“The best place to view Los Angeles of the next millennium is from the ruins of its alternative future” thus Mike Davies begins his provocative history of L.A. When Davies interrogates Blade Runner and The Martian Chronicles he finds a considerable amount of material to critically interpret the city andContinue Reading

There’s a wonderful moment in Book 8 of the homeric Odyssey when Odysseus treats Demodocus, one of the two bards in the Odyssey (we’ll meet poor Phemius, the other one, very briefly later in this post) pretty much the way a gamer treats his or her controller, fulfilling the fantasyContinue Reading

Mark Sample recently posted a short talk he gave at the 2011 MLA, called “Criminal Code: The Procedural Logic of Crime in Videogames.” There is a lot in this little talk that’s worth reading. (I applaud Mark’s call for humanists to do close readings of code,  something we tried toContinue Reading

My students – especially my first year students – sometimes wish for direct, first person testimony. Wouldn’t it make life easier if we could just interrogate them, read what they thought, directly? Seeing as how most of the people in question (in my classes) are Romans, this would require aContinue Reading

Sid Meier’s Civilization is one of the most-loved franchises in gaming, particularly among those with a historical bent, even though it doesn’t provide a realistic narrative of history. The latest iteration in the series came out a few months ago and adjusted many aspects of play for better or worseContinue Reading

One month ago (yesterday) Play the Past went live.  It was a project that I had been nursing for some time, and I quite honestly had no idea how it would be received.  I knew that the model of a collaboratively contributed and lightly edited blog worked (based on my involvement withContinue Reading

The semester is winding down, and the Christmahanukwanzaakah is almost upon us.  Assignments have been submitted (and received), last lectures have been delivered (or attended), and (hopefully) grading is nearing completion.  Everyone around the Play the Past offices is looking forward to a much deserved break in which (among many otherContinue Reading

That story, a story he knows very well in its outline, and may know very well even in its specific detail, is unfolding in a way it never has before, because the gamer himself is helping it unfold, and he couldn’t do it the same way anyone else has done it, or even the same way he himself has done it before, if he tried.Continue Reading