History and Games This Week
Welcome to the week in history and games, a short collection of links to stories and news that we hope you find interesting.
We missed a week! Let's call it a quick summer break. Plenty to cover today. And if you are reading this in the United States, we hope you are having a lovely Memorial Day.
Bob and John are both very, very happy with all the Mass Effect talk on the Internet at the moment. So you can imagine how much pleasure we get from wonderful content like this: actors Jennifer Hale (Shepard) and Ali Hillis (Liara) playing Mass Effect. There is quite a lot of great content like this at the Washington Post Launcher Youtube Page, definitely worth a look.
With Mass Effect Legendary Edition yet again proving that something can be a cash grab and a wonderful piece of history preservation simultaneously, it is worth remembering that the actual archival work of preserving video games is ongoing, vitally important and challenging. The BBC podcast The Digital Human recently examined this important work, and it is an excellent thirty minutes of radio.
It seems plenty of academics have decided to spend their late spring and early summer time thinking about and writing about games, which is good news for all of us. This past week saw an intriguing idea: a twitter-hosted academic conference, The Middle Ages in Modern Games. Scholars presented their work in twitter threads, working through representations of the medieval world in various video games and video game genres. Browse through the main twitter account: there is a lot there and a lot of different approaches. Mostly I found the idea of sharing ideas and arguments via twitter threads in a more academic setting fascinating.
If you are interested in a (slightly) more traditional games studies discussion, do consider registering for the eCommemoration Switchboard event on History in Videogames this Thursday at 3pm Central European Summer Time, featuring Professors Vit Sisler and Angela Schwarz. Dr. Sisler was lead game designer of History Respawned favorite Attentat 1942.
Bret Devereaux wrapped up his series on Europa Universalis IV this week and goes out on a high with a big, fundamental question: Why Europe? And Jeremiah McCall had a great twitter thread sharing resources on using the fantastic game design tool Twine in teaching environments. Many thanks to Jeremiah for the shout out as well.
And we have been busy around here! Bob recently joined friends of the show Brian Bentley and Corey Dockendorf on their podcast Starting Point to talk Oregon Trail, Civ, and 4X games in general. Not to be outdone, we recently put out a podcast episode of our own, on Victoria 3 and video games being covered in the American Historical Review. This followed hot on the heels of the two of us getting together for the China episode of Civs 101, during which John talks about the interesting contrast between Chairman Mao and the First Emperor Civilization leaders. And if THAT wasn't enough, we have more! Bob was able to recently share video footage of an OAH (Organization of American Historians) roundtable in which he participated earlier this year. Not typical History Respawned content, but a fantastic line up here and something well worth your time.
That's it! A big bumper of a week. We will be back next week, if History Respawned has not dissolved due to intense jealousy over a now sold-out coffee cup.
