Playing in the Past: A Framework for History-Oriented Video Games

• In Event: Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Digital Technology in Social Studies

Abstract

This paper develops a typological framework for analyzing video games that deploy historical elements influencing the ways players engage with and think about the past. It will posit phenomenological categories for identifying different deployments of and experiences with historical elements in video games, illustrated by examples drawn from analysis of selected popular, historically oriented video-game texts. Building on the literature of video games, popular media and history education, this study will theorize specifically on the characteristics of interactions between student-players’ academic, school-based knowledge of history and the historical representations they encounter in computer, console, or web-based games.

Authors

• Scott Alan Metzger, The Pennsylvania State University - University Park

• Richard J. Paxton, Pacific University