Luo Chenchen is a master’s student in world history at East China Normal University, studying French history, public history and historical theory. He is deeply passionate about historical strategy games. He is committed to seriously examining the significance of counterfactual history for historical theory. [1] I saw the Emperor–this world-spirit–ridingContinue Reading
Joel is a MA student in the Communication and Culture program at York University in Toronto, where he plans to research the empathetic potentials of digital roleplaying. If he’s not playing and dissecting a strategy sim or RPG, then the chances are he’s off driving someone crazy by gushing aboutContinue Reading
About the author: Iván Goldman is a political scientist from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a Researcher at the Meridiano Foundation and the Argentinean Foreign Policy Research Group (GIPEA) of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, where he also is a TeachingContinue Reading
You receive a handwritten note regarding the whereabouts of the Wandering Bue. It is signed by Simone, the librarian in the game Strange Horticulture. Throughout the story, she does what librarians stereotypically do: provide information. She spends so much time working, in fact, that it leads to health decline. ItContinue Reading
“Playing at history”. A few generations ago, science fiction writers seemed almost alone in entertaining the thought. Today, the very idea of going on a trip in a virtual historical setting has gone mainstream, thank in good part to the spread of video games. This success comes at a price.Continue Reading
Libraries and archives are important and have been for as long as humanity has kept records. But why? In The Elder Scrolls Online, a quest asks this exact question. In this article, I discuss the “Historical Accuracy” quest in ESO and dissect the narrative around record keeping (and record destruction).Continue Reading
This is a guest post by Dr Jack Orchard. Jack is Content Editor for the Electronic Enlightenment project based at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, and holds a PhD from Swansea as well as a BA and MA from University College London. His PhD was on reading practices in 18th centuryContinue Reading
The Arcanaeum is a library in the College of Winterhold, an institution and guild that the player visits during the main quest in the 2011 game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. While the Arcanaeum is not quite like the academic libraries we often see and think of today, it isContinue Reading
This is a guest post by Daniel Navarro. Dan holds a MA in Media Studies from NYU Steinhardt and a BA in both Comparative Ethnic Studies and Religion at Columbia University. His research focuses on connecting theory and history to media, most often with games or music. He can beContinue Reading
There is a character in Spiritfarer called the Collector, a well-dressed, finicky walrus who goes by the name of Susan. When the player first meets Susan, she describes her distaste for the collection of “junk.” Nonetheless, Susan is the in-game collections achievement tracker, and will reward the player for findingContinue Reading