Research from the Center

The Center is proud to support research in video games and history. Its members are actively researching and presenting important work that explores gaming history and the historical narratives in video games. 

To further promote the Center we hope to create a monthly podcast that explores issues in history and gaming and invites others to discuss critical play and research methods. In this way, we hope to engage in an interdisciplinary conversation with other games scholars and extend that research to a wider scholarly and public audience. To that end, the Center will facilitate the creation of new gaming-related courses, sponsor an academic conference that invites students and scholars to share their work on history and video game topics, invite speakers to campus, and provide a vocational space for critical gaming. 

Presentations, Publications and Pedagogy

Publications:

Lawler, J. “The Historical Environment as Aged Icon in the Gamed West.” Comparative American Studies An International Journal, November 28, 2022, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2022.2150493.

Lawler, J. and Smith, S. “Imagining the Other: Historical Possibilites and Teaching in Twine.” Entwine: A Critical and Creative Companion to Teaching with Twine. Amherst College Press. Jeffrey Lawler and Sean Smith. Forthcoming 2024.

Lawler, J. “Lacking for Leisure: Spatial Constraints in Non-White Communities in Los Angeles,” Chapter in Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts and Humanities (IDEAH) Journal. Forthcoming 2024.

Lawler, J., and Smith, S. “Reprogramming the History of Video Games: A Historian’s Approach to Video Games and their History.” International Public History, Volume 4, Issue 1, June 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/iph-2021-2018

Lawler, J and Smith, S. “Gaming the Past: Video Games and Historical Literacy in the College Classroom” Chapter in Return to the Interactive Past: The Interplay of Video Games and Histories. Sidestone Press. December 2021.

Lawler, J., and Smith, S., “Creating a Playable History: Digital Games, Historical Skills and Learning.” Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities (IDEAH) Volume 2, Issue 1, 2021. https://doi.org/10.21428/f1f23564.22225218

Lawler, J., & Smith, S. (2020). Playing with Historical Purpose and Agency. Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces: A Digital Project Handbook. July 1, 2020. https://doi.org/10.21428/51bee781.b9b50a74

Presentations: 

Directors and Organizers of “Alea Iacta, Video Games and Ancient History,” a Speakers Series at California State University Long Beach. Sponsored by the David Hood Chair of Ancient History, CSULB. Series of bi-annual conversations about the intersection of ancient history and video games.

Organization of American Historians, April 2021 annual meeting. “Taking Video Games Seriously, a Roundtable Discussion.”

“Engineering an Industry: The Cold War, the Military Industrial Complex, and the Home Gaming Machine.” Sean Smith 42nd annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 21, 2021.

“Arcades Limited: The Southland and Spatial Evaders.” Jeffrey Lawler, Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 20, 2021.

“The Historical Environment as Aged Icon in Video Games.” Jeffrey Lawler, 41st annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 21, 2020.

“John Romero is Going to Make You His B*tch!”: 90s PC Gaming, Masculinity, and the Rise of the Rockstar Developer.” Sean Smith, 41st annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 20, 2020.

“Creating a Playable History: Games, Historical Skills and Learning,” Jeffrey Lawler and Sean Smith presented at Digital History Summer Institute, June 2019.

“Sega Does What Nintendon't: Manufacturing Masculinity through the Home Console Market,” Sean Smith, 40th annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 23, 2019.

“This Is My Land: Soviets in the West,” Jeffrey Lawler, 40th annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 22, 2019.

“History Pedagogy and Video Games: A Case in Two Parts,” Nov. 9 2018 History Department CSULB Faculty Research Seminar.

“Gaming the past: Video Games and Historical Literacy in the College Classroom,” Jeffrey Lawler and Sean Smith presented at The Interactive Pasts Conference 2, October 8 - 10 2018, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

"Assembling Masculinity: How Video Games Set in the American West Recreate Order” Jeffrey Lawler presented at the 53rd annual California State University, Long Beach Comparative Literature Conference: Borders, Place, and Translation. April 26th, 2018. 

"Playing Within and Without Quarters: the Home Gaming Console and the Rise of Women Gamers," Sean Smith presented at the 53rd annual California State University, Long Beach Comparative Literature Conference: Borders, Place, and Translation. April 26th, 2018. 

"Masculinity and Violence in Video Games: The Virile Gun with no Other," Jeffrey Lawler presented at the 39th annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 7-10, 2018.

"Playing without Quarters: the Home Gaming Console and the Rise of Women Gamers," Sean Smith presented at the 39th annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference, February 7-10, 2018.

"Gaming and Pedagogy: How Card Games, Board Games and Video Games Transform the History Classroom" Jeffrey Lawler, Sean Smith and Patrick Rael. Panel presentation 4th Annual CUNY Games Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center, January 22, 2018. 

“Video Games and History Pedagogy-Video Games as Cultural Texts and Primary Sources in the History Classroom” Jeffrey Lawler and Sean Smith. DHSI 2017, University Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia. June 2017.

Pedagogy

"History 306 Playing the Past: Games as Historical Narrative, Public Memory, and Cultural Representations," co-devleoped by Sean Smith and Jeff Lawler at California State University, Long Beach. 

This course focuses on the representations of history and historical narrative in both World and American histories through a variety of video games. The class 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.

“History 307 Cultural History of Video Games and Gaming Techonolgy” co-devleoped by Sean Smith and Jeff Lawler at California State University, Long Beach. 

 The video game industry (an industry that has surpassed all other forms of popular culture in popularity and profitably) and computing technology have become ever present in our students’ lives. Despite growing up as “digital natives” most of our students have little knowledge of the origins and cultural impact of the technologies they use daily. Most histories of the computing industry and especially the gaming industry are written by games and computer journalists or enthusiasts. Much of this work is still in the hagiographic stage and it continues to romanticize the field and its heroic engineers and developers. This class will work to dispel these myths and present a more critical examination of the history of computing and gaming and focus on the diversity of participants in both the creation and consumption of these technologies. 

Throughout this course, students will focus on investigating the interplay between video games and the cultural, social, and historical contexts in which they were developed. The class will explore the social, economic, and political contexts of the achievements and the developments in the history of computing and video games, as well as the history of hardware/consoles and game development techniques. The students will come away from the course with a broad understanding of the many historical and cultural dimensions of video games, the industry and game play. The course will involve considerable reading, discussion, guest presentations and projects on the history of video games, games industry, and computing technology and their cultural impacts. As a final project to assess their historical thinking skills and their understanding of computing and gaming technology in a broad cultural context, students will research and write an academic history that covers some aspect of the gaming or personal computing industries and present their findings to the class.