Anecdotally, I think that map-based strategy games like Europa Universalis or Total War can do a lot to give people an insight in geography that might otherwise be lacking.

It is one thing to read about the importance of the Silician Gates, or the distance the Crusaders had to traverse to get from Constantinople to the Holy Land. It's quite another to move "armies" across that terrain and actually having to consider these things as problems.

Written descriptions, likewise, do a much worse job of conveying spatial relations than such games do, and even maps in books only go so far since they do not come with scroll and zoom functions.

The amazing orbis model uses many of these functions even better and can likewise make you experience these things more directly, but even then most people won't spend the hours with them they would with a map in a strategy game.

Moreover, there is no element of challenge. The games pitch the geographical constraints as challenges to achieving the player's goal. I find this results in a very different mindset and a very different way of looking at the map. It's an active as opposed to a passive form of study.

Though teachers can, and probably do, use the Orbis model to set challenges for their students. With the right set of questions and that model, I bet students could learn a lot about logistics and transportation, as well as geography, in the Roman world, and in that same active-thinking way I described.

Of course, historical accuracy in the games is a big limiting factor in this. The maps in the games are almost always abstract and simplified to some degree. So are maps in books, of course, but those are less easily mistaken for a simulation of reality, and will have much more reliable research behind them. And of course the nature of games can just as easily encourage very wrong-footed modes of thinking.

For one thing, and this goes to some extent even for maps in books, the bird's eye overview we get through these modern tools is something the ancient Romans and the like lacked themselves. It encourages a way of thinking in map-lines and clear border demarcations that do not at all match what actual frontier studies show. (Far more ephemeral regions of interactions between peoples and cultures)

In summary: Interactive maps are cool. Video games provide most of the interactive historical maps we have to date, and encourage people to spend hours and hours poring over them. But the Orbis project is even cooler.

Ha. As a historian employed by a video game company, I think I'm pretty much able to comment on this one!

You have I think three different angles for this. The first is the direct attempt to teach history. What is known in the industry as a 'serious game,' with education or training being the primary goal. These are very rarely commercial successes, and even when I've seen them used for academic purposes, their circulation and retention seems very low.

The second, and far and away more common effect, is the teaching of history incidental to the game. I work for Wargaming, which amongst other games, publishes "World of Tanks." I've been teaching about tanks for over fifteen years, and I can see a very definite change between what 'Joe Bloggs' knew about tanks ten years ago, and now, with World of Tanks only coming out some five years ago. For example, almost nobody outside of the dedicated enthusiast community (or people who happened to come across the real thing sitting as a monument on a base) knew about the US's heavy tank program during WW2. Yet now, with over 120million players, it's rare to find someone vaguely interested in tanks who doesn't know about the program, because they can play those tanks in the game. There has been a knock-on effect in other industries as well. If you make scale models, you will doubtless be fed up to the back teeth with the relatively limited variety of models available. I suspect there have been about as many King Tiger kits produced as there were real King Tigers made! (I exaggerate, but only slightly). Now, though, if you look at what the model manufacturers have been putting out, due to the popularity of the game, a kid going to the hobby store will see on the shelves models of the M6 heavy tank, the T54E1 oscillating turret tank, and other vehicles which the model manufacturers are now making because of the popularity of World of Tanks. So as a result, you can discover people learning some history because of a game, even if they never played the game. I hope that something similar will happen as a result of World of Warships. This incidental effect can be seen with many other games. How many people have learned about at least some historical aspects from the "Total War" series, for example?

There is a third aspect, as well, and that's the one mentioned by Japekula. Even if the game itself does not particularly teach history, it can still stimulate an interest in it. The video series and written articles that I do for Wargaming have basically nothing to do with the game. It instead takes advantage of the fact that people have developed a nascent interest in the subject matter, are hungry for more knowledge about these cool subject matters that they spend their time playing with, and are willing to read and watch things on their own time, when not playing. Now, there's some commercial aspect to this as well: Being not related to the game, folks outside of the game will watch and may be drawn into the game I am associated with, and there is some player retention aspect as well (basically, keep them thinking of our brand). But that does not deny the teaching merit of the opportunity.

