“Honestly, I Would Stick With the Books”: Examining Young Adults’ Ideas About a Commercial Video Game as a Source of Historical Knowledge

• In Event: Media, Imagery, and History Education

Abstract

Though several popular videogames have been set in the past, young peoples’ ideas about videogames as sources of historical knowledge have not been examined in detail. Twelve purposely-sampled undergraduates were recruited to play the game “Medal of Honor: Frontline (MoHF)” under observation, and were interviewed about how “realistic” they thought the game was. If they lacked specific knowledge to critique the game’s depiction of historical events and situations, participants reasoned about its trustworthiness as a source in one of two ways: by identifying game features that appeared unrealistic, and taking these as indicative of the developers’ general approach to realism, or by trying to imagine the motives that commercial game developers would have for working to achieve historical realism.

Authors

• Kevin O'Neill, Simon Fraser University

• Bill Feenstra, Simon Fraser University