Sphinx

It is a very long time indeed since I had the time or energy to get involved with any computer games – I think the last time was when I embarked on Final Fantasy VII as a means of bonding with my then newly-acquired stepchildren – but there are times when it seems at least a little tempting. It was always the complex strategy and administration games that appealed the most, above all my lovingly tended low-rise, high-tech and eco-friendly utopia in SimCity (its only flaw being the refusal of that version of the programme to support the creation of allotments and urban beekeeping), and so I am probably part of the target audience for Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece, which allows you to recreate the fifth and fourth centuries BCE as the Spartans, Athenians or Macedonians. One reason why it’s especially tempting at the moment is that it’s obvious how far the designers have drawn on Thucydides, at least in the way they’re advertising it, and so I could almost claim this as a work-related activity; after all, what better test of our interpretations of Thucydides than playing out his analysis of the Peloponnesian War again and again? Maybe not; if the designers have indeed read a lot of Thucydides, it’s entirely possible that the game system – the new “diplomacy engine”, for example – is precisely calibrated so that the conventional ‘Thucydidean’ version is the optimal strategy, and so it won’t be any real test. Unless, of course, they’re political subversives, seeking to establish that the ‘might is right’ approach of the Melian Dialogue automatically leads to catastrophe, and the optimal strategy is one that respects Greek tradition and international norms. No, must stop thinking about this, I really can’t afford the time…