Welcome to the Center for History of Video Games and Critical Play's Blog. This space is dedicated to publishing work that encourages gamers, scholars and students to consider how video and other games offer unique ways of looking at history and history pedagogy, the interpretation of games, game play, and the impact of games on culture. In doing so we hope to create a space where we engage in an academic conversations that focus on representations of history and historical narrative in both World and American histories through a variety of video and tabletop games. The work here will investigate the assumptions that guide such representations of history and analyze the extent to which the medium of history-themed video games can bring new questions and perspectives to academic history and history education.
Welcome to The Hall of Historic Heroes, the first edition of what we hope will become a weekly feature on our blog. In these posts we’ll briefly explore American exceptionalism as it appears in video games (both past and present) and/or in video game advertisements or box art.
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Recently, one of our favorite history and video games podcasts explored the portrayal of race and the role of the American Civil Rights movement in Bethesda Softworks Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Rather than take on the obvious themes of the game Bob Whitaker, John Harney and Robert Green engage in a compelling conversation about the African American experience and how it's represented in this counterfactual history of America. It's a great conversation that raises some interesting topics and we think it's important to support work like this. Listen to it here or visit their Youtube page.
The Center is a collaborative, interdisciplinary space where a researchers, students and a community of gamers at CSULB can engage in an interdisciplinary approach to the critical study and teaching of video games and culture. The Center's mission is to foster game pedagogy and research throughout the university, and develop productive interactions between disciplines, students, scholars, gamers, and the general public.
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