In other words, exactly how and why are video games a useful source for the historian today? Almost all (good) video games now have some kind of historical component or reflect on a concept that has also occupied historians of various eras and themes, but could anybody help me clarify my thoughts a bit and suggest more precisely why video games could be both a useful and a unique source?
I'm an American Civil War historian, a career path that was greatly influenced by playing (mostly board) games as I grew up.
Games are a great way to visualize geography--battlefields, important economic pathways, etc.
I also think that gaming will allow you to more fully comprehend historical decisions. If you read a book about an event, the author will probably take some time to explain the options available to the actors, but in my opinion there is usually still a strong sense of inevitability about the whole thing. When you play a game about an event, you realize how many moving parts are truly involved and how easily a different decision could have been made, usually with drastically different outcomes even after just a small modification to what happened historically.
Obviously, you always have to consider what level of expertise the game designer is bringing to the table. A lot of games have a nice coating of historical "chrome" but do not have a reliable historical engine inside.
Are you asking how say, historians of Rome can use Total War, or how the historians of tomorrow can use today's video games as a primary source?
It is not unique but I will say that video games offer a much better geographic and physical representation via game maps than is generally available anywhere else.
My ability to visualize locations, distance, etc. in the medieval world is much improved by games like Total War and Crusader Kings.
Largely this is a matter of money. Academics typically don't have the resources and ability to produce th super slick maps that are used in the gaming world. The rise of digital humanities and programs like GIS may change this though.
The other element is perhaps the ability to generate interest, but the actual use of this interest is somewhat debatable, as I am sure the roman flavored users who field total war questions all day can attest too, heh.
I actually just attended a talk about this yesterday!
David Fredrick at the University of Arkansas has been working on recreating Pompeiian domestic spaces using the Unity game engine, and based a recent online class on a a game he and a student team developed in the space. Just by simply navigating the space as it would have been 1950 years ago (to the best of our knowledge), you can appreciate a variety of design choices that are difficult to visualize with a 2D plan or the skeleton of the structures that are left. The architecture might force you to view a painting a certain way, or to even interact with scene. The atrium can have a right and wrong path around the central fountain. Certain spaces would have been points of frequent interaction for servants and residents. Granted, it's not "learning" anything, but a new presentation of data is usually quite interesting and useful.