I'm going to avoid Mike Wallace's extremely awkward statement at the beginning of today's reading, but I did find his extremely short discussion on history video games interesting.
We all remember games like "The Oregon Trail," which I loved as a kid, and these games are vivid memories for many of us. They were learning experiences that were also fun and interesting... so why are there so few games like this? I can think of a few games that have true learning potential that are very fun and historical, for instance "Age of Empires," they portray aspects of life at the time of the setting and do so accurately. But these games are few and far between. There is a recent game that I personally find fascinating, it's called Assassin's Creed, it's set in the middle ages, and has an extremely sci-fi conspiracy to the story, but what is so interesting is how they went about recreating medieval cities like Jerusalem and Florence and especially Rome. Now, like I said, the story is very Sci-fi, but with the technology to recreate these cities, and an imaginative story, why can't we create games that truly put the player back into history and have us discovering things about the past? Games like these could allow for interesting ways to learn about the politics of the past, learn about conflicts and their causes, learn about buildings, and learn about issues that affected them then and continue to affect us now.
I think this is a missed opportunity for us to do some interesting teaching that can engage in interesting ways, but it's just a thought.
Medieval Total War taught me everything i know about history.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone ever play 'Lords of the Realm'? I loved the second one so much I bought an old laptop running windows 95 on ebay so I can still play it now. I love Medieval strategy games. I agree that they are a good teaching tool too
ReplyDeleteApparently what we need is "The Sims: Historically Accurate Addition."
ReplyDeleteCaesar and the Civilization series' incorporate a great deal of historical accuracy and I must admit I learned a lot. This is a great set of educational games that are engaging and historically accurate...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mission-us.org/
I think most people think of RTS games when we think of history, unfortunately for me, I've never been good at them. There have been a couple that I really would like to play, but I know I'd get frustrated with them far too quick. In my case though, I think it would be great to be able to play a historical RPG, set in Louis XIV's court with Cardinal Richelieu and the intrigue there, or during the Spanish Armada and the efforts to save England. There are any number of scenarios, nor do they need to hold strictly to historical accuracy point for point, but convey the message of what was happening at the time. I would stay away from action games though.
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