Archive
GTP Dialogue with Vinicius Marino Carvalho: HPS and Beyond (Part I)
JM’s Starting Note: This discussion began when I asked on the Historical Game Studies Facebook page for feedback on my most recent article expanding on and articulating the historical problem space framework https://thersites-journal.de/index.php/thr/article/view/238. My colleague and friend Vinicius Marino Carvalho asked some of his, as usual, insightful questions that got us discussing all sorts of topics in historical video games and the medium of game history. From this point we will follow our discussions where they lead.
Vinicius: So, I just had the pleasure of reading your latest article “Agents, Goals, and Action-Choices”. You seem to be developing the Historical Problem Space framework toward an interesting new direction. I wonder if you’d be willing to discuss a couple of ideas in more detail?
1- It may be just my impression, but you seem to have taken the HPS to a more overtly structuralist direction than your previous papers (e.g. “historical games are games, and that means they take the form of historical problem spaces”; “At their core, each game, like all historical games, presents a historical problem space with a player agent”). Has your current work on your upcoming game design book prompted this shift? Or have you always thought about the HPS this way?
Read more…Gameworld Space and Action-Choices in Historical Games (HPS framework)
Just a quick reminder/introduction. The Historical Problem Space framework is a set of terms and concepts I’ve been developing over the past decade+ to help all intersections of educators and academics analyze historical video games in away that is holistic and recognizes that historical games are both functional as working computer programs (and, to a lesser but still useful extent, analog games) and as cohesive designs. This means any particular historical phenomenon in a game is functionally and cohesively connected to al the rest of the game design.
The framework continues to develop but my most recent core writings on this are:
The Historical Problem Space Framework: Games as a Historical Medium (2020)
Gaming the Past: Second Edition (2022)
And there are links to other articles and talks about HPS on this page
Greetings to all who, like me, find themselves fascinated by historical games,
Not infrequently I find my thoughts well ahead of my writing on the Historical Problem Space framework for historical game analysis (https://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/mccall) (Yes, I’m that sort of person who thinks about games and history games a significant amount of the time) Today I was working out a lecture on 4x games so that my students will have some genre understanding when looking at Colonization and Imperialism (the 4x games — but of course the historical phenomena too). I’ve been referring to the different kinds of action-choices a player agent can make in gameworld space.
I have listed and briefly discussed some of the core action choices a player agent has available in a gameworld space. I thought I had perhaps listed them all in the 2020 article, or perhaps in GTP 2.0 but now I’m thinking the core action-choices in gameworld space should be (helpfully, I hope) set out in one places until I can work them into a published article or book.
So, a quick reminder, the gameworld space is the space in which the player agent (the main playable character) pursues the goals (if they choose) that the developers have set for them and, while doing so, encounter the various elements in the space (a.r.t.o s = non-player agents, resources, tools, obstacles etc). The player agent makes and takes action choices in order to (if they choose) attempt to achieve the goals the developers have designed for the game. The “problem” in the historical problem space design that is standard in historical games, is to solve, avoid, overcome, utilize etc. the elements (a.r.t.o s) in the gameworld space that are keeping the player agent from the designed goals or can help the player agent.
Historical Problem Spaces on the Studying Pixels Podcast
In late September, I had the pleasure of talking with Stefan Simond over at the Studying Pixels podcast about games as historical problem spaces
https://studyingpixels.com/games-as-historical-problem-spaces-with-jeremiah-mccall/
Historical Game Design Theory and Practice with Luke Holmes, Part 1
After a too-long hiatus (4 years), a new series of dialogue-blogs start on Gaming the Past with this installment. This time my very-esteemed interlocutor is Luke Holmes, Game Designer at Creative Assembly (previously museum-worker, with a History MA). We’ll set out on what we both excitedly hope will be a series of substantial discussions by talking about developer goals and the design of historical games
LUKE: I’m going to jump right in! When studying historical video games, historians often think about what games are trying to say, and how they say it. We do our best to draw conclusions from the characters, levels, narratives and mechanics, and to some degree judge these products by their historical interpretations. How faithful was Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey to ancient Greece? How far can Civilisation be used for teaching and studying history?
We look at the goals given to the player, and we analyse whether they are historical. Is the decision of whether to hire knights or archers in Age of Empires IV reflective of the kind of decisions that historic nations had to make? I know you’ve done a lot of work in this area, Jeremiah, so I’m interested to explore this a little more.
JEREMIAH: One of the reasons I am so pleased to get to work with you on this, Luke, is because the developer perspective is so critical to historical game studies but not explored nearly enough. Historical game developers are historians. They meet the basic criterion: they create curated representations of the past (something any number of historical game studies folks including myself have emphasized, not least of all Chapman 2016). So, it follows that a key to better understanding the medium of historical games is to better understand developers’ approaches to designing GAMES that are historical. Your insights will be of great interest in this light. It’s always good to remember that history, categorically ≠≠ academic written history.
Read more…Dreams of Darkness as a Historical Problem Space: A Discussion
Friend and HGS colleague currently working with Dream of Darkness, Tamika Glouftsis, wrote an insightful blog in April Can the Historical Problem Space framework help us make better history games? I was excited to see her thoughts, not least of all because I’m considering a book project specifically on using the HPS framework to guide game design for students (in the form of interactive texts, and physical boardgame design) a guide that, hopefully, would have value for teacher-designers and historical game developers too. So with that in mind, and the pleasure of exploring this topic for any synergistic insights we or others might developed, I wrote some interlinear comments to Tamika’s post to continue the discussion, and Tamika wrote some additional comment to turn this into a dialogue. So what we have is, we think, an interesting discussion of ideas and a continued exploration of how developers (in addition to those studying historical games) might use the Historical Problem Space framework (McCall, 2020) as an analytical tool for historical game development. Both Tamika and I welcome further conversations on this, so please reach out to us with questions and comments
Read more…Through the Darkest of Times’ Historical Problem Space
This is a republication of my two-part essay on Playthepast.org, (original Part 1 and Part 2 here). It is the first long-form historical game analysis I have written using the Historical Problem Space framework. The first half of the essay is more descriptive, illustrating the details that go into a historical problem space analysis. The second part provides more analysis and conclusions about the game as a history.
Read more…New Article: Historical Problem Space
Game Studies, I’m very pleased to say, published my article in late September, The Historical Problem Space Framework: Games as a Historical Medium. In this essay I lay out in detail the historical problem space framework, an approach to understanding historical video games (and tabletop games, for that matter) I’ve developed over the past eight years or so. It should, I hope, provide a helpful way for thinking about and analyzing historical games for historical game fans, scholars, teachers, and designers.
GTP Designer Talks
Interviews with designers of historical video games. Posted here and on Spotify , Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.
Gaming the Past 