Well, what the author is doing is a) using these games to explain themes of history (e.g., interstate relations, internal political tensions within the Long 19t

Well, what the author is doing is a) using these games to explain themes of history (e.g., interstate relations, internal political tensions within the Long 19th Century), and b) critiquing how mechanics in these games do or do not reflect the history. It's the same vein of a city planner explaining how SimCity does and doesn't reflect real-life city planning, and such discussions absolutely do exist. Of course, one of the challenges of a historical game is that pop history does exist to a larger degree than other subjects, and you can get ferocious arguments of the historicity of the game where people use incorrect pop history as the basis. For EU4, colonization is absolutely in that boat; after the most recent patch, there is a vocal crowd about how ahistorical it is that North America is now filled with lots of natives that have to be conquered rather than empty land to be passively colonized.