Tag: historical games

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Medievalism

Call for Contributions – Medievalism

Image via Dave Herring (Unsplash)

Guest Chair/Convenor: Robert Houghton  The Middle Ages are almost everywhere in games. From the painstaking reconstructions of medieval buildings and cityscapes in Assassin’s Creed (2007-) and Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018) to the fantasy worlds emblematic of World of Warcraft (2004-), Gloomhaven (2019) or Baldur’s Gate (1998). From the detailed and measured explorations of medieval life in Pentiment (2022) or Pendragon (1985-) to the comedic Peasant’s Quest (2004) or Munchkin (2001). From post apocalyptic pseudo medieval societies in Fallout (1997-) […]

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Education Technology

Levelling up: the evolving relationship between museums and video games

The "Museum Ending". The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe, 2013). Screenshot courtesy of author.

“The potential of videogames for museums is limitless.” Museum Lab, 2022. In 2014 I was playing Galactic Café’s The Stanley Parable (2013) – a story-based game with a branching narrative providing commentary on player choice, decision making and game design – when I encountered the game’s ‘Museum Ending’. In this ending, the player is invited to explore […]

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Development Player Practices

You’re ruining my lore

"You're ruining my lore." Holly Nielsen, 2024.

Click here to download and play “You’re ruining my lore” (via Holly Nielsen, itch.io) This is a short interactive fiction vignette I created to explore some of the ideas (and my own personal perspective and feelings) around “lore” in games, what it has come to mean, and the role of players in the creation of […]

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Player Practices

Reflections on Player Practice and Online Wikis

Screenshot from Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox Development Studios, 2016.

“EA Sports. It’s in the Game”. This infamous refrain will be very familiar to the sports-videogame enthusiasts amongst us. (There are dozens of us. Dozens!) However, when considering player practices and history, it is fascinating to look beyond the confines of digital game content and instead examine the paratexts that are produced around and outside […]

Categories
Development Education General Memory

IWM War Games Jam – Phantom of the Battlefield

Project Artwork by Leif Gay

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 […]

Categories
Memory

Fear to Remember: The Development of 13 Rosas

13 Rosas. Casilda de Zulueta.

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 […]

Categories
Memory

Remember. The Children of Bullenhuser Damm: A Landecker Digital Remembrance Game

Image credit: Paintbucket Games

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 […]

Categories
Memory

Memory and Historical Games – thoughts in light of the Imperial War Museum’s ‘War Games’ exhibition

In IWM's War Games exhibition, a stack of red barrels marks a room discussing first-person shooters. Photo: © IWM

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 […]

Categories
Memory

Astroneer and the Paradoxes of Memory in Historical Space Exploration Gaming

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 […]

Categories
Memory

Industrial Memory Culture in Fantasy Games: Remnants of the Ruhr in the Gothic and ELEX Series

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, […]