#Washington post best video games 2014 plus
Furthermore, games that are at least a few years old are preferable both because of their relatively low price (unlike many recent games that can be as expensive as-the horror!-a college textbook) and because of their compatibility with older-model laptops the latter is a plus when the latest gaming consoles sell for around $500. Thus action-adventure games, like Assassin’s Creed, offer a relatively static view of the time period they use as a backdrop, whereas empire-management games, like those of the Total War series, attempt to simulate sociopolitical and economic processes in a more dynamic fashion. When selecting the games my students have to play, I took care to draw from a variety of genres, because the historical component does not play the same part everywhere. The course I designed for the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi is a seminar that requires students to play a few historically themed video games while they read academic articles related to the period or topic that is central to the game. As I found out teaching this course, they would be missing an exceptional opportunity to show students that history is not merely “what happened,” but rather the result of research, source criticism, and debates in theoretical approaches. Looking at the first game in the series, set in 1191, some might argue that the most historians can do is to list the game’s (numerous) inaccuracies, and leave it at that. But the Nizâris are also the subject of a historiographical tradition that is marked by highly negative depictions in primary sources (written by Sunni opponents and perplexed European travelers), orientalist tropes (Bernard Lewis, the nemesis of theorist Edward Said, wrote what remains the best-selling book on the subject), and postorientalist revisionism.
#Washington post best video games 2014 series
They inspired the first of a very successful series of video games, whose later installments have explored Renaissance Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the American Revolutionary War, and, most recently, the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean. The Nizâris-or Assassins, as they are known in the West-were a minor Shi’i sect that became a significant political player in the Middle East around the time of the Crusades. But I also realize that, even more than I expected, using video games is a very efficient way to let undergraduates engage with historiography and leave them with a sophisticated, critical perspective that is likely to remain alive long after they graduate. As teachers of history, doesn’t that give us something to work with?Īfter designing and twice teaching a course about representations of history in video games, the historical inaccuracies of Napoleon: Total War or Civilization IV are as obvious to me as ever. A course about the Crusades, the American Revolution, or the Napoleonic wars might sound especially interesting for one who has been there. I got tired of being stuck in such a dismissive mode, especially because I know that many students come to college interested in history precisely because they’ve played historically themed video games. That’s assuming we know the game in question, of course.
Many of us have had this experience: a question pops up about some historical tidbit encountered in a video game, and we instructors cannot offer much of a reply except to list all the things the game got wrong. "So how much of Assassin’s Creed is, like…true?” The voice grows more hesitant as the student realizes how silly he must look asking about a video game in the middle of a serious college history course.
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