moving to the US in later decades.

As for the morality and ethics...well, I'm usually gung-ho about writing and I've never issued a NSFW or trigger warning on my material. I wouldn't be offended by real, truthful history being written into a story but whereas the game restricts what you can portray, those tragic and horrific events in history can be mentioned or alluded to. I think it would be odd if they weren't mentioned.

Modern events presents a real life problem in that within our lifetimes there's been a lot of controversial events and with social media often being an unrestrained battle ground of anger and emotion and what could have been discussed more calmly decades ago now comes with risks of starting a fight between people. I don't know how my readers will react to me mentioning something like sexuality, gender, race, political opinions or world views so I just plough on with the story as I think it should be and hope that no one is seriously offended. So far, so good.

When writing historical stories the best ones, my favourite ones, stay true to the era in terms of the way people speak and their attitudes of the time. Unless they're actual villains no one is a villain of their own story. They are shaped by their time and culture so we, as readers, should cut them some slack when they fail to measure up to modern sensibilities.

Part of the fun of writing historical simlit is adopting the speech patterns, slang and idioms of the time period. But I have to admit, I picked one of the most stylish and visually pleasing decades of the 20th century so, yeah, vintage aesthetics is very important to me.

I think these are good questions. I'm curious to see what people think.

Some things probably shouldn't be depicted in the game or on the forums, such as genocide and slavery.

I'm sure someone somewhere could find a tactful way to do it, but it's not something I think would be appropriate, or fun, to do in a game, personally. Obviously the evils of genocide and slavery need to be stated, but playing them in a game probably isn't the way to do that. I think stories can be told in a way that respectfully work around those aspects.

For me personally, I play as if things are based on things that happen in history, but aren't history exactly. I haven't gotten very far in my game, but when it comes to things like race, I play it as if it's an alternate world. No body cares what your skin color is in my game. I'm not going to play racism, even if it is a thing that happened in history, and still happens.

That being said, I can also throw in some magical/fantasy elements if I want to and it's totally okay. :)

I haven't gotten to a war yet, but I don't plan on being very detailed with it. Just mentioning I think would be fine. You have to do what your comfortable doing.

There's so much persecution of many different people groups throughout history, making mentions of these things or telling stories of people who have overcome is great, but being able to depict that would be very difficult. I wouldn't fault anyone for trying though, as long as it was done in an appropriate way. Like, we wouldn't need all the nitty gritty details.

Hope that makes sense.

"Kellogg_J_Kellogg;c-18343297" wrote:
I wouldn't be offended by real, truthful history being written into a story but whereas the game restricts what you can portray, those tragic and horrific events in history can be mentioned or alluded to.

I can agree with this. I think that's what I was trying to say, with things being mentioned or alluded to, but not played out.

To be honest, the Decades Challenge when it's played as written and from a United States perspective makes me slightly uncomfortable. Many people in America are still dealing with the negative effects of historical injustices, so to see them glossed over, ignored, trivialized and gameified for someone's entertainment is a bit ... I don't think we can discuss this in detail here and I want people to enjoy learning about history, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

I also don't think there's anything wrong with a video game or any other medium handling serious topics. People can learn from anything. I just personally don't like huge issues trivialized or completely ignored/erased unless someone establishes that they're doing that from the beginning and explains why (e.g. alternative past showing how things could have or should have been).

In general, the EU/UK Decades Challenges that I've seen have had a better treatment of history than the US ones and some on the forum have been excellent. But I've still seen problematic things. It's obvious that people don't mean harm, though, so I rarely say anything.

ETA: I love history a lot and spent many many years studying it, so I don't think my POV is normal. Most people seem to really enjoy these challenges, just have fun with them, and don't think too deeply about it. I think that's okay.

@Kellogg_J_Kellogg
Thanks for telling me about @Daravi 's interpretation. I will go and check it out!

And yes, I guess a lot of events can only be mentioned and talked about, but I feel like one can make a lot of mistakes this way too...

And I absolutely agree that historical stories are best if the characters act and develop in a way that feels suitable to their time. I liked that about series like Downton Abbey or Anne with an E, for example. They also portrait characters saying things that would definitely be inappropriate today and I felt by doing so they created a much more respectful story by acknowledging the problems. And I've also seen series where basically every character was inexplicably open-minded and modern to the point that it made the story feel rather ridiculous.

Writing historically adequate speech feels like a huge challenge!

@Belalucina
Don't worry, I'm not thinking about depicting disturbing things by playing them out and taking screenshots! But like I said above, I feel like even by mentioning (or not mentioning) some events there's a risk for making mistakes.

And yes, I can appreciate alternate world historical stories, too. I liked that about the Bridgerton series. At first I was confused, but I think they did a great job with the series and it even feels more accurate to me than a lot of other historical stories, haha. But it probably helps that it's set at a more distant past.

@haneul
Yes, feeling uncomfortable was also my experience when reading the rules of the challenge.

I haven't been around that long here yet, so I have only read @JAL 's version so far and I appreciate the amount of research that they've done. I also liked that WW1 was handled a lot more deeply and nuanced than the rules would have suggested. I would be really curious to know if you've already thought about the later decades @JAL

I don't know much about the history education in other countries, but I think here in Germany it's taken very seriously and NS Germany (the German abbreviation for the word that the forum doesn't allow me to write) has been a topic on multiple occasions and in different subjects during my school career, so that's probably the source for my thoughts and worries.

