History Games for Boys? Gender, Genre and the Self-Perceived Impact of Historical Games on Undergraduate Historians (original) (raw)
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2016
Historical computer games are a relatively young medium but they have a great potential to influence popular perceptions of history. This article addresses the impact of computer games and other media on undergraduates’ interest in history and their historical knowledge. On the basis of evidence collected through a survey conducted at the University of Winchester this paper argues four key points: Firstly, computer games can strongly influence undergraduates’ perspectives of history. Secondly, computer games exert most influence on students’ understanding of periods which they have not previously studied. Thirdly, different genres of computer games influence students in different ways. Fourthly, male and female students are influenced to different extents by computer games.
Gamevironments, 2016
Historical computer games are a relatively young medium but they have a great potential to influence popular perceptions of history. This article addresses the impact of computer games and other media on undergraduates’ interest in history and their historical knowledge. On the basis of evidence collected through a survey conducted at the University of Winchester this paper argues four key points: Firstly, computer games can strongly influence undergraduates’ perspectives of history. Secondly, computer games exert most influence on students’ understanding of periods which they have not previously studied. Thirdly, different genres of computer games influence students in different ways. Fourthly, male and female students are influenced to different extents by computer games.
A Game Design Plot: Exploring the Educational Potential of History-Based Video Games
IEEE Transactions on Games, 2019
The number of video games that are developed based on real historical events and evidence is increasing. These history-based video games provide players learning opportunities, but a certain type of such games-first and third person shooters-has not been carefully examined for their potentials. Knowing what players say about their game experience-even if the information and knowledge are inaccurate-helps researchers understand what type of learning could happen with such games. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to assessing games as learning environments, using the method of comparing authenticity of popular history-based video games. Through a qualitative data analysis, we studied players' comments on the web-based communication services, such as game forums, digital distribution platforms, and discussion websites. Casual players' conversations on these websites showed that there exist several learning potentials in the games for players including building their understanding about history and historical forces of the time, through personally relating to the specific events, social artifacts, and places.
History Education in the Digital Age, 2022
Over the past few decades, digital entertainment gaming has become very popular among a global audience of players, including a significant number of schoolaged young adults. Some of the most popular digital entertainment games offer a (fictionalized) representation of historical events. This chapter offers a reflection on how digital entertainment gaming can be adopted to advance historical learning and the development of processual historical thinking skills. I do so by analyzing historical digital games as cultural artefacts embedded in a broader digitized media ecology, and digital games as integrated into formal school history curricula.
History-Themed Games in History Education: Experiences on a Blended World History Course
—In this paper we explain our experiences and observations on a blended world history course which combines classical lecture and discussion elements as well as video game sessions in which the students play strategy video games with heavy historical focus. The course, named Playing with The Past, is designed to experiment on how to integrate video games on teaching history especially in order to achieve a higher understanding of the contemporary social, political, economical, and technological context of a given era for a given nation. We ran the course four times between 2015-2018 with different video game titles having different historical models and observe the experiences and learning of students based on the quality of their written essays and articles. Our experiments and observations could be beneficial not only for the design of a general world history course, but also for a history course on specific periods, cultures, and nations.
Video games in the process of historical education at the academic level, 2012
"This piece deals with the significance of computer games in the modern teaching process. The author identified the main challenges for the teachers that are related to problems created by electronic entertainment. The second part of the text focuses on the positive impact of video games exemplified by popular „mods” based on actual historical events. In conclusion, the author stated that it will still be many years before computer games are used by researchers in the process of teaching the academic youth, however they do have the potential to become something more than just pure fun."
Teaching History With Digital Historical Games: An Introduction to the Field and Best Practices
(Privately available from author, jmc.hst@gmail.com) Writing about the theory and best practices of using history-themed video games in the classroom stretches back at least to the 1980s. However, the literature on the subject is scattered, making it difficult for history educators considering the use of historical games. This article provides an introduction for history educators to the use of computer-based historical games in history education. In this article, I provide differing definitions for types of historical games and discuss the importance of such distinctions for the history educator. I provide the strengths and biases inherent in the medium of computer-based historical games. This article surveys best practices from the literature concerning the use of historical games in history class and concludes with a brief survey of potentially useful historical games.