Notes on the workings of history in games, historical culture, game design, and putting together this special issue of gamevironments.17Bremen

Fewster, Derek

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

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        1________ 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 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      2________ 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, 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?      3________  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 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      4________ 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.   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.        5________ 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 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      6________ 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 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.          7________   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.  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). 

English

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

Media SuUB Bremen

State and University Library 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 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1________
 
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 
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 
 
 
 
 
 
2________
 
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, 
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? 
 
 
 
 
 
3________
 
 
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 
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 
 
 
 
 
 
4________
 
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.  
 
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. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5________
 
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 
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 
 
 
 
 
 
6________
 
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 
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. 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
7________
 
 
 
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. 
 
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). 


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