I’ve been batting around ideas for my video games class, trying to flesh them out some more. I put together a twine-based exploration of some of my ideas in this regard a few weeks ago; you can play it here. Anyway, what follows below is just me thinking out loud. The course runs for 12 weeks. (O my students, the version of the syllabus you should trust is the one that I am obligated to put on cuLearn).

What does Good History Through Gaming Look Like?

How do we know? Why should we care? What could we do with it, if we had it? Is it playing that matters, or is it building? Can a game foster critical play? What is critical play, anyway? ‘Close reading’ can happen not just of text, but also of code, and of experience. It pulls back the curtain (link to my essay discussing a previous iteration of this course).

Likely Topics

1. A history of games, and of video games
2. Historical Consciousness & Worldview
3. Material culture, and the digital: software exists in the physical world
4. Simulation & Practical Necromancy: representing the physical world in software
5. Living History, LARPing, ARGs and AR: History, the Killer App
6. Museums as gamed/gameful spaces
7. Gamification and its bastards: or, nothing sucks the fun out of games like education
8. Rolling your Own: Mods & Indies
9. The politics of representation

Assessment

Which Might Include Weekly Responses & Critical Play Sessions:

1. IF responses to readings (written using http://twinery.org)
2. Play-throughs of others’ IF (other students; indie games in the wild)
3. Critical play of Minecraft
4. Critical play of ‘historical’ game of your choice
5. Critical play of original SimCity (which can be downloaded or played online here). We’ll look at its source code, too, I think. Or we might play a version of Civilization. Haven’t decided yet.
6. Critical boardgame play
7. ARIS WW1 Simulation by Alex Crudas & Tyler Sinclair

Yes. I am going to have you play video games, for grades. But you will be looking for procedural rhetorics, worldviews, constraints, and other ways we share authority with algorithms (and who writes these, anyway?) when we consume digital representations of history. Consume? Is that the right verb? Co-create? Receive?

Major Works

1. Midterm:IF your favourite academic paper that you have written such that a player playing it could argue the other sides you ignored in your linear paper. Construct it in such a way that the player/reader can move through it at will and still engage with a coherent argument. (See for example ‘Buried’ http://taracopplestone.co.uk/buried.html). You will use the Twine platform. http://twinery.org
2. Summative Project: Minecrafted History
   1. You will design and build an immersive experience in Minecraft that expresses ‘good history through gaming’. There will be checkpoints to meet over the course of the term.Worlds will be built by teams, in groups of 5. Worlds can be picked from three broad themes:THE HISTORY OF THE OTTAWA VALLEY
      THE CANADIANS ON THE WESTERN FRONT
      COLONIZATION AND RESISTANCE IN ROMAN BRITAIN  (…look, I was a Roman archaeologist, once…)
   2. You will need to obtain source maps; you will digitize these and translate them into Minecraft. We will in all likelihood be using Github to manage your projects. The historical challenge will be to frame the game play within the world that you have created such that it expresses good history. You will need to keep track of every decision you make and why, and think through what the historical implications are of those decisions.
   3. The final build will be accompanied by a paradata document that will discuss your build, details all sources used (Harvard Style), references all appropriate literature, and explains how playing your world creates ‘good history’ for the player. This document should reference Fogu, Kee et al, and the papers in Elliot and Kappell at a miminum. More information about ‘paradata’ and examples may be found at http://heritagejam.org/what-are-paradata Due the first session on the last week of term, so that we can all play each others’ worlds. The in-class discussion that will follow in the second session is also a part of this project’s grade. Your work-in-progress may also be presented at Carleton’s GIS Day (3rd Wednesday in November)
   4. (These worlds will be made publicly available at the end of the term, ideally for local high school history classes to use. Many people at the university are interested to see what we come up with, too. No pressure).

So that’s what I’m thinking, with approximately 1 month to go until term starts. We’ve got Minecraft.edu installed in the Gaming Lab in the Discovery Centre in the Library, we’ve got logins and remote access all sorted out, I have most of the readings set … it’s coming together. Speaking of readings, we’ll use this as our bible:

Playing with the Past

and will probably dip into these:

Play the Past

PastPlay

… sensing a theme…