Excavating the Present in Fallout 3
“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
Emergent gameplay, bardic style
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
Seeing Like SimCity
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
Operation LAPIS: Collaborative Roleplaying in the Immersion
As I introduced in a previous post, at the heart of Operation LAPIS is a collaborative role-playing experience that continuously and actively reinforces the primary learning objectives for the course: learning how to read, think, and act like a Roman based on an understanding of the culture as a whole.Continue Reading
Practical Necromancy* for Beginners
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
History as Context: Civilization V
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
Argument Wars Redux: Interview with Dan Norton of Filament Games
I am excited to have a chance to talk with Dan Norton, Lead Designer at Filament games. Filament has developed a bunch of great educational games. I was thinking about writing up a review of one of their games which has a particularly historical dimension, but I figured, hey whyContinue Reading
Thanks, Happy Holidays, & Publishing Hiatus
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
Holiday Play
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
The gamer and the herdsman
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