The American creator of a controversial Irish Famine-themed board game, Kevin McPartland, has addressed backlash from the Irish public. Marketed as a historical simulation, the game encourages players to survive famine-era hardships. Critics argue it trivializes tragedy, comparing it to a Holocaust-themed game. McPartland defends it as educational, aiming to inform Americans about An Gorta Mór.
Read MoreThompson's interest in games stems from his childhood and roleplaying games, such as Dungeon and Dragons. It was listening to the Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast that introduced Thompson to the concept of board game design.
Read MoreIf history is the only true teacher, then Assassin's Creed could soon be the best school to learn about life in Ancient Egypt and how the crusaders crushed the enemies of the Latin Church. With the Discovery Tour series, history is now front and centre. Assassin's Creed Discovery Tour series: How it came about.
Read MoreDelving into the history of how video games have utilized - and distorted - stories of the past reveals a persistent demand for historical education through entertainment, a reminder that people are constantly searching for new ways to engage and find meaning in the past.
Read MoreJenga is a game made up of 54 blocks that are removed one at a time and stacked on top of each other. The story of Jenga is really interesting as it has roots in an ancient game and became a huge hit in the 1980s.
Read MoreEuropean game designers produced some successful war-related games, such as Albert Lamorisse's La Conquête du monde, known in the English speaking-world as Risk, but this game conveys quite an abstract representation of warfare, while the great novelty offered by American wargames was precisely their so-called "Realism".
Read MoreEducational games weren't limited to software; the Logo programming language, an early attempt to teach programming skills to children, used a turtle robot that could draw objects based on what was programmed on the screen. While educational software was having a major impact on the computer industry, it was a while before Microsoft's MS-DOS came to dominate the educational games market.
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