Assassin’s Creed IV, Ubiculturality, and Stede Bonnet: an Invitation
My intention for this post was to write something specific and reasonably authoritative on how the character of Stede Bonnet as seen (as performed by means of, really) in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag differs from what we know of the historical Stede Bonnet, and what I think the differenceContinue Reading
Teaching Games as Text Part 4: The Conclusion
This is the fourth and final part of a series that reflects on a Composition II course taught in Spring 2013 called 20th Century PC Games. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. As I write this, I’m finishing up another Composition II courseContinue Reading
Visual Styles and Depictions of the Past
The first time I saw the preview trailer for LUFTRAUSERS, I thought of Nazis. Gothic font, banner with white spot and black symbol. Skull. Sepia motion picture animation. Video game makers adopt a specific set of visual references and use them as a way to helpContinue Reading
Prison Tycoon: the Broken Promise of Simulation
This article is part 1 of a 2-part series on prison management games, and the controversies surrounding them. You can read the introductory remarks for the series here. Apparently, Prison Tycoon isn’t much fun to play. “Apparently”, because even though I’ve played it myself, I wasn’t seeking entertainment. InContinue Reading
Prison Sims: Birth of a Controversy
N.B. This post is an introduction to an upcoming two-part series on prison management games, and the controversies surrounding them. It’s a fair question to ask: are prison management games any less controversial than your average violent video game? Or any opus from the Grand Theft Auto family,Continue Reading
Teaching Games as Text: The Problem (Part 3 of 4)
Teaching Games as Text: The Problem (Part 3 of 4) This is the third in a four-part series that reflects on a Composition II course taught in Spring 2013 called 20th Century PC Games. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. Here’s the thing about teaching gamesContinue Reading
Mirroring Gods in Theros: conquering mythological stereotypes in Magic the Gathering
The following is a guest post from Aris Politopoulos, Universiteit Leiden, Archaeology. There is a huge amount of modern fiction out there set in Ancient Greece or based on Ancient Greek themes. Television series, books, video games, board games, comics, you name it. Due to its long history and mythology and theContinue Reading
The Preservation of Twitch Plays Pokémon
Writing on the history of video games is not a new field. Numerous books and website have dissected and investigated the nearly sixty years since a group of MIT students created Spacewar! in the early 1960’s. However, the recent phenomenon of Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) falls outside the normal realm of videoContinue Reading
Historical Infiltration of Video Game Journalism
I tweeted about this a couple nights ago but in the last couple weeks Play the Past surpassed the 200,000 all-time view mark, a huge milestone for the website. I believe that the success of this site and other sites like it are indicative of the growing interest in historyContinue Reading
The Memoirs of DayZ
I have taken a particular interest recently in user created histories within video games. My first post on this was on the created history of EVE Online and now I will turn to the interesting case of DayZ. DayZ was a mod for ARMA 2 (2009) and its expansion pack ARMA 2: OperationContinue Reading