View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.

uk brought to you by CORE

provided by E-LIB Dokumentserver - Staats und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen

Novigrad in the evening sun. The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (CD Project Red 2015)
 Special Issue

Gamevironments of the Past.

by
Derek Fewster and Ylva Grufstedt
Issue 05 (2016)

articles

Introduction: Gamevironments of the Past – A Broad Take on Games and History.

by Derek Fewster & Ylva Grufstedt, 1

Where Did You Learn That? The Self-Perceived Educational Impact of Historical
Computer Games on Undergraduates.
by Robert Houghton, 8

Developing Time: Representing Historical Progression Through Level Structures.

by Samir Azrioual, 46

Ghost in the Cartridge: Nostalgia and the Construction of the JRPG Genre.
by JD Mallindine, 80

History and Human Agency in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

by Vinicius Carvalho, 104

The Architecture of Bioshock as Metaphor for Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

by Brittany Kuhn, 132

The HGR Framework: A Semiotic Approach to the Representation of History in Digital

Games.
by Vincenzo Idone Cassone & Mattia Thibault, 156

game developer reports

The Adventures of Ms. Meta: Developing a Historical Superhero Video Game.

by Sarah Zaidan, 205
“Who Really Said What?” – Mobile Historical Situated Documentary as Liminal
Learning Space.
by Owen Gottlieb, 237

report

The Indian Indie Game Development Scene - History and Cultural Heritage as Game
Themes.
by Xenia Zeiler, 258

interview

Interview with Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider at BioWare.

by Cecilia Trenter, 264
Introduction: Gamevironments of the Past – A Broad Take
on Games and History
Derek Fewster and Ylva Grufstedt

Abstract: Notes on the workings of history in games, historical culture, game design,
and putting together this special issue of gamevironments.

Keywords: gamevironments, historical culture, historical consciousness, history,

video games

To cite this article: Fewster, D., Grufstedt, Y., 2016. Introduction: Gamevironments of
the Past – A Broad Take on Games and History. gamevironments 5, 1-7. Available at
http://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de.

The many faces of history and games

Initiating the work on this issue, Gamevironments of the Past, we wanted to revisit the 1________

open and inclusive take on scholarship that has so far been a staple in our academic
discipline, in order to cover as many aspects of gaming and history as possible. The

cross-sectional and interdisciplinary space of game studies continues to be a melting

pot of scholarly experimentation and development. We wish this issue to mirror this

notion, and to build it particularly on the potential that arises from the mix of game
studies and the humanities. While the scope of game studies expands and branches

into specific subfields, we find it important not to lose sight of the benefits of
broader thinking. Studying the interplay of different aspects of a game, such as

design, contents and reception, allows us to see the networks of communication

surrounding both gameplay and development.

The quote below may exemplify these thoughts; it comes from a GameSpot review

(Clarke 2014) of the historical war survival game This War of Mine (2014), which was
set to take place during the Balkan Wars of the 1990’s. The player is taken on an
emotional roller-coaster in a game dealing with micro-events, mentalities, and

atrocities of a civilian experience, which forever changed the lives of so many people
in the area and beyond it.

“Is this a game you want to play? No. Is it a game anyone with a beating
heart should play? Yes. A million times yes. It's a long-form exercise in
empathy, a sobering piece of work that fills in the blanks left when all
we see of war are the headshots. It's a much-needed course correct in
the current shoot-first-ask-questions-never gaming landscape that
supposes war is won because one supreme bad guy caught a bullet
through his brainstem. No: It's won when the people who lived under
his boot get to go home.” (Clarke 2014).

In the above quote, something in particular caught our interest. The journalist writes

of a “much-needed course correct in the current shoot-first-ask-questions-never

gaming landscape”. The suggestion here is, that players would tend not to ask

questions to the contents of the games, past the instant gratification of a kill, a score, 2________
or some added experience points, unless the game was specifically designed to

trigger moral or ethical considerations. Furthermore, it also suggests that there is a

particular need for games like This War of Mine, in order to achieve interactive
products that allow players to truly ask questions about the essence of the games
they are playing.

It is, of course, certain that other types of games also trigger similar and other

relatable questions, thoughts, or even to some extent, learning processes concerning

history in the minds of the players. One need not go further than any Internet forum

discussing some gaming topic and read the near infinite number of debates,
comments, player accounts, reviews, or hints, to understand that players are indeed

quite invested in the digital products that they are handling. The question is, in which
ways do games of varying genres facilitate communication, produce value, and

invoke thought through the vast provisions of design, historicity and narration?
Because, images of history and conceptions of historicity do saturate the design

process, the completed games and the gaming experience as a whole. If these
relations were brought into the open, they would probably concern most of the

available scene and most of the merchandise. Design principles and choices, partially

hidden in the rules, principles, categorisations and genres, build upon decades of
traditions and theoretical considerations, just like those outlined in for example

Wendy Despain’s 100 Principles of Game Design (2013). Historical culture overflows
the visual design, anchoring games in certain environments, each new game

capturing yet another plausible ambience and relatable realism, while rendering
novel yet adapted Zeitgeists for obvious reasons of immersion and incorporation.

