Gaming the Past

Historical Video Games 

• The Curious Expedition, now has a demo for its browser based version. This game of European exploration in the Age of Imperialism has been used in history classes successfully. The browser based version will make the game even more accessible.
• Dead in Vinland, A survival strategy game with adventure/murder mystery elements set in a Viking settlement on a strange isle.
• Hard Ancient Life (Q4 2018) – “Hard Ancient Life is a city-building economic strategy taking place in the Nile Valley. Immerse yourself in a world full of pyramids, where you will become a part of the ancient world. Create history, be history!”
• Imperator: Rome – Paradox interactive just announced it is developing a game set in the 4th – 1st centuries BCE Mediterranean. Out for release in 2019
• March to Glory, – “March to Glory is a turn-based strategy game that takes you through the Napoleonic wars with a new strategic and challenging gameplay, full of interesting mechanics combined with thrilling combat.”
• One Hour, One Life – If I understand correclty, not a historical game, but rather focused on how modern humans, deprived of all technology, would rebuild civilization. One lifespan takes 1 hour of gametime, it’s multiplayer, and remains of human civilizations built during the game can be used by incoming players. So it sounds to me like a potentially excellent and creative way to think about the neolithic revolution and rise of civilizations.
• Reflexio – An archaeology game on itch.io. “Play as Laura Kraft and investigate the mystery of an archaeological site. In this exploration-and-puzzles video game, you’ll have to travel the ancient ruins, looking for time-lost archaeologists and artifacts hidden in the scenery. “
• Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia
• Walden, A Game — Designed by the USC Innovation Lab (Walden game website here), Walden is a first person open world sim of Thoreau’s efforts to live self-reliantly.

Historical Board Games 

• Paradox announces Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis Boardgames (Strategy Gamer)

Twine and Twine Histories

• Kathleen Crowther, Anne Boleyn
• 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.
• Rob Parker, First Person Scholar, “Interview with Chris Klimas“, Klimas is the creator of Twine
• Marc Saurette, “Path of Honors: Second Response” explores the practice of developing games to teach history and what a rules-based historical interpretation can offer to student players and designers of games. This, too, is an important for read for those interesting in moving the needle forward on game design as history pedagogy.
• CSULB Student Twine Game Portfolio. A series of historical Twines designed by students in Jeffery Lawler’s History 172 Class, Spring 2018. Native American Legacy, the American Revolution, Mary Ann’s Mission, and more.
• CCDS Ancient World History Twines: Trial of Socrates, Alexander the Great and the Conquest of Persia and more 9th grade Twines coming (the very best of the batch) from the 2018 research paper and Twine project in my Ancient World History Classes. Here at Gamingthepast.net

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

• Adam Chapman and Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past, “The Debate is on: Historical accuracy and historical video games.” – Part 2 in our series of discussions.
• Katherine Cross, Gamasutra, “Opinion: Elegance and colonialism in Civ VI’s Rise and Fall.“
• Mark Filipowich, Critical Distance, “February-March Roundup: History” — a gathering of Critical Distance essays on history and video games. Looks pretty awesome.
• Dom Ford, Game Studies 16.2,  ‘”eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate”: Affective Writing of Postcolonial History and Education in Civilization V.’
• Daniel Gross, Hyperallergic, “The Casual Colonialism of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones.” — “An anthropologist and a historian weigh in on the troubling genre of the archaeological adventure story.
• Emil Lundedahl Hammar, waccglobal.org, “The political economy of historical digital games“
• Ben Hoy, Simulation and Gaming, March 2018, “Teaching History with Custom-Built Board Games.”
• Jimmy Maher, The Digital Antiquarian, “The Game of Everything: Civilization” A lengthy thoughtful and very interested history of the first Civilization, the game that changed it all for historical strategy games. Consideration of the the progress narrative, religion, geography, war, government, government and religion, and so much more. In 10 parts (so far?). You have to check this out. Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten
• MIT Technology Review. “Video games could be serious tools for historical research” – describes an undergrad course using games and suggests other areas where historical gaming in history is moving forward
• Andrew Reinhard’s book, Archaeogaming: An introduction to archaeology in and of video games is coming out in June!
• Cory Wright-Maley, John Lee, and Adam Friedman, “Digital Simulations and Games in History Education,” The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning. 2018.

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

• Jody Macgregor, PC Gamer, “Dead in Vinland dumps a viking family on North America’s shore.”
• Nic Rueben, Rock Paper Shotgun, “Wot I Think: Dead in Vinland“
• Tim Stone, Rock Paper Shotgun, “Wot I Think: March to Glory“
• Alex Wiltshire, Gamasutra, “Making a civilization-scale crafting system for Jason Roher’s One Hour One Life.“
• Alex Wiltshire, Rock Paper Shotgun, “How Crusader Kings 2 Makes People out of Opinions.“

Designer Insights

• Kacper Kwiatkowski, Gamasutra, “7 things I’ve learnt from designing This War of Mine” – more about design practices, but even in that respect helps for understanding the constraints and goals that influence designers as they craft historical games.
• Adam Smith, Rock Paper Shotgun, “Soren Johnson on challenging the norms of 4x games.” Always important to listen when Soren Johnson talks about history, strategy, and games.

Podcasts and Youtubes

• Conflict Simulations, “Harold on Games Podcast #5 with Martin Wallace,” an interview with board game designer Martin Wallace about his new game, Lincoln.
• Jeremiah McCall, “Gaming the Past: Video Games as Public History and in the History Class” Youtube
• Andrew Reinhard, “Archaeogaming with Andrew Reinhard” — the blurb says it all, ” In this short film Past Preservers Expert Andrew Reinhard, talks about the main branches of video game archaeology. His book, Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games, will be published by Berghahn Books in May 2018.”
• Three Moves Ahead: Episode 431: Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger ;   Episode 434 – Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia

Events 

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