When Napoleon looked over the frozen fields around the Pratzen heights, what did he see? Did he think of his army primarily in terms of battalions or regiments or brigades or divisions? How did he imagine the battlefield or the limits of his own command? Historical games often ask us to embody specific decision makers in the past, but to what degree should we let their subjectivity guide the models we use to design our games. In this talk, Cole Wehrle will consider how historical games have dealt with questions of perspective in the past and consider what designers stand to gain from wrestling with these subjectivities.

Cole Wehrle is an ex-academic who decided to abandon the lucrative field of Victorian studies in favor of game publishing. He works as the creative director at Leder Games in Saint Paul and is best known for the award-winning game Root, which uses a children's book aesthetic to explore the politics of police states and insurgency. Root and its expansions have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have been translated into nearly twenty languages. He is also the cofounder of Wehrlegig Games with his brother Drew Wehrle, which handles the publication of his historical games which cover subjects related to his academic work including state formation in 19th century Afghanistan (Pax Pamir) and the rise and collapse of the British East India Company (John Company).

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