Games can be virtual time travels into imagined communities. The contents,

storylines, narrative layers and textual elements of digital games utilize centuries of
folklore, beliefs, historical events, and literature. Sometimes the writers and designers 3________

even create backdrops of imagined libraries or detailed (semi-)fictional timelines,

working just like historians developing counterfactual sources and chronologies, all

for the extended joys of the fans. In addition, the games, even if fully commercialised,
often promote reflections on ideologies, alternatives and political choices, often

consciously taking the players into the grey zones of ethics and morality.

Games, even many which were not intended for this, work their way into the minds of
the players as educational experiences; scores of games have a serious core dealing

with history conceived as problematic, historical traumas, commemorations, private

and national memories, as well as modern anxieties stemming from the past but

bearing into the future. To pose a related question, have you ever considered why so
many historicizing games display some level of an Apocalypse, be it then from

zombies, a rat plague, nuclear fallout, Reapers, “The Incident” or plain civil war? Many
game features, like having female protagonists or presenting sexual freedom of
choice, or storylines considering racism, segregation, totalitarianism or the essence of

humanity in general, are all firmly anchored in modern discourses, in the present
historical moment. Even the current interest in retro gaming, without any overtly

ideological issues, can be seen as part of a modern historical culture.

Content Summary
The possible topics that could be covered by related research are too numerous to
mention here, and the field remains vast for the coming years of historical game
studies. i We can, nevertheless, in this issue of gamevironments provide some

contributions to enlighten the readers and develop future scholarship on some of the
outlined subjects.

4________
In this issue at hand, Cecilia Trenter, Xenia Zeiler and Sarah Zaidan all contribute with

developer perspectives in their articles. Trenter provides us with a rather unique

interview on Dragon Age: Origins (2009) and historical culture and consciousness.

With regards to the sometimes frustrating wall between scholars of games and game
developers, the questions and insights provided by the article are valuable and

contribute greatly towards an understanding of the thinking and decision-making

behind the products we study.

In a compelling report from the Indian game development scene, Xenia Zeiler gives

her perspective on the current state of the industry through a platform and topics
analysis and interviews conducted on-site in 2016. The indie scene in particular

appears to draw heavily on history and cultural heritage for inspiration.

Zaidan, in turn, is a game scholar as well as a game developer herself. Building on the
work she did on her PhD, she contributes with an article in which she elaborates on

her work on building a video game based on theories and principles sprung from
game research. She is on a journey to produce a video game called The Adventures of

Ms Meta, a historical superhero brawler game.

Along the same lines, Owen Gottlieb tackles the topic of design-based research in his

article about learning history through situated documentaries. He asks questions

about the reception and potential benefits of a learning tool which mixes the

authentic with the fictional, with particular regards to augmented reality mobile
platforms.

In an empirical study, Robert Houghton asks students of history at university level

“where did you learn that?” The article builds on a small-scale, preliminary study with
the aim to examine if the video game form has a greater level of perceived 5________

transformative impact on players than other media. The results highlight the
potential in using video games to teach history alongside the importance of

understanding the portrayal of history in the games before we do.

Vinicius Marino Carvalho’s article is a contribution on game design, history and

agency. Deconstructing tropes of historiography and the causal chain of Witcher 3: A

Wild Hunt (2015), Carvalho describes the various interplay of contents and mechanics
with a profound theoretical approach.

JD Mallindine’s contribution delves into the culture of JRPGs – Japanese Role Playing

Games. In her preliminary pilot study, Mallindine explores the topics of genre and
nostalgia by looking at games critique and accompanying comments online. Her

findings point to the importance of mapping community life and fan cultures when
exploring the history and development of game genres.

Brittany Kuhn writes about the first instalment of the Bioshock series (2007) – a game
with an explicit intent to criticise Ayn Rand’s objectivism. Focusing on how the

building architecture and symbolism inside the game facilitate said critique, Kuhn

brings forward interesting insights on the meaning of level design.

A contribution to historical game study methodology, Mattia Thibault and Vincenzo

Idone Cassone draws on theoretical applications of semiotics and historiography in

order to describe three processes used to create a historical discourse, called the
History-Game Relations Framework. The framework is then tested on two games as
case-studies: Total War: Rome II (2013) and Sid Meier's Civilization V (2010).

Finally, on the topic of level design, Samir Azrioual asks “in what ways do Call of Duty:
World at War (2008) and Assassin’s Creed (2007) use historical events in their level 6________

structure to produce temporal progression?” Building a theoretical framework on

time and the layering of time, Azrioual conducts a comparative analysis of the named

games.
References
Chapman, A., Foka, A. and Westin, J., 2016. Introduction: What is historical Game
Studies? Rethinking History, 20 [open access]
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642529.2016.1256638, accessed 13
November 2016.

Clarke, J., 2014. Counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums.

GameSpot [online review] 17 Nov. Available at

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/this-war-of-mine-review/1900-6415963/,

accessed 13 November 2016.

Despain, W., ed., 2013. 100 Principles of Game Design. New Riders. 7________

This War of Mine, 2014. [video game] (Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS,
Android, PlayStation 4, Xbox One) 11 Bit Studios and War Child, 11 Bit Studios.

i
For a developed discussion on the nature and state of historical game studies, see for example
Chapman, Foka and Westins (2016).