{"id":7358,"date":"2020-12-13T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=7358"},"modified":"2020-12-13T11:09:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T16:09:50","slug":"play-the-past-with-a-little-help-from-our-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=7358","title":{"rendered":"Play the Past: With a Little Help from our Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since its founding in 2010, Play the Past<\/em> has had the good fortune of hosting many enriching and far-ranging discussions on the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In celebration of our 10th anniversary, we published this last November a brief account of the origins of Play the Past<\/em><\/a>. We also presented to our readership the core set of writers who were part of our founding group<\/a>, as well as those who came to join the community in the years following Play the Past\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let it also be known: since inception, Play the Past<\/em> has also featured critical essays by many guest writers — some well-known in the Historical Game Studies community, others less so. Writers coming to us from the field of media studies or game studies, undergraduates and post-docs in the digital humanities, game designers, educators as well as amateur historians have made significant contributions to our blog, even if their individual output may have been limited to one or two blog posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d like to think that quality research and prose by our writers attracted game studies \u201cheavy-hitters\u201d from outside the core Play the Past<\/em> group. But this has also worked the other way around: as you will see from our presentation below, many guest writers wrote articles which come to take on special significance with the community. Above and beyond, we\u2019re gladdened that Play the Past<\/em> could serve as an online venue for sustained dialogue between the founding community and outside contributors, before the advent of specialized discussion groups on social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As so we\u2019re closing our cycle of 10th anniversary posts with this third and final article, a compilation featuring the critical endeavors of the many guest writers who have played a big part in making Play the Past<\/em> what it is today. We\u2019ve segmented our presentation into thematic groupings, for ease of access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A shout out to you, dear Guest Authors, for all your great work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Historical Representation in Games<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Many video games reference history as a background for their stories and gameplay. What opportunities do games open up for historical representation? And what are the limitations of games as media for historical representation ?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Before publishing his foundational monograph on Historical Game Studies with Routledge in 2016<\/a>, new media scholar Adam Chapman<\/a> had provided glimpses of his forthcoming book in various articles published in academic journals and game studies blogs, including Play the Past<\/em>. In 2012, Chapman published with us a brief essay outlining the importance of assessing historical representation in games through a formalist critique of games as media<\/a>. Criticism of games for \u201chistorical inaccuracies\u201d is stock and trade in academia, journalism, and game forums. Chapman pointed to the distorting effect of deriving criteria for historical accuracy from (print culture-derived) academic standards of empirical historiography. In light of the need for a formalist framework for analyzing \u201chistorying\u201d in digital games, Chapman\u2019s article inspired Play the Past<\/em> authors to take the theoretical bull of media criticism by the horns, and opened the way for concepts and heuristics which were to be more fully developed in his book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar vein, Dawid Kobia\u0142ka of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences pointed out that debates about historical representation in popular media (novels, movies, games) tend to nitpick over details, while losing sight of formal issues around historical representation<\/a>. As a historical reenactment enthusiast, Kobia\u0142ka asserted that understanding attitudes toward material culture from, say, the Viking age, required that we drop the fetishizing quest for \u201cauthentic Viking paraphernalia\u201d, in favor of making parallels between our own pop culture myths and Viking attitudes and beliefs. This \u201cmethod of analogy\u201d could help us discover affinities between past and present forms of human experience, and sharpen our critical wits with respect to historical content in new media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As video games have become a legitimate cultural object, education theorists have conceptualized new modes of learning made possible by (non-)digital play. In History as it can be Played: a New Public History<\/a>, UK-based Creative Curator Jamie Taylor<\/a> critically examined claims of \u201chistorying with games\u201d made by game-based learning advocates. Though games undeniably expand popular history genres, the packaging of virtual historical worlds as video games tends to encourage a functional relationship toward these interpreted