Teaching Historical Theory through Video Games

When we talk about Teaching Historical Theory through Video Games some people considers it a bad idea
to merge teaching with computer/video gaming. But the potential of teaching with video games is increasing
day by day and people have started taking interest in this domain. In the provided research paper that mainly
focused on teaching History. And the game they used to back their research is Civilization IV. They have
divided it into 7 thematic sub-topics to make it easy to understand for irrelevant people too. The topics to
be discussed are (1) Game Mechanics; (2) Economics and Environment; (3) Cultural Bias; (4) World
Systems and World History; (5) Determinism and Contingency; (6) Combat and Brutality; and (7) Gender.
They tested students knowledge of these themes through in-class exams.
Civilization IV is a turn-based strategy game in which the player takes on the role of a ruler of a
“civilization” (for instance, Catherine the Great for Russia) and guides its development from its first
settlement in 4,000 B.C.E. until the twenty-first century C.E. (or until a civilization achieves victory through
conquest, diplomacy, scientific superiority, or cultural prowess). The game serves as a useful anchor for a
number of reasons. First, it is technologically accessible—old enough to work on most computers and
operating systems produced over the past ten years, but new enough to work on the latest operating systems
as well. It also comes in editions for both Windows and Macintosh. Moreover, in contrast to action-
adventure games, such as first-person shooters (FPSs) and role-playing games (RPGs), it does not require
well-developed eye-hand coordination to progress through the game. Additionally, the Civilization series
is one of the most popular historical game franchises, having sold over eleven million copies.8 As such, it
has also been the object of scholarly critique, more so than any other historical strategy title.9 Civilization
IV in particular serves as a useful example for raising several issues connecting historical scholarship and
video games. It has a more sophisticated and less deterministic combination of civic options for a player to
adopt than its predecessors in the series. For instance, one can adopt democratic government and state
property ownership at the same time. In contrast to its predecessors (and, until the release of a recent
expansion pack, its successor, Civilization V), religion is a central feature of Civilization IV, affecting an
empire’s productivity, internal loyalty, and external alliances. Finally, as a turn-based strategy game dealing
with the grand sweep of world history, Civilization IV enables students to examine many aspects of history
while deconstructing its game mechanics and thematic assumptions.
First of all 7 thematics, we’ll discuss Game mechanics. As we all know Game mechanics is that the least
historical theme, but essential to understanding the restrictions of video games as presenters of historical
content. Students are showed presentations by Civilization IV design team leader, Soren Johnson. These
presentations specialise in the difference between gameplay mechanics and subject theme, arguing
convincingly that one doesn't necessarily depend upon the opposite. Classroom discussion focuses on
comparing and contrasting Civilization IV mechanics with those of other similarly themed strategy game
franchises, like Age of Empires and Europa Universalis III. Unlike Civilization, both of those titles are real-
time strategy (RTS) games covering large stretches of history. Action games are even more scripted than
most RTSs, forcing the player from one scenario to a different, usually requiring the player to finish them
during a predetermined sequence. a number of these games are literally much simpler concepts dressed up
in superior graphics and historical themes. as an example, at their core, many FPSs—such because the Call
of Duty and Medal of Honor series—bear marked similarities to arcade games, counting on rapid eye-hand
coordination.
As of second thematic, “Economics and Environment”. In order understand further the
economic/environmental theme, They showed students the games Railroad Tycoon II and CivCity: Rome.
In the former, players build railroad empires across nineteenth-century America, Europe, and Africa. they
need to locate stations near resources, build mines and farms, and trade commodities to where they're most
needed, all while trying to attenuate maintenance costs of running wheeled vehicle and servicing track. This
game is more obviously economic focused than the Civilization series. In fact, it can get quite complex with
the selling and buying of shares. Nevertheless, since Sid Meier originally designed both titles, the similarity
in game mechanics is obvious, and encourages students to reflect on the underlying economic nature of just
about all decisions in Civilization IV. During this unit, we discuss the recognition, from Karl Marx onward,
of treating economics because the main drive in history, and the tendency of computers, which are basically
calculating machines, to encourage this materialist view of history.

