1st Edition

Digital Games as History How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice

By Adam Chapman Copyright 2016
    290 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    302 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book provides the first in-depth exploration of video games as history. Chapman puts forth five basic categories of analysis for understanding historical video games: simulation and epistemology, time, space, narrative, and affordance. Through these methods of analysis he explores what these games uniquely offer as a new form of history and how they produce representations of the past. By taking an inter-disciplinary and accessible approach the book provides a specific and firm first foundation upon which to build further examination of the potential of video games as a historical form.

    Part I: Digital Games as History1. Introduction  2. Interacting with Digital Games as History  Part II: Digital Games as Historical Representations 3. Simulation Styles and Epistemologies  4. Time and Space  5. Narrative in Games: Categorising for Analysis 6. Historical Narrative in Digital Games Part III: Digital Games as Systems for Historying  7. Affording Hertiage Experiences, Reenactment and Narrative Historying  8. Digital Games as Historical Reenactment  9. Digital Games as (Counterfactual) Narrative Historying  Part IV: Digital Games as a Historical Form 10. Conclusions.

    Biography

    Adam Chapman is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Historical Games in the Department of Education, Communication and Learning at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden