Valiant Hearts: The Problem (and Solution) of Historical War Video Games
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
Retrogaming and the Mutability of Genre
Retrogaming is a culture of playing old games or creating new games in the style of old games, artificially restraining game aesthetics to mimic the very real technological restraints that made the historical games’ the way they are, akin to applying a filter to a digital photograph to make itContinue Reading
The Serialized Video Game
This is a guest post by J. Stephen Addcox who recently completed his PhD at the University of Florida with a focus in Victorian literature. In the fall, he will be joining Georgia Tech’s Writing and Communication Program as a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow. His research is on the intersections ofContinue Reading
Pixelated Commemorations: 4 In Game Monuments and Memorials
We recently had a great post on what museums do in video games. This got me thinking about another tried and true feature of public history which shows up in all kinds of video games, monuments and memorials. So this is a quick run at a few examples of memorialsContinue Reading
Social Construction of Technology in Games
Technological development influences the way we live and interact with the world on a deep level. Technological artifacts like computers and cars dictate how our society functions and how we relate to one another. These influences are so pervasive throughout our everyday lives that it’s sometimes difficult to imagine thingsContinue Reading
The Role of the Museum in Video Games
The following is a guest post from Tomas Brown. Thomas is currently a post graduate student studying Cultural Heritage and Resource Management at The University of Winchester. He is interested in the application of cultural heritage in video games, Imperial heritage and Ancient Rome. You can find him on twitterContinue Reading
Prison Architect: The Dark Heart of Every Sim
This article is part 2 of a 2-part series on prison management games, and the controversies surrounding them. You can read the introductory remarks for the series here, and part 1 here. Playing Prison Architect almost always cheers me up. Is that bad? When I play the game, I’mContinue Reading
Counterfactual History and The Conquest of Paradise
While I’m a pretty big fan of strategy games in general, historical strategy games are particularly interesting, especially from a pedagogical standpoint. As I and many of the other Play the Past authors have previously discussed, these games allow us to look at the past through a different lens thanContinue Reading
Artifacts of the Past in The Last of Us
I recently purchased The Last of Us as a small reward to myself for finishing my undergrad. I had already beaten the game last summer after borrowing the game from my friend but I couldn’t resist playing it again. First things first, THE LAST OF US SPOILERS AHEAD I’ve had the greatContinue Reading
Teacher Design Notes: Using Civilization IV to Learn about Agrarian Societies
Before I begin, a short preface. I have made it something of a personal mission, both as a researcher and writer on historical simulation games and as a classroom teacher, I love to do research on the best www.easyslots.com games, to crack the Civilization IV code. In other words, toContinue Reading