Archive
When Games about the Past Trouble the Present: Games and History, Accuracy, Equity, Representation, and Reality
Over the past few months I have been mulling over some ideas for a set of talks I’m giving in the winter and spring for students, teachers, and parents on historical video games and gameplay as historying, the ways they represent the past, and the importance of a critical perspective.
As part of this, I’ve just started gathering, for my own research, articles written online about historical video games with interpretations and assumptions about the past that cause controversies and issues for present day gamers.
Disclaimer: I have not read most of these articles yet, but my criterion was basically longer form analytical essays (as opposed to news reports)of historical games that portray the past in controversial ways for the present. The current batch ranges from the diversity of people in past societies, to the portrayal of certain political, social groups, and/or cultural groups to the representation of nuclear weapons. I’m barely scratching the surface here and would love to update this with more articles and links (send me anything you think would fit the bill)
Bias Disclaimer: I stand for equity, inclusion, compassion, respect, and decency. My selections hopefully reflect that.
Analytical Essays
March History and Games Links
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.
February (Even though it’s March) History and Games Links
Here’s the list for February. A lot of games, including the controversial Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the uncommonly focused Nantucket (19th century whaling), and the potentially very classroom-useful Neolithic: First City States. Some excellent essays and podcasts; really all kinds of materials. Enjoy!
Historical Video Games
- Age of Empires: Definitive Edition — An updated version for Windows 10 of a watershed commercial history game, first released in 1997. Currently only available through the Windows store, but there is some buzz that it will be available on Steam. See T.J. Hafer and Marcello Perricone’s articles below
- Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt— Lots of excitement for this, a violence-free tourist mode where players can explore the 3D world of late Ptolemaic Egypt, meet historical figures, and learn about material culture. This is a free update for those who own AC: Origins, but also can be purchased separately. Be aware this will take a good graphics card to run well. See John Hopley’s essay below.
- Check Your 6! — Turn-based game of aerial battles in World War 2
- Fields of Glory 2: Legions Triumphant expansion— An expansion (must own the main FoG2) focused on the Roman Empire and its foes from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus (476 CE)
My 30+ minutes of fame on the GDR podcast
I was very pleased to have the chance to be on the latest episode (189) of The Game Design Round Table talking about my work with history games and even my amateur game designs for class. http://thegamedesignroundtable.com/
Civilization VI, Problem Spaces, and the Representation of the Cree – A few thoughts
PC Gamer published a short article on the controversy stirred by Civilization VI’s release of the Cree as a DLC civilization led by the historical leader, Poundmaker (Poundmaker Cree Nation leader criticizes Cree portrayal in Civilization 6). Reporter Andy Chalk quotes Cree Headman Milton Tootoosis’ assessment of the harmful depiction of the Cree:
“It perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land,” Headman Milton Tootoosi said. “That is totally not in concert with our traditional ways and world view.”
“It’s a little dangerous for a company to perpetuate that ideology that is at odds with what we know. [Poundmaker] was certainly not in the same frame of mind as the colonial powers.”
And Chalk notes that Civ VI’s representation of the Cree as a playable civilization is problematic because it seems to suggest that the Cree were just another global player in the ultimate arena: world civilizations struggling to dominate the globe.
January 2018 History and Games Links
So many interesting things to investigate in this month’s links collections!
Historical Video Games
- Ancient Warfare – Looks to be perhaps a combination of block-building creation (a la Minecraft) with realtime strategy/third person battles. Clearly a sandbox of sorts and equally clearly, a sketchy status as a historical game. Ostensibly claims the ability to do WWI and WW2 battles, which undermines the whole title. Let me know if you play with this one.
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins’ first DLC: The Hidden Ones is out on January 23rd at Uplay
- Attentat 1942 – Attentat 1942 (my review) was recently named a 2018 competition finalist in the IGF (Independent Games Festival) competition. It is an engaging mystery game where you, playing as a modern Czech man or woman in Prague, investigate your grandfather’s involvement in the historical assassination of Nazi Governor and Holocaust Architect. Definitely a good candidate for play in classes studying civilian life in Nazi occupied Europe (Czechoslovakia), and an good genre game for anyone interested in the topic.
