A Season of Historical Game Studies Events
May and June have witnessed a flurry of historical game studies activities across the UK. Here’s a round-up of the events that our Centre lead for Games, History, and Heritage, Jenny Cromwell, has had the joy of participating in this Spring.
The University of Leeds held a History Games Colloquium on 21st May, organised by Izzy Bartley and Owen Hodkinson. Topics presented on the day included the histories of playing cards and books, colonialism and erasure in classical board games, playing colonial themed board games as decolonising work, and making research-informed historical games (including Jenny discussing the TTRPG she’s currently designing, ‘Qadesh: A Soldier’s Journey’). The event ended with a hacking event focussed on colonial themed games (you can read about other game hacking work by centre members here). MGC RA, Sam Jolly, also participated in the event.
MGC Research Assistant, Sam Jolly, at the Leeds Historical Games Colloquium, busy hacking ‘Archaeology: The New Expedition’.
‘Games, Gaming and the Ancient World’ took place on 30th May at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, organised by the Ancient World Research Cluster. The event, which was open to the public, included introductions to board games from the ancient world (e.g., Senet from Egypt, the Royal Game of Ur from Mesopotamia), the chance to play replicas of these games, and finally a panel – which Jenny was a part of – on the relationship between video gaming, gaming technology, and research on the ancient world. Discussions ranged from the role that video games have on shaping public perceptions of the past, to whether digital simulations can support the interpretation of archaeological data, to how researchers can communicate with game developers about current trends in historical and archaeological research.
Finally, ‘“Gaming” history?’ was held at Durham University on 26th and 27th June. The two-day event brought together historical game studies scholars with game developers and scholars working in other areas of game studies. The main aim of the event was to group-workshop key themes on how to foster effective collaboration, as well as discuss the present and future of historical game studies. Given the range of fantastic work in this area currently being undertaken, and the number of events that haven taken place during this spring alone, the future looks exciting!