Issue 29 - History Through Games

[The Escapist Staff]

Dana Massey"It is the responsibility of society as a whole to make sure future generations, not just stuffy historians at the local college, remember the past. Yet, doing so requires they want to learn, and that is why I look to the entertainment industry to pass along this knowledge to the masses." Dana Massey discusses preserving history through games.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Jacob
http://punclox.co.uk/
Who hasn't heard of Nazis and Rome? I find that hard to believe...do American schools not teach students about them?

Anyway, back on topic, I learnt a lot from Civ II when I was younger - what an aqueduct was, what a trireme was, how to get musketeers in 500 BC...perhaps not entirely educational then!

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: David

What about the Total War series? Shogun gives people a interesting look into Middle Age Japan. Medieval gives people a look on how Europe was during the Middle Ages as well as how important religion was in the lives of the people and in dealing with other nations. Sometimes Creative Assembly takes certain liberties with history for the sake of gameplay (ie the three Roman houses in Rome) but it gives an interesting perspective of things as well as showing people how terrible war was even before the invention of modern arms.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Charlie Six
http://virtualmerc.blogspot.com
Bah. Letting the free market have control over what history is learned by adults and what isn't is precisely why we Americans have the historical memory of a chipmunk. We need mandatory adult education. *nods*

Anyway, I think the majority of games, just like the majority of films, which deal with historical topics for the purpose of selling entertainment, are about as ethical as a Rambo movie or Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. They're crap.

Spielberg is the only filmmaker I can think of who uses history in an ethical, intelligent way. The game industry has no Spielberg when it comes to this stuff. It just has a ton of Michael Bays.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mark

You think it's a new thing that people don't know about history, or a distinctly American or capitalistic thing? It becomes difficult to call anyone ignorant from that perspective. No, the fact of the matter is that most people only ever bother to learn what they need in order to get by, which rarely includes facts whose political relevance expired a century ago. It's a bit difficult to blame "high school students" for not knowing historical events - why, after all, would they be in high school, if not to learn those things?

An interesting article, nevertheless.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Fred

I I think he should have mentioned the Total War Series, was it not Rome Total war teh Game that the history channel used to show several of the largest historical battles. I infact leanred much of what I know about Fuedal Japan from Shogun Total War, Well at least who the Lords were adn about alot of the troops. I think those gmaes do a very good job with dealing with history and being accurate as well.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Spiffae
http://beninjapan.blogspot.com/
IIt is borderline criminal to write an article on history via games and leave out sims and wargames. I learned enough to fill pages upon pages about World War II airplanes from IL-2 and it's expansions. I learned so much about U-Boats from Silent Hunter III that I have taken trips to see a real one. I teach in Japan now, and I had a student ask about the battle of midway, and sure I've read about it a number of times, but I could explain the difference between the Japanes carriers and Japanese planes and the American Carriers and Planes. we talked about superchargers and engines, tactics, doctrine, and manufacturing systems, and those were all things I first encountered in flight sims.

Mostly though, a tough sim is a great incentive to pick up a big scholarly book and read it. I have a library now, but the seed of that library was games I played.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Wandering Taoist

Panzer General made me read all six volumes of Churchill's "Second World War" with distinct pleasure when I was 17. The blast I had from the game after reading it (it took good four months) was fantastic. The same way I became recently enamored to books about the Middle Ages due to extensive playing of Europa Universalis II.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: zorniki
http://zorniki.heim.at/Hochzeit
Well I, as an Austrian, have to deal with our infamous past quite often, precisely with the fact that Hitler was born 50km from my hometown and one of the concentration camps called "Mauthausen" is also not too far from here. Whenever I visit this terrifying place (with foreign friends and students) I somehow can feel the pain and suffering that´s being caused at this site 65 years ago. It´s a wave of unbelieveable sadness that crawls up my spine by just seeing the camp from the distance.

I´ve played many of the shooters mentioned in this article and not one was able to deliver this kind of feeling to the player - not even came close to. I feel that, if people need to learn these things about the past, it should be at least told in cutscenes, to be able to identify with the characters task in the game. To be able to say, I know why I´m here, I know why I gotta stop the Nazi regime from conquering the western world and I know that it´s right to do it, even if war can´t be the answer from an ethical standpoint. I think we can´t be warned often enough to realize that this kind of mindset still exists and we can´t allow things like these to happen again. As one other poster said, Spielberg taught us a little bit of how it really was. And for me that´s just a start...

Great article by the way ;-)
greets
Zorniki

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Toast

Following on from what Jacob said, I do think the lack of acknowledgement for Civ II in particular is unfair. Sure, it makes a better article if you can claim that there's nothing better than WWII shooters out there (just like every article on morality, depth, writing etc in games presents a much neater conclusion when you ignore Torment), but I'd have thought the inclusion of a series as monumentally successful and historically reasonably accurate as Civ would be a no-brainer. With the increasing propensity of teaching history skills in school rather than actual history ("Wow, we're doing WWII again this term?"), I'm happy to declare with some confidence that I learnt more actual history from Civ II than I did from history classes at school.