worlds — i.e. what can be done in the game world, and how to accomplish game goals. In other words: because of game design, playability will always trump historicity in simulated historical worlds; the commonly-heard argument that \u201call history is constructed\u201d in Historical Game Studies circles tends to downplay the entertainment ends and cybernetic nature of video games, that conditions how history is represented in games. If on the other hand, as Taylor pointed out, we set our optics on the \u201cprocedural rhetoric\u201d of games – how games model <\/em>history – we can instead look at games\u2019 potential as \u201cengines\u201d of historical counter-narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the footsteps of Adam Chapman, Play the Past<\/em> is lucky to have guest authors who have written foundational articles for the community that put forward and\/or clarify key concepts for the field of historical game studies. Jim McNally, lead designer of Longbow Games\u2019 Hegemony <\/em>series<\/a>, proposed in April 2012 to uncover the key design concepts and game development methodologies behind Longbow Game\u2019s long-running strategy franchise on Play the Past<\/em>. In The Concept of Caricature as a General Philosophy for Implementing History as Game Mechanics<\/a>, McNally used the concept of \u201ccaricature\u201d to explain the process by which game developers both simplify and amplify \u201craw\u201d historical or geographical data into game mechanics, UI and narrative, for purposes of creating engaging gameplay. More than a concept, McNally\u2019s notion of caricature is a heuristic,<\/em> a series of practical questions to help streamline historical research into a coherent set of game design principles. From map design to the gamification of ancient military logistics, McNally provided examples of \u201cthe process of caricature\u201d at work in their Hegemony <\/em>games, showing how gamic vocabularies from table-top games could crossover to video games seamlessly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Serialized Video Game<\/a>, University of Florida literature PhD J. Stephen Addcox examined how serialized video game franchises, with their slow drip of narrative content in intense episodic bursts could impact how player memory reconstructed a story, in and out of play sessions. With its heyday in the nineteenth century, the serial approach to publishing has been experiencing somewhat of a revival on streaming media platforms such as Netflix<\/em>, Amazon Prime<\/em> and Disney+<\/em>. The Walking Dead <\/em>series remains the canonical example in contemporary gaming culture for narrative delivered in serialized format; Addcox surmised that the success of the franchise as a transmedia phenomenon has much to do with its successful deployment of narrative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Discussions have reached far and wide on Play the Past<\/em> on the relation between form and content in historical video games, leaving the question of aesthetics perhaps less considered. Since game genres play a defining role in the way historical content is conveyed, visual style also informs the intelligibility of historical content to players, in a medium that borrows heavily from other media such as film and literature. Taking analytical cues from Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, Joey Di Zoglio highlighted, in Notes from the Roman Camp<\/a>, how the portrayal of Roman military conquest in video games typically draws inspiration from cinematographic kitsch. Reviving the literary and media criticism notion of \u201ccamp\u201d for the occasion, Di Zoglio unpacked the design aesthetics of Total War: Rome<\/em> to reveal Creative Assembly\u2019s impressive mobilization of modern tropes and stereotypes about Roman politics, Empire-building and militarism into a (barely-cohesive) whole. The result has been a strategy game which, in serving up a hot dish of roman camp in digital form, paid more lip service <\/em>to popular cinema than the game developer may have cared to admit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a pop culture form, video games have often kept their relationship to the historical materials tongue-in-cheek. As a result, analysts of cultural and historical representation in video games need to be skilled not only in their given academic disciplines, but also at blitzing together tidbits of lore from art history, technology and platform studies, and literary and media criticism for each new venture into the land of video game criticism. In this vein, Willamette University humanities graduate Zach Wolf gave Play the Past readers an entertaining guided tour of the medieval-kitsch aesthetic of indie platformer Shovel Knight<\/em><\/a>. Mobilizing the concept of pastiche <\/em>and its postmodern uses (and abuses), Wolf was able to show how Shovel Knight<\/em>\u2019s cheesy take on all things medieval was primarily informed — no real surprise here — by its gameplay style. But as Wolf points out, once the aesthetic cat is out of the bag (i.e. once a game is released), game aesthetics tend to take on a life of their own as they diffuse through the broader culture. In the Simulacrum, no one can hear you reference\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its humble beginnings, how has the nascent discipline of Historical Game Studies advanced the study of historical representation in games? In Challenge the Past\/Diversify the Future: Reflections on Historical