The following is a guest post from Dawid Kobiałka, a doctoral candidate at Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan). The times in which we all live are quite interesting and paradoxical. On the one hand, there is an injunction to enjoy, to carpe diem; seize the day. According to this point of view, humanContinue Reading
In my last post I outlined the way that the Assassin’s Creed series makes of its players what I call Ubicultural subjects. I argued that through the thematics of culture-clash that the games drape over the mechanics of free-movement within a notionally historical space and violence of a notionally historicalContinue Reading
I’m often asked by colleagues who know my interest in games in education to suggest a game students can play that will teach them some particular set of knowledge or skills. “Do you know any iPad games that can teach quadratic equations?,” or “Has anyone made a game about conjugatingContinue Reading
It’s that time of year again! The semester is winding down (or already has wound down), final exams have been taken (or given), grades (or assignments) have been turned in, and calendars are booked with various holiday gatherings and parties. And, in keeping with Play the Past tradition, it’s theContinue Reading
It’s easy to criticize games with historical settings based on their inaccuracies, and equally easy to defend them on the basis of gameplay. I have certainly done both before. This time, I want to do neither; in this post, I will examine how specificity strengthens Sierra’s Pharaoh in terms ofContinue Reading
The historical stories told within the animus of Assassin’s Creed are about the clash of cultures. The Assassins and the Templars are represented in the game’s version of history by those same Assassins and Templars (Assassin’s Creed), the forces of enlightenment and repression in Renaissance Italy (Assassin’s Creed II), NativeContinue Reading
NOTE: THIS PAPER CONTAINS SPOILERS The Second World War was possibly the most devastating conflict in human history. For Europe, it would take years before the continent was put back together. As for the United States, it became the most powerful nation in the years immediately after the Second WorldContinue Reading
We often treat serious games as a relatively recent or unexpected development. Certainly there is still a fair amount of hype about the potential practical uses of videogames, particularly in the realm of education. While such discourses of progress and potential are certainly not unfounded, it is important to rememberContinue Reading
In my last two posts about the shooting mechanic, I tried to demonstrate that an understanding of immersion as the player’s identification with the ruleset that conditions his or her performance can help us find ways that even as entrenched a mechanic as shooting can, together with the shaping ofContinue Reading
“Once upon a time in the wild, Wild West… “ …a game publisher decides that it needs to save a once-successful game license from certain doom. For a series built on the premise of gunslinging in the Western style, that could only mean one thing: give’m gunfighting action, and lots ofContinue Reading