4X games may sound incredibly reductive on the surface. After all, this is the only genre of game whose name is also a decree about how you should play – eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. But as any fan will tell you, 4X games are actually bustling sandboxes that can be tackled in all kinds of ways. For some players, that could mean eschewing military action or research or trying to make do with a single settlement. For others, it could mean trying to rewrite the historical events depicted – whether out of mischief, or in an effort to challenge narratives about the past that loom large in present-day politics.
Some 4X games lean into this spirit of eXperimentation. Take Syphilisation from Indian developer Nikhil Murthy, a “post-colonial 4X” and intricate parody of Civilization, centring on colonial India during the time of the British Raj. The game includes familiar 4X concepts and systems, but attempts to reframe “human struggle as a common striving for a better world rather than a competition between ourselves”, though whether this ideal comes to fruition is up to the player. Rather than a government or ruler, the game casts you as one member of a group of research students, who put together their own interpretations of figures like Gandhi and Churchill while moving units and building cities.
I’m fascinated by Syphilisation, and got chatting with Nikhil on Twitter earlier this year. In one of those magical opportunities, it turns out he’s friends with Ryan Sumo, a prominent member of the Philippine gamedev scene and developer of cute-but-cutthroat election sim Political Animals, who is nowadays a business owner for Europa Universalis IV and Victoria 3 at grand strategy household Paradox Interactive. Ryan, it transpires, is friends with Firaxis veteran Jon Shafer, designer of Civilization IV: Warlords and Beyond The Sword, and lead designer of Civilization V. We all got together one very nerdy Friday afternoon to discuss uninvestigated possibilities in collaboration systems and map design, and how this most imperial of genres can shapeshift in the hands of players and developers from former colonies. The below is a transcript of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