Game Studies and the Study of Historical Representation Across Disciplines<\/a>, Adam Chapman reported on the Challenge the Past\/ Diversify the Future<\/em> digital humanities conference held at Gothenburg University, Sweden<\/a> in March 2015. Chapman provided a summary of the (then) hottest developments in Historical Game Studies (HGS). Chapman touched on the diversity of issues and topics covered at the conference and the disciplinary background of speakers. If cross-disciplinary approaches seemed the common currency of HGS presenters at the conference, an underlying enthusiasm for the potential of games as a mode of \u201chistorying\u201d was perhaps its enduring legacy — also attested in Chapman\u2019s research and work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Video Games and Collective Memory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Millions of people have played video games, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Culture critics have pointed out the virtual worlds enable (or impose?) new perceptions of the real, and are \u201clived in\u201d in ways that are analogous albeit ontologically distinct from the \u201creal world\u201d. In our consumer society, can player-inhabited virtual universes also serve a public memory function?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of our guest writers have written about digital preservation practices, in and outside of museum, library and archive institutions. For one, the role and place of museums in virtual play spaces has attracted the attention of game critics. The University of Winchester Tomas Brown\u2019s comparative analysis of museums in Uncharted<\/em>, Skyrim<\/em>, Bioshock <\/em>and Wildstar<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>introduced Play the Past<\/em> readers to the different functions occupied by museums in game worlds, as narrative drivers, places of debate, sites of propaganda, or spaces designed to facilitate the construction of player identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More recently, Pratt Institute Library and Information Science graduate Alvina Lai explored the four galleries of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ museum<\/a>, with a designer’s eye for the hooks and tools that encourage player curiosity and creative problem-solving. In Lai\u2019s assessment, the character Blathers provides a narrative foil for the Animal Crossing<\/em> gameplay loop expression of the real-world cycle of exploration, excavation, collection and curation through which archaeological discoveries are made public. In a second article exploring the theme of cultural heritage and the memory function, Lai deftly turned the vellum pages of library level of the point-and-click masterpiece LUNA The Shadow Dust<\/em><\/a>, to reveal layered symbolism at work in the game that celebrates the lore and mystique of books and libraries of yesterday and today in interactive media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If local preservation initiatives continue to struggle against the tide of modern urban renewal projects, can such initiatives find justification in preservation of ephemeral worlds of virtual game spaces populated by (real) digital players? In The Oral History of MMOs<\/a>, Middle Tennessee State University History PhD Josh Howard covered the theory and practice of digital preservation, and the uses of tailored methodologies from the fields ethnology and oral history. Going forward, Howard proposed that oral history projects such as the Public History Norrath<\/a> could serve as models for digital preservation initiatives for persistent-world MMOs with large user bases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A vigil for Leonard Nimoy held in the game Star Trek Online shortly after his death in February 2015<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In ‘Sad When a Game Outlives a Player’: Memorials and Monuments in MMO Gaming<\/a>, Howard also explored how MMO communities organize rituals to mark the passing of real people. Though persistent-world MMOs convey an illusion of permanence in and out of gameplay sessions with one\u2019s tribe, virtual ontology ultimately rests on player-base loyalty and shifting corporate priorities. Rituals undertaken to commemorate real-world events in the (privatized) \u201ccommons\u201d of virtual worlds remain an understudied aspect of online community behaviour. Howard looked at examples of top-down or bottom-up-driven commemorative practices in major MMO brands such as Final Fantasy<\/em>, Eve Online<\/em>, Ultima Online<\/em>, World of Warcraft<\/em>, and Guild Wars<\/em>. Howard also underlined the common frailty of these paradoxical endeavors, which seek to instill a sense of personhood and permanence in \u201clived-in\u201d virtual spaces that leave no documentary record of their passing once servers are shut down, and once the Let\u2019s Play!<\/em> videos vanish from YouTube<\/em>.