“The potential of videogames for museums is limitless.” Museum Lab, 2022. In 2014 I was playing Galactic Café’s The Stanley Parable (2013) – a story-based game with a branching narrative providing commentary on player choice, decision making and game design – when I encountered the game’s ‘Museum Ending’. In this ending, the player is invited to explore […]
Tag: education
Our fourth HGN event, for our Education theme, took place on 13 April. We were delighted that the panellists and the audience, generated a lively discussion and prompted more questions on how historical games can be used (or misused) in education. In case you missed it or would like to watch it again, you can […]
So. I’m a curator and a game designer. I work on a lot of different sorts of games: games to play at home, games for museums, games for festivals, games for schools, occasionally even games for computers. Often, these are games with some sort of connection to history, usually made as half of Matheson Marcault, […]
In recent years, different types of video games have created new opportunities to explore and learn about history. With technology improving at a formidable rate, pushing the fidelity and possibilities to uncharted territories, it raises even more questions about the value of historical references, research, and re-enactment in games as a tool to teach history. […]
Adam Chapman is absolutely right to be cautious about prescribing the use of games in education uncritically. We need to be careful about selecting and using games that are effective as learning tools and that can be meshed with course content (McCall, 2016), and – perhaps most importantly – that are sensitive towards serious topics […]
This is first guest post from one of the panelists, Kasia Smith. You can sign up for the event on via our Eventbrite here. This will take place on Wednesday 13 April 2022, at 16:00 UK time (15:00 UTC). Kasia is a Regeneration Manager with North Ayrshire Council. Previously Kasia was the Regeneration Officer delivering on […]
HGN Education Theme Event
We’re thrilled to be announcing the panel date/time and our wonderful speakers for the theme of Education and Historical Games. You may have seen our call for contributions for the theme, which focuses on the challenges that face both educators and developers when making games about the past. The theme kicked off with the fantastic […]
Playing with Pedagogies Studying history in games often involves moving between diverse academic fields, regularly finding oneself amongst scholars from literary studies, film studies, media studies, educational sciences, psychology, and of course those from the more conventional sections of archaeology and history. Many of these scholars will be encountering the field of historical (or vanilla) […]
Apologies for the long delay! It seems like an age since we posted and somehow it’s now March! At HGN we initially paused content in solidarity with the strike action taken by University staff across the UK. HGN decided not to post new content and cross the digital picket. This strike action continues and we […]
The discourse surrounding Holocaust-based simulation exercises and games underscores pedagogical and moral possibilities and limitations for educators or designers. Holocaust simulations are viewed as an outlet for participants to emotionally and psychologically engage with the past. Holocaust-themed exercises invite participants to experience victimhood, complicity, lack of agency, and loss. From Ron Jones’ Third Wave experiment […]