A very interesting set of extremes can be seen by the way musea have interacted with us. We've been in tight with the Bovington Tank Museum, we're the lead sponsor of their annual event, TankFest. The director of the museum has seen the huge audience that we have, and has been more than willing to work with us with the result that attendance to their museum has shot up. In fairness to Bovington, there have been many reasons for their recent good fortune, but World of Tanks has to take some of the credit. Result? Bovington is now a better experience for all who visit, and a large number of players have now gone to this place of learning.

On the other hand, there is the case of Panzermuseum Munster, the German equivalent, which is run by a more old-school chap. It is important to note that World of Tanks is an arcade game, the actual gameplay is not remotely close to realistic (Though some of the individual tank tactics are). We wished to host an event for the players at Panzermuseum, and this did not particularly go over well. The museum posted an official letter.

http://www.panzermuseum-munster.de/uploads/media/DPM_und_Wot_-_eine_komplizierte_Beziehung.pdf

A general translation is found here. http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/04/29/opinion-of-munster-tank-museum-on-world-of-tanks/

I highlight a quote: "In principle, World of Tanks brings only such content, that goes directly against the values the tank museum tries to convey". And then the museum goes into a list of unrealistic things about World of Tanks. They actually refer to us as the enemy.

Then they go and say exactly what we advocate that they do, and that Bovington has been doing anyway.

"We cannot prevent World of Tanks from spreading its primitive depiction of history anyway. It happens globally 24/7. What can we then do? Earlier, the Museums as “temples of education” turned up their noses and focused only on the “right” audience. We do believe however, that this approach is no longer helpful. We use another approach: we appeal to the audience of this game by bringing them into the Museum with the support of WOT."

"These players, interested in tanks, are brought to the museum throught the Wargaming event. Here, they encounter also the historical original tanks and here, they also encounter (just a little, but soon, a LOT more) history education, that brings the objects in the game into the interesting, but also irritating and critical context, that makes you think"

(Snip) "What we do here is damage control upon the image of history as well as we can by addressing this target group actively and friendly, so that they become fans of the museum and can begin with the history education."

No kidding. This is a win-win for everyone. We're bringing people to your door. Absolutely, teach them history. We encourage it. We make no claims that WW2 was really like how our game plays. Why else would we host events at musea if we didn't want them to learn reality? We could hire out a bar with dancers instead. (And, in fairness, we've done that too).

The relationship with the European musea is actually the purview of our European office, so I'm not sure quite how we're doing with Panzermuseum right now. I do know that our relationship with Bovington remains strong, I was there two weeks ago and we're back again for TankFest.

There is an additional side benefit to video games and history. We're one of the largest industries around, we're bigger than Hollywood. Should we choose to do so, we can just throw cash at the problem simply because we want to. Call of Duty has an associated veterans charity, which, while laudable, isn't educational. We at Wargaming, however, have gone a different route. We've funded the education center at Bovington, and restorations at other musea. We are pioneering VR technology at museums, so you can currently see some tanks inside and out in virtual 3D, and we'll soon be doing ships. And, yes, a large, part of the people experiencing this 'virtual exhibit' will be people who got interested in the subject by playing the game. Sure, we're doing it partially for publicity, but the teaching benefits remain.

Another case in point. Bovington, like many other musea, have a huge archive of photographs (Hundreds of thousands). They are not electronically catalogued. We've started a program to leverage the 120mil people to effectively crowdsource electronic tagging of these photos, for the use of musea, researchers, and so on.

I'm sorry if I come across as plugging WoT here, but we really are passionate about what we do with military history.

As for the question of historical consultants in video game, no, I don't think it's a market which is going to explode. There are a few folks who manage to eke out a living doing it, but the nature of the typical game is employment for the development cycle, then consultants (who are contracted for development) are released, they then go to try to find another game to consult on. Only in the case of persistent games, such as World of Tanks, is there any rational reason for a game company to keep a historian (or several) on full-time staff.

So, long response cut short... If you're interested in history, look into video games. Look into not only the game itself, to give you ideas about what to look up externally, but also look into the second-order effects that that game has created.

