Historia Ludens: The Playing Historian
Historia Ludens: The Playing Historian
Edited by Alexander von Lünen, Katherine J. Lewis, Benjamin Litherland, and Pat Cullum
London: Routledge, 2020.
ISBN: 9781032240497
Review by Jennifer Cromwell
Historia Ludens explores the multiple ways in which games, history, and historians intersect and interact. The chapters examine how games (primarily videogames, but not only) represent history, as well as how play can be introduced into teaching; as the editors note in their preface, “history can be understood as a form of playing” and “playing poses intriguing methodological and theoretical potential” (p. xiii). The sixteen chapters are divided into six sections, the order of which this review follows, but it is notable that these categories are somewhat amorphous and there are numerous points of contact between papers throughout the volume.
Section 1: History of Gaming. In the volume’s first chapter, Yannick Rochat presents a quantitative analysis of historical videogames. Almost 1700 relevant games were published between 1981–2015, for which Rochat identifies key trends (historical period, genre, platforms). Notably, over 30% of these games focus on WWII alone, showing a dominance of late modern history – and WWII appears in several papers in this volume, including all those in section 6. This is an important point to bear in mind when considering the nature of scholarship on history and videogames, as well as what types of history are resultingly made accessible to the general public. While the next chapter, Holly Nielsen’s examination of the presentation of the British Empire in nine board games from the early to mid-nineteenth century, does contribute to the history of gaming, it more importantly demonstrates how games can be used as political tools. In this case, the games promoted prevailing conceptions of the British Empire and British attitudes towards conquered peoples.
Section 2: Gaming in History Education. Juan Hiriart, whose background is in game design and development rather than education and history, presents the process of creating a video simulation of Anglo-Saxon England for use in primary education (UK Key Stage 2, i.e., 7–11-year-olds). This chapter reflects on the design process, the response to the game by the school children, and the use of the game in generating discussion and highlighting the dissonances between perception and presentation of Anglo-Saxon history in the game. The next three chapters move from primary to Higher Education. Katherine Lewis’ contribution focuses on a unit she teaches on the use of popular culture and Medievalism to teach medieval history, focussing on the assessment brief, which involves the use of popular culture to explore historical issues and includes students pitching a game idea. Lewis demonstrates how this creative approach successfully supports student engagement with primary sources and historical debates. A different use of games is presented by Alex Mosely, namely how game and play elements (puzzles, prizes, collaboration, and competition) were integrated into an undergraduate skills unit to help increase engagement and progression rates among students (i.e., gamification). Lastly, Pat Callum’s paper turns to the use of Lego Serious Play as a method to encourage engagement and in particular to support the transition from Further to Higher Education, through the use of visual thinking and social interaction, drawing upon theory from cognitive science. The study demonstrates how such methods can support students to articulate topics that they struggle to discuss.
Section 3. Computer Games and Public History. The two chapters in this section contribute to the increasingly prominent position that videogames hold in discussions on public history; see, for example, the inclusion of videogames in Jerome de Groot, Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture (2nd edition, Routledge 2016), and more general works such as Thomas Cauvin, Public History: A Textbook of Practice (2nd edition, Routledge 2022). The chapters in section 5 of this volume, on fan cultures, also could be understood as public history of games and gaming. Luke Holmes considers how games can be integrated into a heritage environment to support public engagement and understanding, e.g., the uses of games within exhibitions and what types of games may be suited to this situation (simulation), as well as the potential to gamify exhibitions. Robert Whitaker’s chapter on the history of his podcast and YouTube series, History Respawned, now has deeper resonance in terms of how the Covid pandemic has changed how people engage with games, including the increase in gaming audiences on streaming platforms.1 This chapter also highlights the appetite that many people have for engaging with historical games in this way (see also now, for example, the Save Ancient Studies Twitch channel).
