Gaming the Past

Historical Video Games 

• China: Mao’s Legacy, Steam blurb: “Year 1976, the stormy Cultural revolution has died down, hard times of hongweibing and public critics are coming to an end. Old and sick Mao Zedong will soon leave China to his comrades from CPC. The Cold War is coming into a new phase…
• Crusader Kings, Iron Century, The latest update (and free) for Paradox’s strategy/role-playing/diplomacy game set in the Medieval period. Iron Century starts players in the 10th century.
• Dawn of Man Steam blurb: “Command a settlement of ancient humans, guide them through the ages in their struggle for survival. Hunt, gather, craft tools, fight, research new techs and face the challenges the environment will throw at you.”
  • 3MA Podcast 
• Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis. A well-received port of Mark Herman’s board game of the same name. Steam blurb: “Can you drive the Secessionist into the Fort Sumter trap that gave Lincoln his historic victory? Can you successfully use the issue of States Rights to divide Northern opinion? Fort Sumter let’s you explore this seminal moment in American history in a fast-playing, easy-to-learn card driven game.”

• From Village to Empire Steam blurb: “From Village to Empire is an indie turn based strategy game with a historical setting. Build cities, research technologies, and train units to discover new lands and conquer the world!”
• Heaven’s Vault  – Not really a historical game per se, but one whose archaeological setting has really excited archaeo-gamers. Steam blurb: “Explore lost ruins, decipher ancient inscriptions, and create your own story in this massively-branching archaeological science-fiction adventure game from the creators of 80 Days.”
  • History Respawned Heaven’s Vault 4/27/19
• Her Majesty’s Ship – Steam blurb: “All young naval officers dream of becoming Admiral, but few realise this can’t be done without a loyal crew and keeping the vessel under your command afloat!”
• Imperator: Rome – Paradox interactive’s grand strategy game set in the 4th – 1st centuries BCE Mediterranean.
• Jon Shafer’s At the Gates,  Steam Blurb: “At the Gates is an indie strategy game from Jon Shafer, designer of Civilization 5. You are a dark age lord building a kingdom to replace the crumbling Roman Empire. Manage your clans, explore the landscape around you, harvest its resources, and build a mighty economic and military machine.” I plan to talk with Jon more generally about historical game design, with the emphasis on historical, later this month.
  • GTP Designer Talks #2, Jon Shafer  Spotify, Google Play
• Lichenia: A City Building Game for the Anthropocene. Playable online. Developer Molleindustria describes: “A city building game for the Anthropocene. Reclaim the ruins of a fallen city and create a sustainable human habitat. There are no goals and no endings in Lichenia. Learn about its cryptic ecology. Grow a city like a garden.”
• Pathway – Another game potentially interesting to archaeogamers. Steam blurb: “Adventure into the strange unknown with Pathway, a strategy RPG set in the 1930s great desert wilderness. Outwit your enemies in daring turn-based combat, raid occult tombs and make tough choices in a procedurally generated grand pulp expedition!”
• Total War: Three Kingdoms Steam blurb: “Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is the first in the award-winning series to recreate epic conflict across ancient China. Combining a gripping turn-based campaign of empire-building & conquest with stunning real-time battles, THREE KINGDOMS redefines the series in an age of heroes & legends.”
  • 3MA Podcast Episode 470: Total War Three Kingdoms
• Tropico 6 Steam blurb: “El Presidente is back! Prove yourself once again as a feared dictator or peace-loving statesman on the island state of Tropico and shape the fate of your very own banana republic through four distinctive eras.”
• We. The Revolution Steam blurb: “As a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal, preside over complicated cases of ordinary citizens, dangerous criminals, and enemies of the revolution in revolutionary Paris. Make judgments, plot political intrigue, and try to not lose your own head!”. S
  • GTP historical review
  • Three Moves Ahead podcast 472

Historical Board Games 

• Brave Little Belgium, Hollandspiele Games, who describes it as “a lightning-quick introductory wargame,” on the German offensive through Belgium at the start of World War I.
• Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917-1947 GMT Games blurb: “Volume IX in GMT’s acclaimed COIN Series. Exploring one of the world’s most prominent experiments with nonviolent resistance, Gandhi takes us to the subcontinent of India, … 1 to 4 players compete to determine the future of India; will the transition to home rule be a peaceful one, will India be split apart by partition or civil war, or will it remain firmly in the grip of empire?”

Twine and Twine Histories

• CCDS History Twines: Caesar and Pompey from Fall 2018 Roman Republic is finally up — and it’s excellent!  Here at Gamingthepast.net

Interactive Fiction

• Chris Klimas, “Twine: Past, Present, and Future” A Narrascope 2019 talk on the Twine IF design tool/environment/platform
• Graham Nelson, Opening Inform, A Narrascope 2019 talk on the IF design tool/environment/platform, Inform and its future by Inform’s designer

Games and Teaching History Teaching

• Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past, “A Brief Intro Letter to US History Teachers.” 7/1/19

