Playing with History: Analyzing and Designing Historical Games

Course Description

Do you like history? Do you like games? Have you ever wondered how you can combine these two? Then this is the course for you! For almost the entire history of games, games have been using history as a setting. Being able to play as a knight, an imperial advisor, or any other exciting person from history can be the most exciting part of playing a game. But how can you tell when a game is showing history accurately or just making stuff up? And what techniques do you need to know to make your own history-based games? We will be answering both of those questions and more! Throughout this course you will play a wide variety of historical games and be shown how you can tell good history in games from bad. You will fight through World War II in “Memoir ’44”, rebuild after the Black Death in “Agricola”, step into the boots of a legendary pirate through VR in “Pirate Queen”, and live out the Protestant Reformation with the whole class in “Challenging Authority: Reformation Politics and Society”. We will then show you how you can tell what parts of these games were fact, and what were fiction. We will also be looking at professional game designers like Ubisoft and Paradox and examining the tricks they use to show history in their games. We will be exploring what makes a game a game. And throughout all of this, you will be making your very own historical board game from scratch! This course is for anyone, regardless of your experience with history or game design. So come join this course and learn how history is used in your favourite games!