Creating a Playable History: Digital Games, Historical Skills and Learning

Jeffrey Lawler,Sean Smith

doi:10.21428/f1f23564.22225218

Abstract

Creating a Playable History: Digital Games, Historical Skills and Learning

Highlights

At the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI), we presented a paper that outlined the pedagogical practice that introduces historical methods to our students using video games as both primary sources that explore the history of the second half of the th century and and the development of digital games to present historical research
That presentation spoke to our creation of an upper division course “Playing the Past: Games as Historical Narrative, Public Memory, and Cultural Representations”, as well as our effort to build the Center for the History of Video Games and Critical Play
This paper focuses on our ongoing experiment with digital game creation in our lower and upper division history courses

Summary

Introduction

Write and create games provides them an opportunity to engage in the work of the historian, test their historical interpretations, and it reinforces the importance of asking good historical research questions. The use of game development to produce history allows students to approach historical production in a novel way while employing the traditional tools of historical analysis, engaging in historical narrative, and using critical thinking and research skills specific to our discipline but transferable to others.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion