Kingdom Come and the real Middle Ages: Can video games teach us history?
The success of Kingdom Come: Deliverance has done more than put medieval Bohemia on computer screens around the world. Players are increasingly travelling to the real places depicted in the game, including Sázava and its medieval monastery. Jan Kremer, game historian at Charles University and National Film Institute (NFÚ) researcher says games can inspire people to explore history – but understanding how they construct their version of the past may be just as important as asking whether every detail is accurate.
For centuries, the Sázava Monastery attracted pilgrims, historians and visitors interested in one of the oldest monastic centres in the Czech lands. More recently, however, a rather different group has joined them: video game players. The monastery and the surrounding region feature prominently in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the Czech-made role-playing game set in Bohemia at the beginning of the 15th century. Other real locations appearing in the game include Rataje nad Sázavou, Stříbrná Skalice and the site of the medieval Talmberk castle.
The connection between the virtual and real landscapes has become strong enough to affect tourism. Sázava Monastery received some 12,700 visitors in 2025, six percent more than the previous year, with the popularity of Kingdom Come cited as one of the factors behind the increase.
But does playing a historically inspired game actually help people understand history? Historian Jan Kremer says the debate often falls between two extremes.
“Traditional historians sometimes reject games as such and criticize them. But at the other extreme, we have some teachers or players who praise games as some kind of holy grail of historical education, saying that they can bring us new knowledge of the past."
“And the second reason why we as historians think that historical games are super useful is that they can teach us how history is constructed, how it is created. What we know from the past for sure are facts, but they represent only a small part of what took place in the past. So the rest is a story and narrative. We have to configure the facts, interpret them and select them, as archaeologists, as historians, and even as game developers.”
That distinction is important. A historical game is not a time machine. Like a historical novel or film, it takes evidence about the past and turns it into a narrative. Unlike those media, however, games allow players to participate in that narrative and make choices within it.
Kremer says this interactive quality can make games particularly powerful: “Every generation, or even every social group, has its favorite media. Games nowadays are very good, as you’ve mentioned, in their immersiveness, in transporting meanings and skills – a quality which is called procedural rhetoric, a term coined by Ian Bogost, who is also a game researcher.
“But still, we can say that historical games can’t really replace teachers or professors at schools. But they can complement them. They can help some of their players or students to understand history better. But we already have studies where, for example, when teachers introduce historical games in history classes, some of the students are happy, but some of them refuse to play certain games. So it depends on every group, on every individual.”
A game still has to be a game
That also raises an obvious question about Kingdom Come itself. Its developers have placed considerable emphasis on creating a convincing medieval environment. Yet however carefully researched a game may be, historical accuracy cannot be its only purpose.
Kremer argues that simply checking which individual details are right or wrong misses a more interesting question: how and why a particular image of history has been created.
“We as historians really don’t judge or fact-check history in games, or in movies or literature, as some traditional historians do. We mostly analyze how the history in the game was constructed, why it was constructed in this way and how it is perceived by contemporary players. I think that this makes much more sense and it’s much more fun for us.
“Games have to be games. They have to work as games, function as games. So they have to be entertaining. They have to be successful economically. They have to be well reviewed. And if they inspire us to learn more about history, the better. But their purpose is not to teach us history. And this is the same with historical movies, historical books, historical comics. This is the same in all popular history, including games.”
From the screen to Sázava.
Perhaps the most tangible consequence of Kingdom Come’s success can be seen outside the game altogether. The town of Sázava has created a route taking fans to locations associated with the game and comparing its medieval world with the landscape they encounter today. And Kremer himself was speaking from one of those places – the gardens of Sázava Monastery – where he conducts tours specifically for Kingdom Come players.
“It’s actually a nice coincidence that I’m just walking through the gardens at the Sázava Monastery talking to you, but you are right. Games bring more tourists inspired by games to the places where they take place. And what I’m doing here is guided tours, especially for players of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
“This is a well-known effect that we know even from, for example, historical books, historical comics or historical movies. It is even an effect which is coined by the term ‘Braveheart effect’, because after the release of the Oscar-winning historical movie Braveheart, the number of tourists pouring into the castles where it took place was really on the rise for a few years.
“So this is what is actually happening here at the Sázava Monastery, where there are more and more tourists coming, inspired by playing the game. But this is something which is maybe connected to our longing to have some authentic experiences. We have to see it, to touch it, to experience it. And this is what we can do at the authentic places.
“We can do it in the games, but this is the same that we can do in the new trends that we see in tourism, like heritage tourism, but even living history and historical reenactment. These are hobbies that allow people to have some kind of perceived, at least, authentic experience of the past, or of some popular history that they love, like playing historical games.” Kingdom Come may therefore never be able to show players exactly what medieval Bohemia was like – nor, Kremer argues, should that be expected of it. Its impact may lie elsewhere: in making thousands of people curious enough about the past to leave the virtual landscape behind and go looking for the real one.
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