Gaming the Past

Here’s the list for March.

Historical Video Games 

• Check Your 6! — Turn-based game of aerial battles in World War 2
• Mewilo – Give this proposed game and website a look. It represents a game about historical Martinique, surely not a commonly found topic in historical games. Says the creators, “You are transported in 1900, in the tumultuous past of an island of the Antilles, the Martinique,”  and that this game as “an unprecedented reconstruction work allowsus to rediscover the atmosphere of this city nicknamed ‘the little Paris of the West Indies’ or ‘the tropical Venice’.”
• Northgard – A Viking themed game that the designers say is based on Norse mythology and focuses on the discovery of a new land and competition to control it.

• Ostalgie – A strategy game focused on the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunion of Germany. The Steam blurb: “The confrontation between the socialist and capitalist bloc is coming to an end, but the confrontation between socialist and capitalist Germany is not. The old party leaders are still sitting in their offices, not changing anything and waiting for exclamations from Moscow. But their end is close – Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl shake hands, unleashing unexpected consequences even for themselves.” Not your normal setting and it appears to be getting positive reviews.
• Emulations of Plastic Handheld Games at the Interactive Archive.

Twine and Twine Histories

• Jeremiah McCall, Epoiesen, “Path of Honors: Towards a Model for Interactive History Texts with Twine” The first response essays is up. This is an overview of using Twine and choice-based texts compared to video games and static texts to create interactive histories and the current (though barely started) version of my Path of Honors Twine.
• Angus Mol, Epoiesen, “Path of Honors: First Response”. Beyond reviewing my PoH project, Angus offer a very interesting analysis of open source interactive history (represented, he suggests, by PoH) and closed source, “black box”, interactive history like Assassin’s Creed: Origins. I think his ideas here are important and will grow to be more so as we continue interactive history studies.

Games and History – Essays and Journal Articles from History and Games Critics, Students and Scholars

• Peter Christiansen, Play the Past, “Videogames and Memory.”
• Benjamin Hoy, Simulation and Gaming, “Teaching History with Custom-Built Board Games.” March 2018.  After my jump back into tabletop simulations with a new design of SPQR, my Roman Republic politics, that went very well in class, and my guest evening on the Game Design Round Table, I am renewing my commitment to the importance of tabletop historical games in history ed. Ben gives a useful case study of a game built for class and the learning inspired.
• Eugen Pfister, Spiel-Kultur-Wissenschaften, “On Political Communication in Digital Games.” The second part of Eugen’s essay from his keynote at the FROG (Future of Relaity and Gaming) conference this year.

Games and History – Online Reviews, Commentary, and News Items from Games Media and Other Media

• Abby Denton, Medium, “Ultraviolent Flash Games after 9/11.”   Haven’t had a chance to read this yet, but I often use September 12:  A Toy World when introducing my seniors to serious games, so this fascinates me.
• Andreas Inderwildi, Rock, Papaer, Shotgun, “Kingdom Come Deliverance’s quest for historical accuracy is a fool’s errand.”  More discussion of the controversial KC:D and consideration of the problems and pitfalls of historical accuracy as a game concept.
• Alister MacQuarrie, PC Gamer, “All rise and no fall: how Civilization reinforces a dangerous myth.” An important critique of the perpetual progress model embodied in Civilization games.
• Tim Stone, Rock Paper Shotgun, “The Flare Path: Battle Scarred.” Discusses Check Your Six! (see above) and Panzer Strategy

Podcasts and Youtubes

• Three Moves Ahead: Episodes 423 – Civilization VI: Rise and Fall; 424 – Command Ops; 427 – Northgard; 428 – Gary Grigsby’s War in the West; 
• History Respawned, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Youtube, Podcast on Itunes

Events and Calls for Papers

• VALUE, Leiden University, The Interactive Past 2 (TIPC) COnference is scheduled for 8-10 October 2018 in Beeld em Geluid, Hilversum, Netherlands. Here is the Call for Papers.