How to analyze History games
Goals:
This week we will read different historical approaches to games including a few examples of what this looks like.
Our focus this week will be on modern history games, that is, contemporary games that represent the past. We need to ask what are the suitable objects of our analysis as historians and what kinds of questions should we ask (and answer).
Read/Watch/Listen
Methodologies:
A. Chapman, Digital Games As History: How Videogames Represent The Past And Offer Access To Historical Practice, chps. 1, 2 & 10 (intro, chapter, conclusion).
E. Pfister and A. Görgen, „How to analyse a Video game? The HGP-Method“ in: Horror-Game-Politics, <http://hgp.hypotheses.org/1754> 03.08.2022
J. McCall, "The Historical Problem Space Framework: Games as a Historical Medium". https://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/mccall (web only, no pdf).
McCall's website on his HPS framework (links to additional articles and diagrams)
Case Studies:
B. Hoy, “Cardboard Indians: Playing History in the American West”. Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, Issue 3, Autumn 2018, Pages 299–324, https://doi-org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/10.1093/whq/why036
H. Nielsen, ‘Men should try playing the woman’s part to see what it feels like. Remember ~ it’s only a game . . .’ The representation of gendered experience in chance-based board games", in Germain and Wake (eds.), Material Games Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play. (pdf on Teams/Obsidian)
Practice
Complete Exercises 3 and 3b (using Obsidian).
Going further
C. Fernández-Vara, Introduction to Game Analysis.
The standard work for video game analysis, laying out a clear methodology and framework for studying games from a media/communications perspective.
You might also want to listen to the (now archived) Studying Pixels podcast. In one of their final episodes, the podcast speak with Theresa Tannebaum about her idea of "close playing" (analogous to close reading).
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