Section 4. Reflections on Gaming and History. Many chapters in this volume reference Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and this comes to the fore in Adam Chapman’s contribution, which asks: if certain periods of history are more ‘playful’, does this lend them to being the focus of games, and, conversely, are there periods of history that are less suited to games. Using medieval history and the topic of war as two cases, Chapman concludes that some periods are more aesthetically pleasing than others and have components to make better stories. Andrew Salvati moves to a different, and increasingly common aspect of PC gaming: modding. At the centre of the discussion is the fan-made ‘Fall of Islam’ mod for Paradox’s Europa Universalis IV. While mods provide an opportunity to explore history, as a site of exploration, there is also the real danger of players living out authoritarian fantasies and mods being adopted by alt right groups to promote political ideologies – their own ‘preferred’ vision of history, as is the case in ‘Fall of Islam’. It is not only modding that allows for exploration, though. Choices made in strategy games, including playing different parties, can also enable such approaches to historical events and processes, as Andrew Elliott’s paper demonstrates through an account of a particular instance of a student playing Sid Meier’s Gettysburg. The student in question played the game while simultaneously checking historical information on Wikipedia, before playing it again using alternative strategies. This case emphasises the role of games as problem spaces that can require sophisticated ways of thinking about the past, as well as entry points for further historical query.
Section 5. Fan Cultures and Historic Games. Nick Webber and Charlotte Stevens examine the ways in which history, fandom, and online communities interact, and whether how online communities engage with games constitutes a form of public history or fandom. The distinction between the two (public history and fandom) is not always so clear cut, with online communities employing ideas central to the discipline of history (e.g., accuracy and interpretation of game lore) and contributing to the historic needs of the community as part of an ongoing narrative. Furthermore, games are situated as historic works, with their own history as well as the history (lore) created within them. The two following chapters turn to the early PC RPG, Darklands (1992), a game that has also received attention in Jane Draycott’s recent edited volume on women in historical and archaeological videogaming (see the MMGC review here). Alexander von Lünen explores Darkland’s historic content and type of immersiveness through the lens of the game’s online FAQ, created in 1995, addressing what led to its creation as well as to the continued fan engagement with the game. The FAQ is positioned as an extension of the original game text by fans who want to document and share their experiences. The following chapter presents a transcript of a 2010 interview between Matt Barton and Darkland’s designer Arnold Hendrick, which is also available on YouTube.
Section 6. Accuracy in Computer Games. Lisa Traynor and Jonathan Ferguson, curators at the Royal Armouries (Leeds), discuss the accuracy of weapons in the WWII tactical shooter, Sniper Elite 4, and the interaction between developers and curators, including the ways in which accuracy was improved in the game, but also what was rejected and why by the developers. The end of the discussion raises various issues that have wider implications for collaborations between the heritage sector and the games industry, as well as the lack of evaluation during the process, which means that much of the reasons behind decisions were not recorded, a point that is important for the history of games themselves. As already noted above, games in WWII account for almost one-third of all historical videogames, and the last two papers turn to the two world wars. In each instance, the question of accuracy pertains to public expectations of these conflicts. Chris Kempshall takes games set in WWI and II (Battlefield I and Call of Duty: WWII) to show how public perception and understanding of the wars, as well as the type of warfare involved, affects what types of stories can be told. WWII benefits from a greater presence in popular culture, with certain events requiring little explanation, but this transmedia popularity is both a crutch and constraint that limits how the war is presented. Conversely, games set in WWI, while having to dedicate more effort to world- and story-building, are ‘unburdened’ by such preconceptions arising from both ‘real history’ and gaming history. Finally, Eugen Pfister uses WWII to address the limitations of what can be presented in games, in particular crimes against humanity – especially the Holocaust – and Nazi ideology. While allusions to these crimes do appear in games, the focus instead is placed on personal suffering and celebrating camaraderie, in effect depoliticising the war and whitewashing the National Socialist regime. However, as games serve an important role as products and producers of cultural memory, Pfister hopes that future games refrain from such depoliticised imaginations and instead help to remember these atrocities as public warnings.
These chapters demonstrate how games can tackle difficult topics and the important cultural role that games play, or can play. In addition to the analysis of games and their representation of history, this volume presents creative approaches to teaching and assessment, and contributes to the discipline of public history. Overall, Historia Ludens highlights exciting scholarship on games and history and this volume should be read by all interested in this intersection, as well as games and the humanities more broadly.
See, for example, the statistics presented in the report by Stream Hatchet, “Covid-19 impact on streaming audiences: game streaming report” (based on the first four months of 2020).