11: Adapting Medieval Indonesia at Sengkala Dev

Muhammad Abdul Karim, @Pedalahusa, Sengkala Dev

Nowadays video games are very popular throughout modern society and we can’t separate the two easily. From 1972, Pong, become very popular28 and pushed video games to evolved not only in the sport genre, but across many genre and platform to fulfil the market demand: including the historical genre. Historical games are very interesting as the players can enjoy and learn about the past. Many historical games use the Medieval era as their background, but games set in this period are mostly set in Europe. But now with emerging indie game developers, players can find non-Eurocentric medieval games including historical games from Indonesia.

The history of Indonesian game developers can tracked with Matahari studio founded in 1998 and dissolved in 2010.29 Several local developers were founded in the 2000’s and several of these developers made Indonesian historical games like Nusantara Online published in 25 Febuary 2010 by Nusantara Wahana and developed by Sangkuriang Studio and Telegraph Studio. This game set in Indonesia’s anicent era at Srivijaya, Majapahit, and Pajajaran era is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).

From the early 2010’s, more Indonesian developers founded either small or big studios including Sengkala Dev. Sengkala Dev was founded in November 2015 under name “Pedalahusa Project Developer” and later change to Sengkala Dev. We focus on historical strategy games set in Indonesia since there are not many historical strategy games set in Indonesia, and especially few from Indonesian developers. Our first project was Fall of Bali from November 2015-January 2017. We started the project called Perang Laut-Maritime Warfare from May 2017 to June 2019. On 27 October 2021 this project was released on Steam. This game focuses on the history of Indonesia’s maritime world from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth Century. Dato of Srivijaya released on 16 December 2020 focuses on the rise of the Srivijaya empire from the seventh century to the tenth century.

According to the National History of Indonesia series, the official history of Indonesia, Indonesian historians call Indonesia’s medieval an ancient era/“masa kuno”.30 Another historian calls this period the “Hindu-Budha” era since in this time, there were many Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms. So in general, there are no medieval era in Indonesia. But if we are looking for a period contemporary to the European Middle Ages, Indonesia’s ancient era is the answer. The ancient era start from the fourth century when inscription about the Kutai Kingdom founded . This era ended in middle fifteenth

28 Carl Therien (2012) Video Games Caught Up in History. Before the Crash: Early Video Game History. Detriot: Wayne State University Press.hlm 19 29 https://tekno.tempo.co/read/228418/game-nusantara-online-sudah-bisadimainkan#:~:text=Nusantara%20Online%20adalah%20game%20yang,%2C%20arsitektur%2C%20sampai%20t ata%20busananya. (Accessed in 9 August 2022) 30 Sejarah Nasional Indonesia or National History of Indonesia is offical book published by Balai Pustaka and compiled by many notable Indonesia’s historian and archeologist. There are 6 books from pre-history (first volume), ancient era(second volume), rise of sultanates(third volume), rise of colonialism(fourth volume), rise of nationalism and Dutch East Indies(fifth volume), Japanese occupation and Republic of Indonesia era(sixth volume).

29

century when the Majapahit empire collapsed while many Islam states rose across the archipelago like Aceh, Ternate, and Demak.

Fig. 11.1: Six volume of National History of Indonesia. Collection of Al-Hasanah Primary School library, Ciledug Distirct, Tangerang City, Banten Province, Indonesia. Photo taken in 8 June 2022.

In the ancient era, there were many kingdoms in Indonesia archipelago but the most important in Indonesian history are the Srivijaya empire (7th to 13th centuries) and Majapahit empire (14th to 15th centuries). Srivijaya and Majapahit were geographically large and covered most of Indonesia. This has made Srivijaya and Majapahit important to Indonesian nationalism. In making Perang Laut-Maritime Warfare, we initially randomized many maritime states through history but later, we decide the era of this game is late medieval into early modern.

As we did with our previous project, Pedalahusa Fall of Bali, we used many books and journals for reference since the scope of this era is very big. The key medieval kingdoms in this game are Majapahit and Srivijaya. We focused research on junk ships of that era. In the main campaign, Majapahit is in a strong position similar to the middle of the fourteenth century. In same time Srivijaya position is weak since that era is the last time this kingdom exists.

At the time of the game, Majapahit has become a late Hindu Kingdom which has substantial influence throughout the archipelago and Southeast Asia. The empire made use of a policy of “mitreka satata” with kingdoms in mainland like Khmer, Ayuthaya and Champa, supporting these kingdoms with their military power and prestige. In Perang Laut-Maritime Warfare, Majapahit has knowledge of gunpowder allowing the use of cannons “cetbang”. This knowledge came from the failure of the Mongol invasion in 1293 and remained through Chinese cannons used by Majapahit in expending their influence through the archipelago.

While in producing Dato of Srivijaya, supported by funding from the Direcorate General of Culture Ministry of Education and Culture through the Facilitation of Culture Project/“Fasilitasi Bidang 30

Kebudayaan”, Sengkala Dev conducted diverse research about Srivijaya and the surrounding areas. This was very critical as we have sources about this ancient period, but we only have ancient Javanese and Sundanese materials and a complete lack of information about ancient Malay.

The greatest challenge in this development was lack of information about Srivijaya before their expansion in 670. Sengkala Dev looked at the condition of East Sumatra which have lot of marshes and jungle for making buildings in this game. In the middle December 2020, we released this game but as we made it too fast, lot of problems emerged. We had big update for this game and released the latest version with better quality in March 2022 after 4 months development of new version.

Fig. 11.2: Screenshot of Dato of Srivijaya. Taken in 30 November 2021

After Perang Laut-Maritime Warfare and Dato of Srivijaya, what next? Well, there are probably update for both projects in improving quality of the game and historical information as we continue reseatch into the ancient era. From late June 2022, Sengkala Dev is preparing a new project Fall of Bali in order remake this game with better quality than before.

31