Treasure, Swordfights, and Plantations: Romantic Pirates and the Postcolonial in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Abstract

Tales of piracy are influenced by popular media that romanticize it. For instance, Treasure Island and Pirates of the Caribbean created a romantic pirate image, with specific pirate tropes that now everyone is familiar with. This romantic pirate image is based upon Caribbean pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy. A current game, namely; Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (Ubisoft Montreal, 2013), that is settled within this Golden Age of Piracy in the colonial Caribbean around 1715 also deals with the romanticization of piracy. This is because consumers have certain expectations when it comes to pirates. This period of time being dominated by colonialism causes that the representation of piracy in popular media is tied up with the representation of colonialism, and consequently the subaltern. A romantic representation of Caribbean pirates could therefore be problematic for their representation. For this reason, this research adds to the existing debate surrounding postcolonialism and game studies by focusing on how/whether romanticization affects the representation of colonialism, and consequently the subaltern. The research uses a plurality of play, because play explains whether the subaltern is controlled or been given agency, and because playing in a different way than following the game allows for new insights. Hereby have implied play and exploratory play been used to investigate how piracy is represented while playing according to the rules. Transgressive play is further used in order to investigate what the boundaries of the representation of piracy are, and what the role of the player is. All of this has then been placed in relation to the romantic pirate genre, and representation of the subaltern. The research concludes that the rules of the game, regardless of the player’s role, create romance as the overarching narrative. The subaltern is hereby suppressed and silenced because they are represented in a problematic counterfactual way, and because truthful representations relating to the subaltern are silenced. For these reasons, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag does not contain postcolonial perspectives, and romanticizes Caribbean pirates together with the colonial Caribbean.