The recent report about game preservation from the Videogame History Foundation paints a very bleak picture of the state of our industry. There are two ways to give life to these preserved games: improving the remaster, and selling the story around the game. Game development continues to be a mysterious subject for a lot of people.
Read MoreTroy University history professor Dr. Scout Blum has merged game playing and academics with her newest creation, a board game called Rising Waters, which aims to give students a better understanding of one of the most destructive disasters in US history and the themes of racism and perseverance.
Read MoreMcCall asks history instructors to embrace video games because they provide an opportunity to discuss and debate the game version of history. Implicit in many historical video games is a particular vision of history, a history of power struggles and fights for domination.
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 MoreThe course teaches students how history is represented in games, how games have influenced history, and which methods are used in video game research. "We wanted to convey some of these ideas about how to do research about video games, about how to think about video games historically, and how to study video games like novels or films," Bolman said.
Read MoreYou may have seen an article in The Atlantic entitled "Kids Are Learning History From Video Games Now." Its subtitle, "More students are being exposed to historical narratives through game play-but what exactly are they being taught?" raises questions that academics need to ask as we teach a generation that has grown up with video games.
Read MoreYou may have seen an article in The Atlantic entitled "Kids Are Learning History From Video Games Now." Its subtitle, "More students are being exposed to historical narratives through game play-but what exactly are they being taught?" raises questions that academics need to ask as we teach a generation that has grown up with video games.
Read MoreFirst, their influence is hard to track: Teachers may not even notice that the student asking why the Ottomans didn't colonize America or what happened to Burgundy may have a view of history that was molded by Paradox games.
Read MoreThe Oregon Trail is that rarest of artifacts, a computer game that predates the rise of the personal computer by about five years - even the first rudimentary video arcade and TV computer games were still a year off.
Read MoreThose chiefs and their histories, along with cultural traditions, other stories and ceremonies, are all expected to be part of a video game the First Nation is now developing with Lambton College. Tentatively titled Three Fires, the game could help boost knowledge of the First Nation's past, said Aamjiwnaang Chief Chris Plain.
Read MoreHistory-based video games allow their players to engage with the past in completely new ways. There's a whole genre of similar video games that play around with the "What ifs" of the past - and in doing so, these games have started to teach us about history in new ways. As popular media goes, video games have an outsized power to shape how we look at history.
Read MoreFor thousands of years, people have been using board games as a great way to pass the time with friends and family. Ancient board games are still played today and are a great way of bringing friends and family together. I've carefully selected the board games in this list, either for their notability or because they inspire board games today.
Read MoreA newish wave of sophisticated, adult board games have made exploitation part of their game mechanics. "Puerto Rico" is still considered to be one of the greatest board games of all time. "Puerto Rico" is part of a wave of modern, strategy-heavy board games that earn high praise while asking players to reenact human history's grimmest episodes.
Read MoreIsn't Middle Eastern history too serious for games? The word itself carries associations like "The Great Game," a euphemism for the British and Russian confrontation in Central Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even today, military conflicts are sometimes likened to chess, and succession struggles in states like Saudi Arabia are called a "Game of thrones." Comparing wars to a recreational activity or children's play easily hides more than it illuminates.
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 MoreA tiny piece of worked glass unearthed during an excavation on Lindisfarne has been revealed to be a rare archaeological treasure linking the Northumbrian island with the Vikings, from the very beginning of one of the most turbulent periods in English history.
Read MoreModern-day chess traces its origins to the ancient Indian game of Chaturanga, whose Sanskrit name refers to the "Four limbs" of the Gupta Empire's army: infantry, cavalry, chariots and war elephants.
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