Related Papers
HI-132 " Games of History " : Games and gaming as historical sources
Apostolos Spanos
This is a presentation of the main subjects and ideas I have shared with my students in Spring 2017. This course is based on my research on the subject which will culminate in a monograph to be finished in 2018.
U.S. American Culture as Popular Culture. Winter Verlag’s American Studies
DGFA, Video Games Esmaeilpour
2022 •
Naghmeh Esmaeilpour
Having worked for more than three years as a translator and editorial assistant for an Iranian video games magazine, I have been influenced by how games, particularly those based on real events, introduce their users into a new kind of reality by employing transmedial historiography. But what are the goals of the games? Do games only serve to induce a sense of amazement and being entertained in the players, or do they follow more serious incentives, aiming to introduce a new reality or promote popular culture? In what ways do games employ historical or social events in their storylines? This article investigates transmedial historiography in the video games Blacklist and Black Friday. Although they belong to different genres, Blacklist is an action-adventure stealth game, and Black Friday is an adventure-interactive drama, they follow a similar transmedial narrative in order to convey historical facts that occurred in Iran or are related to Iran.
“Cyberhistory: Historical Computer Games and Post-Structuralist Historiography,” in Jeffrey Goldstein and Joost Raessens, Handbook of Computer Games Studies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005): 327-338.
William Uricchio
The Historian
Videogames as Tools for Social Science History
2017 •
Vinicius Marino
Controversies: Historicising the Computer Game
Esther MacCallum-Stewart
ABSTRACT Games which involve historical topics have always been a staple of digital games, but at the same time they have often caused controversy and debate. This paper traces some of the pitfalls inherent to the creation of historical games, as well as trying to reach an understanding of how a history game can be defined. Throughout the paper, we investigate how some aspects of history can be problematic, and how others have been made more difficult by a lack of definition or an expectation that all historical games operate on the same intellectual level. We also examine how controversial games have coped with difficult subjects, and relate this to the development of complexity and scope within gaming. Author Keywords Gaming, History, Historical Gaming, Games Studies, Digital Games, DiGRA, War Games.
Histories of Internet Games and Play: Space, Technique, and Modality
Teodor Mitew, Christopher L Moore
In this chapter we propose approaching internet play as an experiential construct, itself a function of the alignment of disparate heterogeneous elements into a temporary but stable network. We argue that a historical perspective of internet games and play has to focus on the alignments between the materiality of game spaces (spatiality), the technical strata of internet hardware (technique), and the genres and modes (modalities) of internet play. The triad of spaces, techniques and modalities of play could be imagined as a prism through which the historicity of internet play emerges and is to be approached. To open these typically black-boxed relations we focus our attention on the First Person Shooter (FPS), Real Time Strategy (RTS), and Role-Playing Game (RPG) genres, as they have come to define entirely new styles of multiplayer games, in configurations arranged around the play of local networked and internet enabled desktop personal computers (PCs). We argue that any historical shifts in the triad of spatialities, techniques, and modalities of play have profound effects on the economics of internet game distribution, genre, and hardware, as well as on the structure, institution, and experience of play.
mhj: melbourne historical journal
Gaming, history and the care and protection of children
2020 •
Mary Tomsic
From introduction: In this piece I want to consider one cultural representation, a digital game called This War of Mine, wherein a group of civilian adults and children are living through war and conflict. I want to examine how people playing the game are positioned, and have positioned themselves, in relation to the game and the children within the game. This provides insight into how children are understood and the types of relationships of care that are constructed. I am also interested in these representations as historically and culturally specific artefacts, showing how the past is mobilised and on what terms history is considered.
Práticas da História
World, Structure and Play: A Framework for Games as Historical Research Outputs, Tools, and Processes
2018 •
Robert Houghton
The potential of historical digital games as academic research ou-tputs has been discussed by a small but growing number of authors (Clyde et al., Spring, Chapman, Carvalho, etc.). To date most of this work has focussed on the validity of games as an academic historical form. This article moves the debate forward by consi-dering the potential of games to act not only as representations of historical data and analysis, but also as a medium of historical debate. It leans on the framework described by the games scholar Espen Aarseth to propose that the fundamental nature of games could allow the exploration and interrogation of information and arguments. Through the interactive quality of the medium tied to a historically critical approach, players could become not only observers of an output, but participants in the process of historical debate. Ultimately, the article argues that while games can cer-tainly never replace monographs and other scholarly outputs, they can be an important addition to the field of study.
History and Theory
Still Playing with the Past: History, Historians, and Digital Games
Esther Wright
Journal of Magazine Media
The Hidden History of Gaming
2019 •
Stephanie Williams-Turkowski