This is actually a really interesting question for a teacher, and I've been enjoying reading through all the answers in the thread. As several users have said, there are many many flaws with the accuracy of video games (and many other forms of historical fiction like films and novels) and how they represent elements of the past, but some of my most popular lessons in my classroom for younger students are games and simulations. Kids are shockingly motivated to play games/simulations either against a computer or against other members of the class. Games draw students in by allowing them to make choices, become an expert, problem solve, and experiment with different strategies, which they simply do not get to do by reading a primary or secondary source. At the moment, "gamification" is a popular buzz word in secondary education.

The most valuable games to learn history in the classroom (that I have seen so far) are "free play" games where students can be given a specific scenario that ties in with the lesson. This allows there to be a specific learning goal which could be completed in one or two class periods. My most successful simulation lessons are in class games, not yet video games...yet. But I can't wait for the day when students can play video games and become a trader on the Indian Ocean to learn what sorts of challenges sailors faced and the cycle of monsoons OR students can sit down at the negotiating table as one of the Allied powers at the end of WWI to try and get as much of their demands as possible OR students have to build a colony while dealing with indigenous people, disease, and famine to learn about the challenges early colonizers experienced. None of these examples would be totally historically accurate since the scenario inserts itself into the past, but video games would provide insight into larger questions about moments in the past that the students can personally experience.

Unfortunately, games for classrooms are still sorely lacking. There isn't much money to be made creating games for the education market, so right now, video games are pretty much exclusively made for mass entertainment and suffer from the flaws that others have mentioned. That doesn't even begin to cover the limitations of technology in schools, which will be required to play said future video games...but I suppose that is for another post in a different subreddit.

I have not been totally impressed by the ability of commercial video games to teach history. The ones whose influence I run into a lot are things like Civilization which perpetuates a notion of technological progress being linked with civilizational development that is overly linear and very problematic. (I thought Civ4 was fun, nonetheless. But a poor model for understanding technological progress and the rise/fall of nations. It takes a Manhattan Project model and applies it to all of human history. Problematic.) I am not sure I buy, a priori, that these games have promoted lay interest in history in a significant way.

I suspect the chief difficulty is balancing something that has interesting gameplay with something that actually reveals truths about some aspect of the past without messing it up. That strikes me as non-trivial, and often these things are directly at odds with one another. To overcome them, a serious historical consultant (not just someone with an almanac or a "buff") would need to be integrated into the game at a very early stage, not tacked on as part of the "story" component.

I have never worked with video games but I have consulted for a fictional television show and a few documentaries. Most documentaries follow the "get the historian at the end" model: the producer/writer figures out all of the story and shots they basically want, then they go talk to historians as part of the last part of filming, then they edit it all together. The result is that they end up telling more or less whatever narrative the documentary creator thought was "right" from the beginning, which is usually a watered-down version of whatever popular books there are on the topic. It makes for boring documentaries that are often quite out of sync with the current state of scholarship or anything nuanced.

The best results I've had were with the fictional show (Manhattan), where I was integrated into the writing process from the very beginning, basically giving the writers a "master class" in the subject (and they had already read the main popular books, so they were up to speed already), and working with them to draw out themes and characters that were based on real-life archetypes, but fictionalized in a way that gave the writers freedom to do un-realistic things with them (like have them murder one another). The result was a product that was firmly fictional but rooted in a nuanced historical sensibility — the themes that came out were not the obvious ones. (Which got some push back from buffs who would say, "but that didn't happen!" — and often they were quite wrong on that point, because their sources of information were more limited than they realized.) I thought it was an interesting model for consultants. However the show was not renewed for a third season, so who knows whether that's a good model for interesting television! (It got great reviews from critics, but apparently it is a very hard time out there right now for even smart shows.)

I would love to apply this sort of model to the development of games, but I've no idea whether it is being actively pursued. I doubt that historical consultant is a burgeoning field for history students. It ought to be! But I doubt that it is — history is one of those things that a lot of people, even very smart ones, think you can just pick up from books and the Internet, because they see it as a collection of facts rather than a deep knowledge of context. Any fool can Google facts, but the facts do not give you history until you embed them into a narrative, and the difference between smart narratives and dumb ones are the understanding of context that comes from spending a decade thinking about something. So says the professional historian, anyway.

