Gaming the Past

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?