Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) offer the player the illusion of infinite possibility. In videogames, however open the world, players are constrained to take the actions that have been built in by its designers and developers. By contrast, in TTRPGs the decisions you take are theoretically only limited by the imaginations of the players. This is […]
This is a guest post from Johnnemann Nordhagen, one of our panellists for the forthcoming Alternatives theme panel. You will be able to watch the panel event as a live stream from the TIPC3 conference. The entire conference is being streamed here, but if you are just tuning in for the HGN Panel. This will […]
Event details Date 26 May 2023 Time 13:30PM CET (11:30 UTC) Location Virtual (Twitch) | Join here Speakers Edmund Hayes | Johnnemann Nordhagen | Corine Gerritsen [Chair: Esther Wright] We’re trying something new! Working with the fabulous VALUE Foundation, the next Historical Games Network Panel will be coming to you from The Interactive Pasts 3 […]
Fall of Bali is a historical strategy game set in Bali in the 18th and 19th centuries, when Balinese kingdoms fought each other, their rivalry having started when the Gelgel Empire dissolved in 1686 and made many vassals independent. The game allows players to control, manage, and build one of the Balinese kingdoms in this […]
The sixth HGN panel event took place on 25 January and discussed the theme of “Development”. We welcomed Dr Maurice Suckling (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York), Saadia Gardezi (Project Dastaan and Warwick University) and Sarah Cole (TIME/IMAGE) as panellists. Hosted by Dr Adam Chapman, the panel discussed the development of historical games, and the challenges […]
Alternatives are essential to games as a cultural form because agency is a foundational characteristic of the experiences they offer. The possibility for players – the audience – to influence the outcome of at least some events means that games must always contain competing alternatives, with their final outcome determined through the player’s actions. These […]
I’ve been to many talks over the years about historical accuracy (fact) versus authenticity (feeling) within games, but fewer about practicalities of putting history into a game. I could talk about something like the Assassin’s Creed, Civilization, or Red Dead Redemption games here – games that are sold on their historical themes. But we’d be […]
In 1947, at the age of seven, Khalid Bashir Rai crossed the new border between India and Pakistan after the end of the British Raj. The border was the creation of a British lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had little idea of the history, demography and politics of India. His hurried line and swift departure […]
There are broadly three main ways in which commercial board games intersect with history: Games as history quizzes test a player’s knowledge of history, for the purposes of education and/or entertainment. Commercial examples of this kind of game are Chronology (1996) and Timeline (2012). In both instances players place cards in the correct sequence in […]
Let’s start with some big questions. Why do historical games look the way they do? Why are player’s possible actions constrained in certain ways? What goes into the decision-making process behind the culture we regularly use to engage with the past? How do game companies determine questions of which periods, which perspectives, and what actions […]