Historical Twine Talk at VALUE Workshop
On September 5th, I had the pleasure of talking about Twine and history with attendees of the VALUE projects’ “Interactive Pasts Workshop: Interactive (Hi-)storytelling,” following my video presentation, Crafting Interactive Histories:
Twine and Choice-Based Interactive Historical Texts.
Link to the Video
Path of Honors Project
Writings
Chapman, A. (2016). Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. London: Routledge.
Dening, Greg, Performing cross-culturally,” Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (December 2006), pp. 1-11
McCall, J. (2011). Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History. Routledge.
McCall, J. (2012). Navigating the Problem Space: The Medium of Simulation Games in the Teaching of History. The History Teacher 45 , 9-28.
McCall, J. (2012). Historical simulations as problem spaces: Criticism and classroom use. Journal of Digital Humanities 1.
Short, Emily — To many great essays to link to at her blog, but here are a few.
- https://emshort.blog/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/
- https://emshort.blog/2014/10/29/writing-in-collaboration-with-the-system/
- https://emshort.blog/2015/05/24/framed-invisible-parties-and-the-world-plot-interface/
Interactive Texts
Jeremiah McCall (me) – Path of Honors Project
Rachel Ponce – Surviving History: The Fever
History Respawned Podcast with Me on Twine
In early August 2017, I had the pleasure of joining Bob Whitaker and John Harney on History Respawned, a podcast and sometimes YouTube video on history and games. We discussed Twine as a tool for history and in history education, and a number of other topics involving games and learning in history.
The Problem of Historical Choices in Twine Game Design – A Response to Neville Morley
Neville Morley (@NevilleMorley)and I (@gamingthpast)have been exploring the ramifications of Twine for developing interactive historical texts. My main ongoing experiment is the Path of Honors project, an interactive text about a fictional Roman aristocrat going through the very historical process of pursuing an aristocratic career. I call this sort of interactive text an “every person” approach in that it focuses on a historical situation but has a protagonist that did not exist, in an authentic set of circumstances. Neville is working on Might and Right, an investigation of the Athenian treatment of the polis of Melos in the Peloponnesian War. Neville’s text is what I would characterize as a “specific agent” approach, in that the player takes the role of Cleomedes, an Athenian general who was, in fact, in a command position at Melos in 416. A very quick bit of historical setup, quoted from Neville’s Twine:
The small island of Melos in the Cyclades, halfway between Athens and Crete, was originally a Spartan colony, and so had refused to join the Athenian alliance. Officially the Melians remain neutral, but in recent years their leaders have sided openly with Sparta. Now the Athenians have sent an expedition of 38 ships and 2,000 troops to demand the island’s unconditional surrender.
Neville has finished a version where the Athenian player, as Cleomedes, determines the fate of the Melians.
In a recent tweet I made a light-hearted, yet serious, attempt to propose a rule about historical game development in choice-based work that I jokingly titled, McCall’s Rule of Good Choices in a Historical Game: “The Designer must provide situations where there is more than one viable choice, and the historical choice cannot always be the only viable choice.”
Student-designed historical Twines posted 5/10/17
At the end of the day on 5/10/17, I will post (on my Philome.la Twine site) a selection of Twine interactive history texts, designed by my ninth-graders at Cincinnati Country Day School during the third quarter of this 2016-17 year. The designers’ names have been replaced by their initials. I am very pleased and excited to post these as excellent examples of historical Twines and hope they will inspire similar projects at other schools and more discussion about Twine as a history pedagogy. For now, I want to include a few caveats that I think are important to appreciating the examples.
- These were selected from among the best projects. Best does not mean 100% historically accurate (whatever that means anyway) or always grammatically correct/stylisyically elegant. Please remember: these are 14 and 15 year olds
- They were the product of a quarter-long research and design project (see the specs and rubric I used) that began with a short research essay on their historical figure and scenario
- They were revised after an initial grading for a revision grade
- I asked the students to do one more proofread before posting
Let me know if you have questions or comments, particularly if you’d like to try something like this in your own classes!
The List of 2017 Interactive Histories
Hatshepsut’s Rule
The Assassination of Caesar
Mary, Bloody Mary
The Siege of Paris, 845
GTP Designer Talks
Interviews with designers of historical video games. Posted here and on Spotify , Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.
