Simulating medieval connections: Grand strategy games and social network analysis

This article explores the potential of relationship-based computer games as simulation software for qualitative network research, using a case study on the inter-personal dynamics of medieval aristocratic networks, with the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas (12^th-13^th c.) as its source material. It shows how video games can be helpful in qualitative readings of medieval networks, their progression, and their internal motivations, on a temporal, interactive basis. One of the key characteristics of strategic games is the endowment of non-player characters (NPCs) with attributes which are reflected in an algorithm determining the outcomes of interaction; the algorithm predicts conflicts and network patterns when characters with different attributes engage with one another. NPC modelling offers a distinctive way of analysing relationships within medieval networks: how, when, and why they develop, progress, and disintegrate. This tool could be game-changing in fields of pre-modern network studies more widely, as it would allow for repeated modelling of network structures in historiographical narratives, altering variables to assess the possible impact of different types of network formation, political priorities, strategies of kinship and the pathways open to agents, resulting in the ability to filter research questions and hypotheses with which to return to the original evidence.