I would love it if academic historians got their acts collectively together and pursued more projects in these directions, because I don't think the big game developers are likely to do it, or to involve us in their work, unless they get successful examples for how this might be pulled off. Because of my work on the NUKEMAP I do occasionally get rumblings from people in various forms of political science who are enthusiastic about games as a means for raising awareness and educating the broader public on complex topics. I haven't seen that much interest amongst historians, but I might not be hanging out among the right people. It seems like one of the real areas of potential gain in Digital Humanities.

A proposal of mine got an "honorable mention" for a recent contest for pitching a game that would educate people about nuclear war. That doesn't get me anything, but the process of thinking out what that would look like (it can't be a "shoot 'em up" sort of thing, because you don't want people to find nuclear war fun), was very productive for me intellectually and made me think I ought to find a way to make my game anyway (I have most of the skills that would be necessary to make a prototype or proof-of-concept, and from there it probably wouldn't be hard to find people who could do the things I am not as good at). I think it would be interesting to do this kind of "game challenge" for historians as well — put out an announcement that said something like: Look, historians, can you come up with a viable game concept that would be useful for teaching but also be interesting for the general public? If you can, we'll hire some programmers and designers to make it real and use you as a paid consultant. I suspect it could be quite interesting. (I have several game ideas, myself, but only so much time.)

Personal anecdote: the game I rocked when I was young was Sierra Online's Gold Rush!. It's (cruelly) hard in the way that games were in the 1980s, but it tries to cram a lot of detail about the Gold Rush into something a kid might find interesting. I was impressed that when I later visited Sutter's Fort, it matches up quite well to the game's version. Is it a perfect historical video game? No. But it does an impressive job for 1988 in making you feel that you are part of the world of 1848 or so. I wouldn't say it got me into history (it did teach me how to type, though), but contribute to me getting into computers!

I would be interested in people's thoughts on the impact of paradox games (particularly the Europa Universalis series), and I guess the portrayal of colonialism, genocide and so on.

On the one hand the games are extremely detailed, and do give players a degree of insight into the history of the period. And they are fun. I've sunk hundreds of hours into EU III, IV & Ck2.

But there are huge areas that the game (well, EU anyway) just whitewashes, which makes me really uneasy.

If your only exposure to these histories comes through this game, you are going to come away with an extremely skewed understanding, pretty much to the point that you're almost better off not knowing anything at all rather than believing the narrative that EU sells.

I dunno. I love the games, but the paradox forums don't give me the impression that they are usefully teaching history. There are a ton of people who are happy to handwave cultural and actual genocide and so on. And I think at least part of that has to come from the way the game presents these matters.

Well, most video games (especially the first-person games) tend to lend too much credence to the "great PC (player character)" theory of history. They indicate that if your character had failed, the entirety of history would have been different (George Washington would have lost, etc). Strategy games have their own flaws. They tend to indicate that "tech trees" exist, in which one technology or political development leads linearly to another. And also, they tend to imply that a nation will (or even can) pursue a consistent, detailed policy in many areas over hundreds of years.

So overall, I think that video games give too much power to purposeful agents, and too little to social forces or blind chance. That doesn't mean that you can't learn about individual features of history from games; it's just that you often learn bad historiography from them.

I'm mostly interested in applications of the Walking-Simulator type games to history (as opposed to the table-top-game sort, such as Civ V, which seem more popular among the historical-minded here) because I like them a lot. I am a lover, not a fighter, I like games where you walk around and look around and touch things etc., with or without a relatively strict narrative. Throw in a few puzzles for spice and I'm happy. I am decidedly not A Gamer (tm) but my favorite games are the Endless Ocean games, and while these games are not intended to be educational, it's educationish, I can rattle off a lot of fish because of them.

I'm interested to see if this genre can develop like the historical novel as a niche of historical entertainment. I don't think anyone gets mad that historical novels and movies are not stunningly educational, and I don't see why this style of game should get harshed on for it either.

Anyone got a favorite RPG/walking sim type historish game?

Edit: forgot to mention the classic historical game Oregon Trail! Obviously we should talk about that.

