1 #MAMG21 There is a disconnect between what is understood as "Medieval" in pop-culture and the broader cultural unconscious (see: Henderson, 1988) and the Middle Ages as understood in academia, which informs its views from the literature and cultural artifacts of the time.
2 #MAMG21 Public discourse on the Middle Ages takes a myopic view of the period, focusing on an Arthurian aesthetic of European kings and knights on errant. Academics, on the other hand, understand the Middle Ages as a rich tapestry of diverse networked cultures (Rashidi 2011). 
3 #MAMG21 These clashing views of history have a curious effect on games. Since pop-culture often imagines the Middle Ages as white-only spaces, attempts at making mimetic virtual spaces often result in games with accurate architecture and anachronistic characters & stories.
4 #MAMG21 As such it may be possible that contemporary fantasy games loosely informed by a Medieval aesthetic recreate a more authentic experience of a Medieval ethos- at least as far as race, ethnicity, & culture is concerned- than attempts at creating more mimetic play spaces.
5 #MAMG21 Consider Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a solid game set in the Kingdom of Bohemia circa 1400 A.D. It made headlines due to the creative design choice to include characters exclusively of Nordic traits despite mounting evidence that there had been encounters with Moors.
6 #MAMG21 Another game that seems to discard their presence is Innocence: A Plague Tale. Set in 14th century France, the game follows two siblings as they escape rats, the plague, and the Inquisition. The game likewise fails to include characters with North African traits.
7 #MAMG21 Certainly, an argument can be made that these games were designed with the populations indigenous to those areas in mind and that it would have been unlikely to see a person of African origin in those specific few kilometers in those specific dates.
8 #MAMG21 However, as someone familiar with trade routes and networks in the Middle Ages and with the history of Medieval war, as well as with the art and literature of the time, I found their omission jarring.
9 #MAMG21 Medieval-Fantasy games, on the other hand, seem to more faithfully recreate the ethos of the Middle Ages. While this is specially true of games in The Elder Scrolls series, it's also true of several Assassin's Creed titles and MMOs like Black Desert Online.
10 #MAMG21 When designers are not constrained by notions of what pop-culture claims is Medieval, they become unshackled from stereotypes of Middle Ages as white-only spaces and create games that are, ironically, more faithful to the Medieval zeitgeist than realistic simulations.
11 #MAMG21 To be clear, this is not a re-litigation on whether there were PoC in the Middle Ages: we know there were, from vikings to the Golden Age and beyond; nor is it a call for designers to redesign their games - they have the artistic freedom to do as they will.
12 #MAMG21 It is, however, a statement on how sometimes what we imagine to be historically accurate due to the influence of pop-culture might be counter-factual, and that the fantastic spaces inspired by these histories might depict networks & spaces that feel closer to reality.
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