As they discussed Cultural Bias, it’s a traditional goal of postcolonial evaluation, and effortlessly
demonstrable in many ancient video games. students are assigned contrasting readings that encompass
samuel huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis and edward said’s announcement that such arguments
constitute “orientalist” ethnic bias. Civilization has acquired a lot criticism for its cultural bias, for obvious
reasons. from its introductory series, the sport indulges in stereotypes concerning the civilizations in play.
at the beginning of the sport, gamers select from a list of civilizations, every with its very own distinct high-
quality characteristics.
To assess civilization iv, the class discusses murderer’s creed, whose creation announces that “this paintings
of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural crew of numerous non secular faiths
and beliefs.” it's far proper that altair, the principle individual in the first name of this collection, appears to
exist comfortably amid both the islamic and christian societies of the 13th-century levant at a time whilst
europeans have been sending crusading armies to wrest manage of the location from the turks. with the
intention to do so, however, the designers cast the knights templar within the position of villains, engaged
in a deep conspiracy worthy of a dan brown novel. even as assassin’s creed, consequently, manages to keep
away from offending modern cultural sensibilities (in the end, who is going to get too disillusioned over
the knights templar?), it additionally avoids a great deal history. nevertheless, this game and its successor
set in renaissance italy seize the flavor of the time, with lavish attention to structure and apparel. college
students discuss the
merits and dangers of characterizing cultures, whether or not through “vital” strengths and weaknesses, as
in civilization, or via road scenes as in assassin’s creed.

As of Combat and Brutality, the tendency to gloss over brutality in records is not restricted to roleplaying
fight games. we've already seen that a few games coping with the early modern international machine pass
over slavery. to give an explanation for why this occurs, i speak the disney animated movie, tarzan. written
at some stage in an age of white supremacists, edgar rice burroughs’ authentic novel portrayed the populace
of tarzan’s africa along an evolutionary continuum with apes at the lowest, europeans on the top, and
africans someplace between the two. to perpetuate such gross racist stereotypes within the Nineties turned
into unacceptable, so instead of confront the prejudice inherent inside the authentic story, the film’s
manufacturers truly averted the difficulty via portraying an africa with out africans

Similarly, the remedy of people as alternate commodities is too arguable for plenty game designers. that is
mainly the case inside the most arms-on economically oriented video games, together with colonization
and east india enterprise, in which one truly buys unique quantities of a commodity to move to every other
area. in his online lecture, “subject matter isn't always that means,” soren johnson discusses the board
recreation, teach, wherein players try and fit as many yellow pawns as feasible into railroad motors, only
to discover when the primary player reaches a teach’s destination that the rolling stock is sure for a death
camp and the gamers are assuming the position of nazi bureaucrats with the pawns being sufferers of
genocide. johnson’s point is that the underlying mechanics of the sport are similar to the conventional
russian video game, tetris, however the gruesome subject matter makes
the overall enjoy of the sport greatly extraordinary. this relationship without difficulty explains the moral
problem in making use of slavery to trading video games set inside the early current new world. certainly,
brenda braithwaite, the video game designer who created train, evolved her first board recreation to
complement her daughter’s understanding of the atlantic slave trade’s
“middle passage.” as a advertising proposition, however, such video games are notably elaborate. the reason
of braithwaite’s board video games, to make gamers reflect on the ethical implications in their selections,
is not the motive of maximum business video video games. amongst games managing the early present day
duration, only paradox interactive’s europa universalis series virtually depicts slaves as a commodity,
represented inside the maximum recent model absolutely as chains.

The final theme, gender, has been the subject of much analysis regarding video games. Using Joan Scott’s
classic argument for the non-compartmentalization of women as a scholarly subject, the class discusses the
difference between gender studies and women’s studies and the possibility of gender analysis in the
apparent absence of one sex or the other. Therefore, inasmuch as combat games reinforce traditional
masculine identity and stress competing male themes of rugged individualism and “band of brothers” unit-
cohesion, gender permeates their content every bit as much as it does Ubisoft’s non-historical, girl-oriented
title, Imagine: Fashion Designer. The almost complete absence of females in historically based combat
games, however, underscores a dilemma for game designers: how to give women agency in gameplay when
their actions are not prominent in the historical record. This issue is one with which professional historians
have grappled for decades. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the male-dominated group of amateur
historians designing historically based video games runs into at least as much trouble portraying the past in
terms of gender, perhaps most notably when they make an effort to give women some agency in historical
settings