I was addicted to Darklands, a fantastic sandbox adventure game set in the HRE in the 15th century. It was beautifully rendered (for its time!), with oil paintings as background graphics and cut-scenes, great music, heroes, robber barrons, the occult, wizardry .... what not to like? You can even play different roles as you want. You can be a trickster, a robber, a mercenary ... so many possibilities. Add to this saintly favors, satan worshippers, Hussites, Templars, dragons! What a great way to learn about medieval christianity and german folklore.

More recently, I got interested in EU and CK, which seems to generate an endless sequence of questions here on AH on "why doesn't real life comply with the games." Gee, I wonder.

As a mass consumer of video games, I wouldn't say that video games per se teach history, but rather kindle an interest in history. Some games, however, for example Sid Meier's Civilization series have a some sort of an in-game encyclopedia (like the games' "Civilopedia") or other way of giving more information about the history related to units, buildings, events etc ingame.

Usually game studios do not give a hoot about the historical accuracy of their games other than the overall theme (and the aforementioned encyclopedias), but there are exceptions, mostly indie game studios; for example, (as far as I know) Logic Artists did conduct a lot of research for their video game about the Spanish conquest of Mexico for their video game, Expeditions: Conquistador, and I have heard that Longbow Games' Hegemony series are historically accurate. Personally, I do not think that there would be much of a market for historical consultants in the video game industry. At best, there would be a job market similar to historical consultants in movies; guys who sit in the corner to be largely ignored.

Usually historically inaccurate games get historically accurate mods, however, which then in turn may teach a little about history. The mod Europa Barbarorum for Rome: Total War is a good example of a historically accurate (and fun!) mod for a historically inaccurate game.

Are (some) video games guilty of perpetuating myths about history?

Yes. For example, the video game Rome: Total War perpetuates the myth of barbarians fighting (almost) naked with no discipline and so on.

I hope my post was atleast somewhat understandable. English isn't my native language and I may or may not have been slightly drunk at the time of writing.

I was taking a History of Architecture class in college. We were at the Renaissance and I was talking about how much research went into Assassin's Creed to recreate the cities and architecture of the time. My teacher was very interested and had me bring it in. We ran around for a good while climbing and observing all the buildings and looking at the different details. I remember the class being very interactive and asked for questions that class. It is definitely a different application of the question, but it was really great to get a new context for exploring famous buildings.

There aren't a lot of video games by themselves I feel that can do an accurate representation of history lessons yet, but I definitely feel you can find parts of things in games that could be applicable.

I've always been slightly annoyed that people take good history and embellish the crap out of it, or throw a fantasy layer on top. There more than enough "real life sexiness" to many historical events that you dont need to add witches, cults, or implausible outcomes to make an event exciting and/or fun.

There was this one Call of Duty game (I think it was CoD), that went through the history of the CIA's operations throughout the Cold War, but embellished the crap out of it, and while sure, its fun, I wouldn't think it would be that hard to make an interesting a first person shooter without embellishing the facts.

Think about it, A Rainbow Six style/Hitman style game where you have to plan and execute the Entebbe Raid, maybe the SAS raid on the Iranian Embassy, just as two example. All through the process you learn the politics of what happened and why, and you try to recreate the sucesses or failures of the mission. Hell, learning from failure could be a great game, imagine having to try to survive during the Bay of Pigs as an anti-Castro rebel.

I think that trying to make a game where instead of "maybe I can lead the Nazi's to victory", the goal of the player would be to not be so thoroughly beaten before 1945, as any number of bad decisions could have caused Germany to collapse like a house of cards. Like in those FPS's, I talked about, where "hardcore mode" means one shot and you die, why not make history simulators, "real life hard"?

Why not have maintaining an Empire as long as Spain did, despite always being economically crippled internally, in debt, caught up in Continental Wars that drained the treasury, manpower, and political capital? I know the argument could be that "reality isn't as fun", but it would show that some of the things that happened in history really were amazing miracles.

As someone who is not a historian, I learned an incredible amount about geography, succession, and various dynasties by playing Crusader Kings and Crusader Kings 2. Playing the game also prompted me to look up things on my own, including the Habsburgs, Basque culture (it was fascinating to me that they were the only people in the base game with cognatic succession), and numerous other things.

So, at least in my case, it has definitely "promoted layman interest."

