Gaming the Past

This is a reprint of my post at PlayThePast from March 2012. This essay generated some insightful comments, for which see http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2594

What simulation games do best as interpretations is present the past in terms of problem spaces. This is a concept I have co-opted from games and learning theorists (most notably Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire) for use in thinking about how we teach and learn about the past and use simulation games. I have an article in the works that addresses  some aspects of this, but I want to test these ideas out in the meantime. I am also inspired by the recent posts from Trevor and Rebecca and the enthusiastic feedback they generated and wanted to make some sense of that in relation to my work.  Any feedback would be most welcome.

I.

The concept of problem space is a highly useful tool for studying historical simulations, teaching history, and using the former to help in the latter.  Simulation games are interpretations of the past designed as problem spaces. A problem space, at least as I currently define it, has the following features:
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(A republication of my original article at PlayThePast )

Routledge released my new book, Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History May 16th.  I’m very excited for its release as, to my knowledge, it is the only book of its kind anywhere: a practical guidebook taking history and social studies teachers through all the steps of designing and implementing lessons and units using simulation games: selecting games, planning lessons, managing classes, and designing activities and assessments. Although its core audience is high school history teachers, educators at the middle school and college level, will, I believe, find the book useful. Play the Past was kind enough to ask me to spread the word on their site, and so, I’ll take the space to explain how I got to Gaming the Past and why it’s important.
I began teaching high school history immediately after I finished my Ph.D. at Ohio State (2000). In those days I was teaching at a boarding school for boys who had not yet succeeded at academics. Simulations of the pen-and-paper variety quickly became part of my repertoire. Somehow there was a world of difference between asking students to list the features of Soviet propaganda in the early years and having them pretend to be Soviet propaganda ministers designing their own campaign. I was dabbling back then (I like to call it experimenting now), but I found that simulations gripped students in a way few other instructional strategies could. When I relocated to Cincinnati Country Day School in 2002, a new world opened for me. Country Day was the first independent school (probably the first school) to implement a 1-to-1 laptop program for its students, grades 5-12. Equally as important, it’s simply an amazing place built on a terrific student body and faculty. Over the next few years I explored the effective use of computers in the classroom as research and note-taking tools, learning from my colleagues and trying out my own ideas. I continued to play with tabletop simulations along the way and began to experiment with video games, first using Civilization III in the class, then Rome: Total War.
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After getting a good reception from various readers to an article I wrote for the Playing with Technology in History conference last year, I decided to post the article here. It’s titled Simulation Games and the Study of the Past: Classroom Guidelines and hints at some of what will be in Gaming the Past. Read it here.

(A republication of my original article at PlayThePast )

Of course the unexamined game can be well worth playing if the goal is simply to enjoy and recreate—though I’d wager that many players reflect actively on their experiences in games. Enjoyment should always be a primary purpose of games. When the focus shifts to simulation games and the formal study of the past, however, there is little point to the unexamined game.

Two not particularly difficult paradoxes that are interesting in their ramifications for simulation games and learning, set the stage for this post.

1. “Though it is not an entirely historical game overall, the game does convey a sense of the Court atmosphere at Versailles.  However,  Courtisans of Versailles is ultimately better suited for the purpose of entertainment than that of education.” (please note that writer accurately noted the game title–the game was translated from the French into English as the Courtisans of Versailles, complete with the misspelling and the association with prostitution). This was the thesis recently advanced by a student tasked with critiquing a simulation game in a senior elective on simulations and the French Revolution. Read more…

(A republication of my original article at PlayThePast )

Over the past 5 years Firefly studios has designed two city building games, Stronghold 2 and CivCity: Rome (hereafter CC:R) that offer thoroughly engrossing gameplay while also presenting some interesting models of human behavior. As a gamer, I’m more interested in the former; as a teacher who works with simulation games as tools for learning about the past, the latter. I want to consider and compare how the games model the attitudes of human populations and some of the assumptions that seem to be made in these models.

Since this is my first posting on Play the Past, however, it seems like a good idea to offer a few comments on my frame of reference, in particular my understanding of how commercial simulation games should be handled–at least by history teachers and student historians, perhaps even by professional historians. First, as I have argued at greater length in an article and a forthcoming book, simulation games are interpretations, not oracles. As such they will contain a number of historical inaccuracies, particularly when it comes to core details. Asking whether a historical simulation game is accurate as if that were an all-or-nothing quality seems to me to be missing the point—the accuracy of any historical interpretation is not something that can be determined with any certainty. One historian’s common sense convention is another’s faulty construct to be dismantled. One generation’s conventions are the next’s biased assumptions. What really matters in historical interpretations is the extent to which any particular one is constructed based on the strongest, most defensible readings of evidence and the best supported and culturally sensitive understandings of human behavior. So, a far better criterion than accuracy when critiquing a historical simulation game is whether its core gameplay offers defensible explanations of historical causes and systems. Read more…

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