Gaming the Past

Starting with this post, I will post at least once every month a list of things new (to me at least) in the world of historical games – Games, Commentary, Scholarship, and even some more tangentially related news and scholarship. I’m not going to be too strict about when such material came out, so if you have things from earlier in the year that you would like to have posted in mid- December, let me know. I’ll figure out a better way to organize this, I hope, but for now, I just want to get the ball rolling

New Historical Video Games

I’m deliberately not including the AAA predominantly first/third person shooters; they get plenty of press already. These are the interesting indies with a marked preference for games that might be useful in a class-setting

• Attentat 1942 by Charles University, Czech Academy of Sciences  Play and learn about the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia from video eyewitness testimony in the role of a modern young adult reconnecting with the past.
• Arms Race – The Cold War Era
• Civil War: Battle of Petersburg – A war game that looks to have been an mobile app first, but has reasonably positive Steam reviews
• Mare Nostrum– Mediterranean naval battles “from the dawn of history to the Roman Civil Wars”
• Numantia  by  Reco Technology A turn-based strategy game based on the second century BCE Spanish – Roman wars.
• Train Tycoon coming in January 2016 Preview Article by Samuel Horti,  PC Gamer
• Empire Architect
• Bronze Age HD Edition
• Field of Glory II

Historical Twines, Twine Talk, Interactive Text Talk

• Dan Cox is working on the Twine cookbook and would appreciate submissions, Twine Cookbook
• M.C. DeMarco, A History of Choice Mapping, Surveys examples of choice maps extending from the 1930s to the present.
• Filip Hracek, Medium, Skyrim rendered in text Fractal stories, or how to build an open-world text adventure – A great analysis of the challenge of designing a compelling open work in a choice-based text medium. There is food for thought here for students of historical games and those making interactive history texts with Twine.
• Linda Leestmaker, Twine – An Archaeological Field Internship
• Jeremiah McCall, Twine – Path of Honors (Last updated 9/2)
• Jeremiah McCall, Crafting Interactive Histories: Twine and Choice-Based Interactive Historical Texts (Youtube)
• Gilles Roy, Playthepast.org  Victoria II: Take the #Canada150 Challenge

Games and History – Online Reviews, Commentary, and News Items

• Jeremy Antley tweeted his excellent corpus of writing on games, culture, and historical thinking that goes into design/play.
• Yussef Cole, Unwinnable.com Cuphead and the Racist Spectre of Fleischer Animation – This is insightful, well contextualized, and ultimately troubling insofar as I suspect his conclusion–“This is essentially whitewashing: erasing the embarrassing parts of our past so that we can enjoy the good”– happens a lot with too little notice.
• Joe Donnelly, PC Gamer, Total War devs discuss direction of new historical games
• T.J. Hafer, PC Gamer, The 7 best depictions of World War II in PC games

• Jack Peat, TheLondonEconomic.com University invents new version of rock, paper, scissors – talks about the work of Neville Morley (@NevilleMorley) using simple games to teach Thucydides

• Steven Petite, Crixeo.com, Should Combat Videogames Show Psychological Realities of War?
• Tim Stone, Rock, Paper, Shotgun – The Flare Path: Emotionally Authentic reviewing Burden of Command, the “tactical leadership” WWII RPG. I am curious about this game.

Podcasts

• History Respawned’s newest episodes (late October) are on Diablo III and Bob Whitaker and John Harney’s plans for the fall with HR  Itunes Link

Games and History – Journal Articles and Books

• Jordan Dean, The Arbutus Review , Unorthodox Professors: World War One in Videogames and on YouTube,
• Andrew Reinhard, ARCHAEOGAMING: An Introduction to Archaeology in (and of) Video Games is available for pre-order and out in 2018
• José P. Zagal, DIGRA 2017, War Ethics: A Framework for Analyzing Videogames

Cool Game Design Related Events 

• 11/30 NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents Jane Ng

Recent Digital History Items

• Don’t forget Shawn Graham’s new journal for Creative Engagement in History and Archaeology, Epoiesen
• RRCHNM Workshop Whitepaper, Digital History and Argument