Video games are my main hobby and history is one of my main interests. I think games are getting better at teaching history overall. Valiant Hearts incorporates brief historical summaries of the battles and factoids about them, along with real letters from soldiers on the fronts and historical artifacts to collect.

History in video games can sometimes be controversial though. Company of Heroes 2 received extremely negative reviews from Russia (which has some of the most gamers in the world) because of the way it portrayed the Red Army.

I think games are both popular and complex enough to be judged on their historical accuracy, like we do with movies, tv shows, and books. Games are being played by more and more people. Some people born from the 80s to today have been playing games before they could read, myself included. It's important that games try to avoid creating and spreading historical misconceptions.

Video games can be a fantastic tool for promoting an interest in history in the general public, though more often than not they lead people astray.

Video games can rebuild lost cities, recreate historical costumes, and recreate events that happened centuries before, but it is important to note that the cost of making a modern, decent video game means that they are designed for entertainment and not education.

I'm currently a high school history teacher and have thought a lot about using video games but have always run into a few problems. Licensing and usage rights aside, the games that would catch and hold a student's attention are not ones that place a huge focus on historical accuracy. Assassin's Creed (ignoring the fact the games are rated for 17+) features a cast of historic characters, but the characters and beautifully detailed worlds are really just an interchangable backdrop. The games are great for seeing what Paris looked like during the French Revolution, or what Acre was like during the Crusades, but it's a stretch to incorporate other elements besides architecture and broad stroked about the societies.

Games that place a high value on historical accuracy, simply put, are not really seen by the general public as being any fun. Europa Universalis, Shogun: Total War, Silent Hunter, and Verdun do a pretty good job of capturing the tone, details, and facts of the period, but they're a hard sell. Especially if your audience is students.

To avoid being a dry re-telling of history, player choice and agency is added which adds complexity to balancing the need to make a fun game with the need to keep historical details and accuracy intact. Myths do come into play as a way to link events in the game to a more "universal" understanding of the past, though for a game like War Thunder the need for game balance sometimes steps in to sand down the unique qualities and flavour of the vehicles featured in the game.

I think u/Iguana_on_a_stick is right in saying many of these games are valuable in teaching geography, logistics, and scale. Though for historical narratives and events the need to make a marketable, entertaining product often trumps the desire to make the game a valuable tool for teaching history.

A lot of v interesting things being said in this thread!

Personally, I'm really intrigued by the interactive quality inherent to video games and what it could do to teaching history ('could', because I've not seen it done convincingly yet!). Video games have such a huge potential for teaching that historical events rarely occur because of the whims of fate or any one individual; but, because of a sum of variables. With video games, we could make the kids face similar problems as the historical characters did, with the same constraints and options - and then let them explore, what they themselves could have done and whether there were any other possible outcomes. That would give so much insight into why some particular historical event played out the way it did. Some kids learn very poorly just by reading or listening in class, and video games are definitely a lot more poignant way to encourage critical thinking about historical progress than text books!

So, I do see value in using video games in teaching, even if they aren't absolutely historically accurate. But, I am often annoyed by the imperative to "clean up" history that most commercial historical games seem to purport, the need to have our modern values reflected into their interpretation of history. I understand it's a creative process and that games need to be entertaining, but the way e.g. Civ V strives to make the game more female friendly and gender-balanced is just stupid. There really hasn't been that many great female leaders in history, so, the makers had to promote practically unknown female leaders over much more plausible male candidates (Dido, really?? Of all he great historical Phoenician and Carthaginian leaders, you had to pick up the one woman that's basically just a product of Roman imagination? Ever heard of Hannibal, Sid Meyer??). In my opinion, history should not ever be 'prettified' and it just dilutes the appreciation for those historical women that did make a massive impact in other spheres of history than politics and war.

I always wanted to know a historian's review of Crusader Kings II. Or at least some comments about the game. From my perspective, this is the most accurate historical game you can play today, it's dense in characters and events and for a non-historical person it seems that it recreates very well the medieval age feeling. The music is amazing as well. But then again, maybe a historian's reaction to Crusader Kings II could be the same as a physicist reaction playing Asteroids. Unfortunately, people who play games are usually not historians, but I'm sure there are a few exceptions out there that could give us some thoughts about the game.