@flauschtrud
Oh, I didn't think you were going to do that! I guess I was just thinking aloud, as I've had some of the same questions.

@Kellogg_J_Kellogg and @flauschtrud Thank you for mentioning :)

I have played the decade challenge from the german pov. It was a hardmode version of the decade challenge to be honest, but it was intensive, so I sticked in that game and still playing it. I liked to dig deep through newspaper archives to see how different people saw the things. Some history events I have heard about in the school, others through the research, since the 1930/1940 are overwelming every event before that time period. When it comes to darktimes, it was like the voldemorts effect but the german language can be quite creative to avoid mention the obvious, and batuu was published at the same time, which was helpful in a weird way. Anyhow, since I have just posted here in the forum I'm not allowed write about anything which is against the forum rules and it was always my fear that I may have pushed it to hard and someone would feel offended. But luckely no one had complained so far to me.

Some time episodes I have played through, like the unrests/fights after ww1, and also the arrest of the opposition, and have builded a normal prison for that group. I have touch the subjects but didn't write much about it. The crimes against the humanity I had never played, to play that would be just disgusting in my eyes. I even let escape my sims in time, since there was a chance and germany was until the 1960 an emigration nation. So I put the writer's freedom card from time to time, because I didn't want to deal with it for my families. The death count at the end of ww2 was still depressing and devasting, since I had death rolls (a second roll for the evil and mean sims in uniforms) for every family who had lived in the designated area. After that I was so done with the war in game, that I needed a break. But since I had also made ruins, the survivers needed to live together, so new families were created too, the results were quite fasicating.

Since you were asking about the second half of the 20th, I wish I could have really set some sims in the gdr (where I was born) but this game lacks so hard of east european furnitures, so even with a high imagination skill I couldn't rebuild any gdr style apartment. I've tried, but the result was underwhelming. It should have been a 1960s style, but it was a late 1980s style in the end, so I gave up and set the family in west germany, since everything from the allied forces homelands became modern in Germany after 5 - 10 years.

If someone want to play it from a european point of view, there are lot of exception from the rules, because not many of them fit to europe. As far as I understand the american decade challenge starts with a poor rural family/single sims. In my case I let my founders started in a poor conditioned tenement, to show their low society ranks.

@flauschtrud Such an interesting topic! As a European myself I've thought a lot about possibly doing another decades challenge in Europe after I'm (eventually) done with this (I'd have an idea about the Munch family as a starting point) and I've gone into more thought than what is probably healthy on what the differences in rules would have to be. I might or might not have an entire list of adapted rules that are far too complicated for my own good if I ever decided to play a European version.

As you mentioned, I try not to gloss over the hard stuff. As a history teacher being faithful to the time is important to me, and as you know I tend not to shy away from hard topics and sadness, even if the game makes it hard sometimes (like a painting and a good meal making up for the fact that the love of your life just died a few hours ago). That said, there are issues that are incredibly hard to deal with in game, issues like racism being one of them. I've actually thought a lot about the future decades and how to deal with segregation as the game for obvious reasons don't have mechanics for that, and it's difficult to portray in any real sense that gives the weight to the issue that it deserves. I have no answers yet, but in general, my philosophy has been to not skip over any hard issues but let them impact my writing even if they can't make it into the screenshots. I can sympathise with @Kellogg_J_Kellogg in that I write what I write without trigger warnings and hope people won't be too offended. I don't like glossing over the hard stuff in life, but I cannot say that I don't think about what people might be hurt by. How would someone react if my Frank for instance slapped Emily? Not unthinkable considering how much he drinks and how much they fight, but would that be taking things too far? (For me the answer is no, and if the shove interaction did show up when they fought, I would probably not hesitate to use it, but I haven't gone looking for it either.)

As for WW2, I wouldn't mind portraying most of the hardships of war. Losing your house, people being bombed out of their homes, people being killed, I had all that for WW1, so that wouldn't be something I shy away from, even in more resent time. When it comes to the more atrocious parts of war, in Europe, Korea or Vietnam, I would definitely mention them, for even if it might feel disrespectful to sort of "use" them for entertainment, it would feel even more disrespectful not to mention them.

I don't know if that answered any of your questions at all. :)

As per usual with anything that comes out of my mouth, I don't know if my answers will help at all. But as we all know I love to talk, so here goes. Sorry I'm only answering one of these questions, I'm not sure what I'd say to the second one about more recent events.

So the trouble is I'm not playing a Decades challenge, so I am only answering half the question but I am writing a historical story, based on...well it's a bit of a mess because it's inspired by everything between the 1600s to the 1800s. : P

Should stories that inevitably involve war, dictatorship, loss of home, persecution and genocide be told at all with a cutesy video game? Spoiler cut for neatness.



I hope this makes some level of sense. : P

@SnowBnuuy I think you said it very well, and I agree. History isn't always pretty and trying to tell history without its ugly part becomes, in my mind, sort of pointless. Then it's all the pretty clothes and nothing else. That can be fun escapism, but it's not history.

I also sometimes do think the decades challenge is a bit 'gimmicky' and over simplified (it's the depression, don't pay your bills until the power is shut off and only live of what you can scavenge for few days then go back to normal), but it can also be a great inspiration for deeper play if you want it to be. For me, I've come to realise that I get bored if everything is too easy, and I like my sims going through hard stuff sometimes.