Welcome to Assassin’s Creed Week. After my plans for reading week fell through, I figured I would put some time into finally writing out some thoughts I have had on the Assassin’s Creed series and never had the chance to put to digital paper. So from Monday to Friday thisContinue Reading
This will be the first in a four-part series that reflects on a Composition II course taught in Spring 2013 called 20th Century PC Games. The course’s primary goal is to teach students academic writing conventions (as a continuation of Composition I), but it is also designed to do soContinue Reading
Enemies within the scope of the real world are difficult to choose for video games. With science fiction games, like Halo, or fantasy games, like Skyrim, universally acceptable enemies like aliens or dragons can be used without any sort of outcry from the public. Some modern shooters have turned toContinue Reading
Videogames are inextricably bound to ideology. In most cases, this is not by design, but simply because game developers tend to create virtual worlds that reflect the particular way in which they see the real world. As Ian Bogost (2006) has noted, these ideological frames are rarely explicit, making itContinue Reading
Leading up to the new Millennium, western countries rushed to recount the history of the 20th century in what Jay Winter, one of the leading historians in the field of memory studies, has called the memory boom. During this time, the big conflicts of 20th century were remembered in publicContinue Reading
We talk a lot about how history is represented in games and about how cozino games can be used to teach history, but I’d love to spark a conversation here about how games themselves can actually be a form of scholarship in their own right. That is, can we imagineContinue Reading
We’ve got a lot of great scholarship here on Play the Past. I’m continually astounded by these authors – their insights, their wit, and their ability to surprise and delight. I’m confident that what we’re doing here on Play the Past is making a difference in the scholarship of gamesContinue Reading
The following is a guest post from Andrew Salvati, a Media Studies Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University, interested in media history, myth,memory, and representation. The post is based on a paper he presented at the first meeting of the International Network for the Theory of History (INTH) in Ghent, Belgium, July 2013. YouContinue Reading
This guest post is by Owen Vince. Owen studied and practiced as an archaeologist in the UK and Turkey, working primarily with Mesolithic and Chalcolithic materials. He holds a Masters in literature and has, recently, been writing video games and music criticism. He’s on Twitter @Owen________ During his long andContinue Reading
Ever since its release, I’ve been a big fan of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I found its huge open world, its random environment, and specifically its material culture refreshing- it kind of fit my style of play exactly. I’m an explorer and tinkerer. I generally abhor magic, for noContinue Reading