This is a guest post by Josh Howard, a PhD Candidate in the Public History Program at Middle Tennessee State University. He is also one of four editors for the Sport in American History Blog, and spoke recently at the NCPH conference about the function of video games in encouraging empathetic engagementContinue Reading
“But tell me, and tell me true, whether you saw any of the mighty heroes who went to Troy at the same time with yourself, and perished there.” Thus speaks King Alcinous of the Phaeacians, when Odysseus has claimed himself to be too tired to continue the marvelous tale ofContinue Reading
This invited post introduces the VALUE project, which I think should be on the radar screen for readers of Play the Past – ed. Introducing VALUE Hello gamers and archaeologists, we are VALUE: a new research group about Videogames and Archaeology at Leiden UnivErsity. Our lore A few months ago, Aris PolitopoulosContinue Reading
We live our lives immersed in numerous complex systems – systems of meaning, economic systems, information networks, large socio-technical systems, and so forth. One of the things that make videogames interesting is that they allow us to momentarily step into a different set of systems and play with them. WeContinue Reading
This article is the thematic introduction to a series on the future of quantification in history. To read the articles in the series click on the following links for part one, part two, part three, or part four. Big Data is upon us, and it looks like it’s here to stay. Has Plato’sContinue Reading
This is a guest post by Adam Chapman, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Education, Communication and Learning. Adam has an interest in many aspects of games, popular history, collective memory and learning, with a main focus on historical games (i.e. games that represent theContinue Reading
I heard a great talk on various open data projects from the City of Chicago’s Chief Data Officer a few weeks back. The city is doing some amazingly neat things to make civic data available and to make use of that data for a range of different uses of thatContinue Reading
The following is a guest post from Jamie Taylor. Jamie is currently an Interpretation Developer at The National Railway Museum in York, UK. He is especially interested in how procedural rhetoric can be used in the practise of history and how ‘interesting decisions’ can help facilitate counterfactual narratives. You can followContinue Reading
The hero is he who is immovably centred Ralph Waldo Emerson If I had to explain Apotheon to someone who doesn’t play video games, I’d say this: “imagine the figures of ancient Greek vase art, come to life…” This pithy description seems to best fit the game’s concept, and theContinue Reading
The following is a guest post from Hannah Rice, a digital heritage specialist with an architectural history and computer games background. Hannah’s MSc dissertation was on computer games and architectural history engagement. Hannah is currently working in the archives at the Hull History Centre, in Kingston upon Hull, UK. She’s on Twitter @hannahbeth_r INTRODUCTIONContinue Reading