Everything Is Permitted

"Powerfully written and deeply original, Everything Is Permitted offers productive interventions into the brand and franchise that makes Assassin’s Creed a cultural and economic force. Cameron Kunzelman does an excellent job showing the systemic, historical, and futuristic ways the elements in Assassin’s Creed enact themselves on gaming, economic structures, design, public reception, and play. A vital contribution."—Kishonna L. Gray, author of Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming

"With Everything Is Permitted, Cameron Kunzelman offers a detailed, sustained engagement with one of the most iconic franchises in game history. With a clear and lively voice, the scholar and cultural critic demonstrates a profound understanding of the Assassin’s Creed universe, grappling with exactly how and why that world and its themes matter to us so much."—Soraya Murray, author of On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender, and Space

An entertaining deep dive into the world, gameplay, and evolution of the hugely successful Assassin’s Creed video game franchise​

A hooded figure stands in a bell tower overlooking medieval Jerusalem, surveying his prey. Parkour-style, he leaps down into the square to kill his target before vanishing into the crowd . . .

Released in fall 2007, Assassin’s Creed transformed video gaming. Across more than a dozen franchise entries, players engage with the eternal conflict between the Order of Assassins and the nefarious Templar Order, carrying out missions in a series of painstakingly rendered historical settings, from the Holy Lands during the Third Crusade to Renaissance Italy, the Age of Piracy, the French Revolution, and Victorian London. Everything is Permitted is an analysis of the development, evolution, gameplay, and world-building of this sprawling and distinctive franchise.

Cameron Kunzelman examines key themes and concepts that connect the games in the series. Combining close readings of the games themselves with discussion of the broader landscape of video game franchises since its initial release, he uncovers what it means for a game to be part of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Kunzelman maps the elements that contribute to the immersiveness and continual playability of the games, showing how historically inflected conspiracies and science fictional premises ground the fantastical stories the games tell on a massive scale.

Diving into the real-world histories and ideas that the game designers used for inspiration, Kunzelman argues that the virtual conflicts between the franchise’s opposing sides offer intriguing insights into actual reality, from ethical dilemmas to the roles of freedom and fate. He demonstrates how, by incorporating themes of means and ends, control and freedom into its gameplay, the franchise engages with profound questions in a sustained, long-form way that is unique among video games. As the Assassins say, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”

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Cameron Kunzelman is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre at Mercer University. He is author of The World Is Born from Zero: Speculation and Video Games, and his writing about video games has appeared in Kotaku, Polygon, and Vice. He podcasts about culture at Ranged Touch.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Developing Scale

Part I. Concepts

1. The Animus

2. The First Civilization

3. Conspiracy

Part II. Considerations

4. Ezio Auditore’s Tragic Open World

5. Black Flag and the Pirate Utopia

6. Playing the Enemy

7. Reconstructing History

Conclusion: Beyond the Creed

Notes

Index