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proving that Play the Past<\/em> can even make inroads into car culture, freelance writer Cory Milne hacked the code of Grand Turismo <\/em>nostalgia<\/a>, showing how the fine-tuned aesthetics of presence and feel are key to paying tribute to iconic cars of times past. Charting changing attitudes toward the once-mighty automobile, from the post-WWII car machismo to the driverless future ahead, Milne also considered how driving nostalgia captured in games such as Grand Turismo<\/em> could achieve the novel distinction of becoming public memorials to the automobile\u2019s heroic past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can video games offer meditations on the human lifespan, and how we come to remember our own past as we inevitably inch daily toward death? In between playthroughs of Jason Rohrer\u2019s epigrammatic Passage<\/em><\/a>, Nicholas Kratsas reflected on the inexorable nature of temporality (lived time)<\/a>. The restricted possibility-space of Rohrer\u2019s Passage<\/em>, Krastas pointed out, upends one of video game\u2019s core seductions — the ability to endlessly replay game sequences — allowing players to grasp how remembrance of past events and hopes about the future can widen the impression we have of our ultimately narrow, individual life trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Paying homage to one of the most obscure (and sombre) tropes of horror film and video games<\/a>, Professor of Digital Studies at the University of Mary Washington Zach Whalen<\/a> engaged in serious digital detective work for Play the Past around a mysterious family suicide in Bioshock (2007)<\/a>. Players stumbling onto the grisly scene of suicided members of the Beauchamp family in the Mercury Suites neighborhood of Olympus Heights, may have been further taken aback at the dearth of clues left in place by the developers for further player sleuthing. Intrigued and disturbed by this layered mystery, Whalen proceeded to digitally peel away the textures of the room for clues about the identity of the family, and possible explanations for their tragic end. With diligent effort, Whalen was able to semiotically unpack retro-kitsch references that abounded about the scene of the crime. With its 1950\u2019s-style TV as symbolic focal point, the scene gloomily radiates television-era nostalgia, inverting the comfortable imagery of a American family living room idyll by displaying it as dead of causes unknown, eerily preserved in its decayed state. The designed digital universe of Bioshock thus shows us how time does not rot in video games, making death ultimately an aesthetic move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ludic Historying and Archeaogaming<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Historians try to decipher musty documents, archaeologists dig holes into the ground to find artifacts, gamers explore virtual worlds to level up. What crossover could there possibly be between these worthy endeavors ? Perhaps when video games offer a mirror — even if distorting — to the methods and approaches of historians and anthropologists…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the fine tradition of non<\/em>-spoiler free game critiques on Play the Past<\/em>, Richard Bell’s Family History: Source Analysis in Gome Home<\/em><\/a> explored Gone Home<\/em>\u2019s layered modes of narration for insights on historical research. Since Gone Home<\/em>\u2019s gameplay and environment rely on investigation and narrative reconstruction, Bell analysed the process by which players evaluate source materials, showing how historians also fill gaps in the evidentiary record to piece together a coherent story, or account of things past. Taking up Trevor Owens\u2019 call for a new evaluative framework for game narrative,<\/a> Bell concluded that Gone Home<\/em> provides a unique take on fragmentary narrative as a way of enabling players to act as reconstructors of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs I played, the similarities between this process and the kind of questions I ask of sources as an historian became increasingly apparent. Players are required to consume and evaluate the varying accounts and information presented to them, piece them together, and make educated inferences in order to bridge gaps in their knowledge. Questions of perspective and purpose need to be addressed: private letters between friends convey something different to a will, but only when read critically and alongside numerous other sources does a deeper narrative emerge. This is where Gone Home differs from something like Dear Esther. Rather than reading between the lines of a single ambiguous narrative voice, here we are encouraged to piece together a narrative encoded in numerous objects. Where Dear Esther invites the kind of textual analysis at which students of literature excel, Gone Home demands something more akin to source comparison.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In his 4-part Let\u2019s Play!<\/em> presentation of Far Cry Primal<\/em><\/a> – the first of its kind on Play the Past <\/em>–  Philip Riris, an archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology at University College London unpacked Ubisoft\u2019s Mesolithic-era story and gameworld from an archaeogaming perspective. Riris\u2019s nuanced critique of the Hobbesian assumptions behind the story and gameplay<\/a>, and the underlying moral economy of Far Cry Primal<\/em><\/a> <\/em>shed light on how developer-historians reconstruct worlds and narrative frameworks that depict long-disappeared human realities. As Riris demonstrated, Ubisoft\u2019s take on the Upper Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic period in Europe is as much beset by clich\u00e9s and distortions (that help sell prehistoric adventure stories to mass audiences) as they contribute to original and imaginative reconstructions of these distant pasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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