Recent Posts
Fresh on the heels of our editorial team transition, Play the Past is pleased to announced that the French-German TV channel ARTE is releasing a new web doc series on the treatment of history in video games.
The series, commissioned by ARTE Creative and produced by Tournez s’il vous plait, is hosted by popular French History...
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Seven years ago, back in November of 2010, we launched this blog. In those seven years, an amazing cast of more than thirty writers from a range of humanities perspectives have written 337 posts about the function of the past, history, and memory in video games. Across those posts we’ve got 1,156 non-spam actual comments. For many...
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N.B. Readers who would like to take up the Victoria 2 #Canada150 challenge without reading the historical introduction, can skip to the play rules, below.
March 16th, 1882. Canada’s 4th parliament is in session.
A member of the Liberal party from the opposition bench, the Right Honourable William Paterson from Brant...
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Setting the Stage
Playing The Creative Assembly’s Rome: Total War (2004) is a manner of performing history. When the map loads, the Mediterranean world appears under a technicolor backdrop of young factions ready to be swallowed up by the Roman banners. The first playthrough only permits players to select among three Roman...
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“Death is difficult under any circumstance. The death of a friend you only knew via the internet is something that this generation is just learning how to deal with.” — Matthew Miller, mmorpg.com, 6/25/2013
Games, gaming, and digital worlds affect lived realities. People meet through games. Long-lasting friendships develop....
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Path of Honors (here at my Twine site on philome.la) is an experimental interactive history that I am designing in bits and pieces. The plan is to model an aristocratic Roman as he played the game of politics and sought to win election to offices and gain prestige and dignity for himself and his family. PoH is skeletal right now...
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The Problem of Ephemeral Gaming
Do you remember where you were when Twitch Plays Pokémon finished Pokémon Red? It was only in 2014— barely three years ago—but many people who actively participated have already forgotten about it; interest faded fast after the game was “won,” and although there are plenty of...
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