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Latest Rubrics for Long-Term Researched History Game Projects Available
I was going to hold off on these until the book comes out next year, but there has been enough recent interest on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/gamingthepast.bsky.social/post/3lfkff3yow22a) that I decided to put my most recent rubrics up. Please share widely and credit me when you do so I can help more people get into powerful experiential and inquiry based learninging that is the researched history game topic.
These were designed for 9th and 10th grade history students in classes where students range from grade-level reading and writing to above grade level. To adapt for middle school, reduce requirements for sources (maybe give them a single source even), formal writing components, length etc. Also consider doing a lot of this in class (I often like to split my classes into 20 minute lecture 25 minute project work). If you are teaching in Uni, consider adding more peer-reviewed sources, increasing formal documentation and sophistication of project and decreasing class work time. Either way these rubrics work quite well at getting a product from students — with your expert guidance of course.
Happy to help you work with these any time (all my contacts are on my home page). And then … hopefully mid to late 2026, Designing Historical Games for the Classroom: A Practical Guide for Educators will be out with Routledge!
Prototype A Available – De Agricultura: The Universal Abstract Overly-Simplified Ancient Peasant Agriculture Game
Update for September: I did playtest prototype A with students and found the core game solid–at least enough for a good class reflection. Here is the most recent prototype that I used.
Like all prototypes, this will break, and I’d be grateful if you sent me a note about how it broke so I can improve on it. But I think Prototype A probably works well enough (I haven’t group playtested it — that’s where you all come in) to use in a class (I’m going to this August).
Prototype A PDF
Briefly, the goals of the game are this.
A better appreciation/understanding of peasants in agrarian societies. It is very hard for moderns to appreciate that the vast majority of ancient agrarian societies (some 80-90% of population) were peasant farmers, i.e. subsistence farmers. They lived and worked in a state of subsistence, just enough to get by, with little bits of surplus food. That tiny surplus, magnified over thousands of peasants, was what the state extracted to fund non-farming activities from armies to building projects etc.
Read more…
GTP Designer Talks
Interviews with designers of historical video games. Posted here and on Spotify , Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.
Gaming the Past 