Public Memory is a concept that is intertwined with history in many different ways, so it’s no surprise that memory is a theme that has come up over and over again here on Play the Past. Memory and videogame intersect in a number of different ways, from prompting us toContinue Reading
The following is a guest post from Christopher Sawula an Early American Historian of Class, Society, and Culture. CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alabama. You can find him @CGSaw on twitter. Valiant Hearts is the only war game I would ever teach students as a historical text. FocusingContinue Reading
The last time I wrote for Play the Past (unfortunately, far too long ago), I examined Valiant Hearts: The Great War as an object of remembrance and commemoration and an excellent way to understand the First World War without glorifying the conflict or understanding the war in a “top-down” view. ItContinue Reading
Something that I’ve written significantly about recently is the glorification of the Second World War in video games. Games like Call of Duty 2 attempt to portray the war with a sense of realism but the final product often ends up muddled with ever-to-common tropes of heroism and sacrifice withContinue Reading