La Desbandá 1937,[1] a historical role-playing game, transports players to one of the most harrowing episodes of the Spanish Civil War: the mass exodus of civilians from Málaga to Almería in February 1937, known as la desbandá. In 1936, a failed coup d’état had ignited a civil war in Spain. By early 1937, Málaga was […]
Earlier this year, we at the HGN were very fortunate to work alongside several other partners, including historian Dr Chris Kempshall, the University of Glasgow Games and Gaming Lab, and sponsored by World of Tanks to co-host the Imperial War Museum’s War Games Jam. The War Games Jam asked participating teams to create an innovative […]
The early decades of the twenty-first century can be somewhat tricky to define, ideologically and historically. In the Anglosphere it is largely remembered for the triumph of the Third Way – the victories of the Democrats and New Labour cementing neoliberal capitalism as the ideology of ‘the West’ during what Fukuyama called ‘the end of […]
The eighth HGN panel event took place on 25 October and discussed the theme of “Memory” in games. We were delighted to welcome Dr Kate Marrison (University of Sussex, United Kingdom), Casilda de Zulueta (freelancer technical artist and animator, indie developer and animation teacher based in Germany) and Ian Kikuchi (Historian and Curator at the […]
13 Rosas is a horror adventure game currently under development about the characteristics and mechanisms of fascism in general and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in particular. Albeit its necessary incursions with historiography (in the sense of methodologically retelling and contextualizing the past), the game relies on fictionalizing the player actions (you are not a […]
Kate Marrison in conversation with Markus Bassermann (October 2023) The sharp rise in interest in the potential of digital media to preserve, revive and enhance Holocaust memory and education is intricately entangled not only with the passing of the survivor generation, but the emergence of new media technologies and the increasingly central role digital media […]
In 2022, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London opened ‘War Games’, an exhibition about video games and war, which it was my privilege to curate. Focussing on how video games tell stories of war and conflict, the exhibition featured a range of games, with contributions from their developers and historic artefacts from the museum’s […]
Astroneer, seemingly a portmanteau of ‘Astronaut’ and ‘Pioneer’, is a sandbox low-poly space exploration game in which players take on the role of a spacesuit-wearing individual or robot whose identity remains obscured. While future-focused, it is also a historical game based on memory. Players explore uninhabited, procedurally-generated worlds that mostly appear natural, but feature ruins […]
Earlier this year, HGN were very fortunate to work alongside several other partners, including historian Dr Chris Kempshall, the University of Glasgow Games and Gaming Lab, and sponsored by World of Tanks to co-host the Imperial War Museum’s War Games Jam. The War Games Jam asked participating teams to create an innovative war video game […]
The study of history in digital games related to memory culture often focuses on games that directly address a specific historical period or topic with the goal of increasing players’ understanding and knowledge. This can range from simple educational goals, to creating emotional connections to the past, to ideological and moral goals. Much less often, […]