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

• Rob Houghton, Practicas Das Historias, “World, Structure and Play: A Framework for Games as Historical Research Outputs, Tools, and Processes” 2018.
• Rob Houghton, Public Medievalist, “Why Are Objectives Important in Historical Video Games?” 5/30/19
• Seva Kritskiy, Historian on Games, Making history about the mass grave of the Obra Dinn. 5/19
• Jeremiah McCall, Journal of Geek Studies, Playing with the past: history and videogames (and why it might matter)   4/22/19. An overview of aspects of the field including discussion of games as a kind of public history, history games in history education,  and the ways that debates about historical accuracy often reveal arguments about diversity, representation, and inclusion
• Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past, Historical review of  We. The Revolution 6/28/19.
• Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College, Pax Exasperation, A long-form analysis of Pax Emancipation , a board game where the goal is to make slavery illegal everywhere. Jeremy Antley @jsantley recommends this article, tweeting, “[Rael] discusses discursive vs. ludic rhetoric and the design’s interaction with historiography— it is a must read for game/history folk.”
• Gilles Roy, “Critical Distance, “Assassin’s Creed III” A Critical Compilation of Assassin’s Creed III.
• Sören Schoppmeier, “Playing to Make America Great Again: Far Cry 5 and the Politics of Videogames in an Age of Trumpism,” Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 20(2019)
• Janos Vas, Four Categories of Video Games in the Practice of History Teaching. English readers: make sure to get to page 6-7 where the English article begins.

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

• Brendan Caldwell, Rock Paper Shotgun, “Meet the geographer who tells developers when they’re ignorant and offensive.” 6/5/19
• Jon Bolding, VICE, “A Cancelled Board Game Reveals How Colonialism Inspires and Haunts Games” 4/12/19 Also about the recently released and discontinued, Scramble for Africa board game
• Andy Chalk, PC Gamer, “EA accidentally gave a Battlefield 5 Nazi the same name as a real WW2 anti-fascist“
• Ethan Gach, Kotaku, “Pathway is an Indiana Jones Inspired Tactics Game” 4/10/19
• Samuel Horti, PC Gamer, “Rampant racism and toxicity are driving players away.” 7/4/19
• Alice O’Connor, Rock Paper Shotgun,  Warsaw Looking Like Darkest Dungeon But with Nazi Occupation. 7/3/19 Warsaw will be released in September 2019 and it is already an interesting and, likely, controversial take due to essentially depicting the Warsaw Uprising of 1944  in an RPG, Darkest Dungeons-style game.
• Shubhankar Parijat, GamingBolt, Warsaw Interview – Join the Uprising See above.
• Dominic Tarason, Rock Paper Shotgun, “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey adds user-made quests today, historical tours in autumn.” 6/10/19.
• Haydn Taylor, Gamesindustry.biz, “How games whitewash Nazism and the responsibility developers have to history.” A report on a talk gave by the developers of the upcoming game, Through the Darkest of Times. at the Ludicious Game Festival in January.
• Jack Trumbull, Wargamer.com, “The Best American Civil War Strategy Games.“6/17/19
• Wargame HQ, “Scramble for Africa: A Lesson in How NOT to Launch a Game” 4/6/19.
• Rob Zacny, Vice.com, “Games Have Always Tried to Whitewash Nazis as Just ‘German Soldiers‘.” 6/19/19

Designer Insights

• Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past, Interview: Matthieu Brevet, Steel Division II. 5/18/19 Recently, I had the opportunity to pose a list of questions about history and games to Matthieu Brevet, historian and game designer at Eugen Systems, makers of both historical and counterfactual strategy games such as R.U.S.E., the Wargame series, and Steel Division: Normandy 44. Eugen just released Steel Division II.
• Tom Russell, Hollandspiele, A First Look at Ensi. Tom discusses the design of his upcoming solitaire game focused on civilization building in Sumer, Ensi
• Jon Shafer, At the Gates Future Plans
• Terminal Conflict (Steam Early Access) Developer Diary

Podcasts and Youtubes

• Jeremiah McCall, Gaming the Past, Designer Talks on Spotify and Google Play
  • Episode #1, 4/21/19 – Soren Johnson (Civ IV, Ten Crowns (upcoming))
  • Episode #2, 7/1/19 – Jon Shaffer (Civ V, At the Gates)
• Bob Whitaker and John Harney, History Respawned
  • Videos
    • Heaven’s Vault 6/20/19 With Andrew Reinhard
    • Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 5/24/19
    • Return of the Obra Dinn 4/5/19
  • Podcasts
    • Hearts of Iron IV 5/23/19
    • Heaven’s Vault 4/27/19
    • Return of the Obra Dinn  4/1/19
• Three Moves Ahead:
  • Episode 466: Dawn of Man
  • Episode 468: Same thing Different Place. Steel Division II
  • Episode 469: Imperator: Rome  Among other things, the excellent discussion here raises the question of what actually motivate Roman imperialism and is it problematic to model unabashedly aggressive imperialism in a modern game.
  • Episode 470: Total War Three Kingdoms
  • Episode 471: Anno 1800
  • Episode 472: We. The Revolution

Books

• Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms. CRC Press, 2019
• John Wills, Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture, Johns Hopkins Press, 2019
• Jamie Woodcock, Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle. Haymarket Books, 2019.

Other Things That May Be of Interest

• Andy Matuschak, Why books don’t work: Designing media to reflect how people think and learn. An intriguing essay.