What to contribute to Play the Past? Have a cool idea for the site? Drop us a line.

You can find the editors, Gilles and Peter at the email addresses (and twitter accounts) listed below.

  • Gilles: gilles at playthepast dot org (@gillesroy)
  • Peter: peter at playthepast dot org (@TheTurnipMaster)

Or, conversely, you can also write as at our dedicated Play the Past gmail:

  • playthepast at gmail got com (@playthepast)

Pitch a guest post! Consider becoming a regular contributor!

We are always excited to get posts from new perspectives in the mix. Play the Past has an ongoing open call for contributors and if you are looking for ideas of what you might write, take a look at these ideas for posts you could write.

Who should consider writing for Play the Past

Anybody who wants to write about some aspect of history and the past (broadly construed) in games (broadly defined). Currently we all have an academic bent and humanities backgrounds. Some of us are graduate students, some are professors, some are K-12 teachers, a few of us work at Libraries and Museums. With that said, I would love to have folks get into this from different areas of interest and approaches. For example, social or computer scientists, game developers or writers, folks deep into modding communities, etc. We are particularly interested in contributions that expand the diversity of perspectives and points of view presented on the site.

The only hard and fast requirements are:

  1. That you are interested in games and the past;
  2. That you have original things to say about games and the past, and can produce insightful writing on topics that engage our readership;
  3. That you are excited to be part of an environment characterized by generosity, creativity, and (as corny as it might sound) kindness.

Why write for Play the Past

  1. People will read your work: Over the last year Play the Past has gotten between 4,000 to 13,000 unique page views a month. Those are great numbers for something as arcane as a bunch of historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and classicists opining about history and video games.
  2. People will talk about your work: There are a lot of great comment threads on many of the Play the Past posts. This is a great place to workshop your writing.
  3. You own your work: You don’t get paid, but aside from being cool with letting your posts live here on the site you own anything and everything about work you put here.
  4. This is a great place to hone your writing: Many of the authors have used Play the Past as a platform for incrementally and iteratively building essays for journal articles or book chapters.
  5. Becoming a better writer is about the habit of writing: I’ve found that putting an idea on the calendar and forcing myself to come up with 300-1000 words on it is a great technique for pushing me to work things up and push them out there. Being a regular contributor is a great way to get into the habit of writing and writing for an audiance that gives you feedback is one of the best ways to hone your craft.

How to Pitch for Play the Past

If you are interested in pitching posts to us here is a quick rundown;

  • Send a 50 to 100 word pitch for one to 3 posts to the editors Gilles (gilles at playthepast dot org) & Peter (peter at playthepast dot org). Wait for us to get back to you with any input.
  • Write your first post (something between 500 and 3000 words, make sure it has some pictures in it.) Also link to existing Play the Past articles in your post, whenever you can.
  • Send us your post and await some input/feedback
  • If you do a few good guest posts for the blog we will then set you up with a regular slot. Ideally, we would like each blogger to be posting something once a month.