Around two and a half years ago I set out to adapt The Mabinogion as a video game. The text itself is a collection of medieval Welsh tales, and one of the most significant works of Welsh literary heritage. The motivation for the project largely came about through an exploration of my own family history: born in […]
This interview features Dr Victoria McCollum and Dr Andrew Sneddon (Ulster University) in conversation with Kirstin Mitchell (PhD student with Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru/Research Assistant for Historical Games Network). It explores Andrew and Victoria’s 2023 collaborative project with Carrickfergus museum, titled “Reimagining the Islandmagee Witches: An Interactive Exhibition.” This exhibition sought to communicate experiences […]
A long time ago, in a world almost, but not quite, like our own… The city-state of Castamont, a centre of scholarship and commerce on the shores of the scenic Ousarine Bay, is buzzing with excitement! An anonymous knight, an armour-clad Mystery Knight who never removes his full-faced helmet, has arrived to joust in this […]
As both a game developer and a medieval historian, each of my interests informs the other. In this post, I’m going to talk you through some ways I approach putting medieval elements in games and think about why they’re there. The process I use is based on thinking about medieval ideas as a sort of […]
There are broadly three main ways in which commercial board games intersect with history: Games as history quizzes test a player’s knowledge of history, for the purposes of education and/or entertainment. Commercial examples of this kind of game are Chronology (1996) and Timeline (2012). In both instances players place cards in the correct sequence in […]
Let’s start with some big questions. Why do historical games look the way they do? Why are player’s possible actions constrained in certain ways? What goes into the decision-making process behind the culture we regularly use to engage with the past? How do game companies determine questions of which periods, which perspectives, and what actions […]