It is hard to imagine contemporary popular culture without history. Historical novels, feature films, radio programs, and television documentaries explore topics from the recent and distant past, thereby contributing to the development of our historical culture and our sense of history. In recent years, video games have also established themselves as a new medium and genre that presents historical themes to a broad audience. The depictions of past worlds within these games are becoming increasingly detailed. The community of gamers has become increasingly diverse and is no longer limited to children and teenagers. Through video games, they immerse themselves in a world that promises to reflect past realities and bring them to life anew. 
It is worthwhile to take a closer look at the portrayal of history in video games. While educators, media scholars, and history educators have primarily focused on this topic thus far, historians have also begun to explore the medium in recent years. This workshop is intended as a forum for presenting and discussing past and ongoing activities in the field of historical analysis of video games. The guiding question is what opportunities may arise for historical scholarship in engaging with a popular medium whose producers all too often advertise that consumers can “experience history” or even change it. How does a presentation of history—in which the individual appears as a subject rather than an object of historical processes—impact scholarly communication?

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Friday, December 5, 2008

A summary of the workshop's findings can be found in the conference report on H-Soz-Kult.

On October 18, 2010, the anthology containing the results of the December 2008 workshop on history in video games was published. Under the title “Have You Always Wanted to Throw Plague-Infected Cows at Your Opponents?” An Academic Approach to History in Video Games, editor Angela Schwarz presents the first volume dedicated exclusively to the historical study of one of the newest and fastest-growing media for popularizing history. In a total of nine contributions, various facets of how history is handled in a leisure activity that is both widely used and hotly debated are examined and analyzed.

Computer games with historical content are not only an essential part of today’s entertainment and media landscape but also of historical culture. They differ from other popular forms of historical representation primarily through their interactivity. What insights does the study of this medium offer to historical scholarship, which has so far paid little attention to video games? With this volume, which covers numerous historical periods, places, and themes, the authors demonstrate not only the diversity of how history is popularized in video games but also the need to document, classify, and interpret it.

The book was published under ISBN 978-3-643-10267-6 as the 13th volume in the “Medien’Welten” series by LIT Verlag in Münster; it comprises 240 pages, including the game index, and retails for €19.90 in bookstores.

The first edition of the volume is now out of print. A revised and updated new edition, comprising 288 pages, will be published on October 18, 2012, and will continue to be available at the same price from the publisher or in bookstores.

Link to the publisher’s website: https://lit-verlag.de/isbn/978-3-643-10267-6/

Further information on the anthology and on research into history in video games can also be found in this ZEIT Online article, which is also available on the IT portal Golem.de.

The topic of “History in Digital Games” has since become a central research focus at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History, where various faculty members are investigating a wide range of aspects within this field. In addition to lectures and scholarly publications, this includes the presentation of findings through digital media. Several doctoral projects have also been and continue to be developed in this research area. The Chair’s contribution to Collaborative Research Center 1472, “Transformation of the Popular,” is also dedicated to the question of the popularization of history in the equally popular medium of video games. Further information can also be found on the website for the research focus “Popularization of History.”