Playing history

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about a way how computer games can be used to educate the players in working with historic texts and allowing them to extend their historic knowledge.

During my time as a student in the master program „Media culture and media economics“[1] I was also required to visit some history courses. The most interesting course was about reading historic texts. I even increased the challenge by taking a course about the letters from a French nun who was one of the first settlers in Canada. Apart from the challenge to translate the letters from ancient French to German, it was pretty interesting to learn more about the different meanings of some words in this age.

The course’s learning outcome of having a basic idea on how to handle historic texts and on how to put the messages into the context of their age was really interesting to me. It was fun not only to read words written hundreds of years ago, but also to decrypt the real message of those words. All in all, it was a bit like a treasure hunt or a puzzle with the reward of an in-depth understanding. Additionally, I was even able to learn more historic facts about this age and to develop a better understanding of it.

However, developing the ability to work with historic texts and learning more about our own past should not only be possible in such courses. Moreover, the whole approach of reading a text and trying to decrypt its message is almost like a small adventure. The process of reading those texts could even have a great potential to be the basis of an adventure computer game.

Adventure computer games mostly challenge the players with small puzzles they need to solve in order to proceed through the game. This can be done with simple „use item“ tasks and can end with complex quizzes requiring the user to decrypt a message to find the correct code. Additionally, adventure computer games are offering interesting background stories to the players and can also take adventage of neat visual representations of the content.

The result of this short adventure computer game genre analysis is indicating that these games might be ideal to present historic facts to the players. The setting of the game can allow the players to experience a historic age by simply exploring the environment and maybe being able to talk to Non-Player-Characters (NPCs), who will provide the players with additional insights about the presented age.

Finally, like in any other adventure game, the players need to be challenged with some puzzles in order to proceed through the game. These puzzles then can be solved by reading and understanding original historic texts. The combination of historic texts and the historic background story can help the players to relate the written information to the historic age. Furthermore, the players can unlock some questions they can ask the NPCs by reading those historic texts. They might be even able to start a conversation with an NPC and click on parts of a text to ask the NPC for their opinion. This approach would allow the players to gather enough additional historic context and to finally solve the puzzle.

After playing such a history adventure, the players could have gained additional information about the historic age and they might even have developed a certain understanding on how to connect historic texts to their age. Additionally, due to the highly immersive and motivating environment of a computer game, the players could have even learned more about the presented topic than by just reading a history book.