Volume 4, Issue 1

Though previously overlooked by academia, scholars from a wide array of fields now consider videogames as a serious subject of inquiry. The emergence of game studies as a standalone discipline has led to the publication of high-quality work on the medium, yet the field of videogame history is still immature. Initial attempts to introduce critical historical analysis of videogames in a field dominated by journalistic accounts were themselves plagued by an overemphasis on videogame canons and on the United States and Japan. In effect, early writings by videogame historians resembled “great man” theory, something one could qualify as “great game” theory. Over the last decade, this situation has started to be redressed and there are now growing efforts to produce solid historical scholarship on videogames. Still, game scholars and game historians need to collaborate, engage in conversation, and develop and adapt proper methods to conduct historical research on videogames in order to write relevant histories of this relatively young medium.

In 2006, The Strong National Museum of Play began an initiative to collect, preserve, and interpret the history of video games. That effort led to the founding of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and World Video Game Hall of Fame. The museum’s collection today numbers more than 60,000 video game-related artifacts and hundreds of thousands of archival materials from key creators and companies in the industry. This article discusses the genesis of the museum’s efforts in its play mission, tracks the trajectories of The Strong’s video game initiatives over the years, and discusses some of the challenges faced by museums and other institutions working with video games.

Digital game preservation is a key element in framing the historical importance of digital game culture. Digital game preservation processes in the global north, particularly in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, is well documented because of a well-established game culture. By contrast, digital game preservation in the global south is not as well documented because of the peripheral nature of game culture in those societies. This article seeks to correct this imbalance by asserting the importance of digital game preservation in two ways. First, digital game culture is situated in local practices and culture while acknowledging its near-global presence. Second, we argue that digital games need to be understood as localized formative elements of culture. Our discussion focuses on the Doki-Doki Station Museum located in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia.

This paper highlights the distortive nature of narrative models that are often employed in video game historiographies to produce captivating tales. More precisely, it argues against: the search for video games’ origin(s); the “chronological-teleological” model based on linear progressions; the “chronological-organic” narrative revolving around a biological-like evolution; the “epistemic breaks” structure based on radical transformations; the “bi-polar” model involving a dialectic of oppositions; and the “cyclical” narrative revolving around postmodern tropes of return, recycling, and retrofitting. In addition to explaining why the uncritical use of these emplotment techniques is problematic, this paper argues in favor of a Foucault-inspired genealogical approach which avoids the quest for the media’s origin(s) and articulates video game history around coexistence, overlaps, interferences, synergies, networks of influences, and discontinuities. This genealogical method also restores the missing inventors, devices, and games in historical records while highlighting the power relations that led to their omission in the first place.

For almost three decades, the depiction of the Holocaust was considered taboo in digital games. While World War II became a popular historicizing setting for digital games, the crimes of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust in particular remained conspicuously absent. In this article we show that discussions about the fundamental suitability of specific media or media forms for dealing responsibly with the memory of the Nazi regime’s crimes have already taken place several times and that similar arguments can now be applied to the digital game. With this in mind, we pursue the question of whether only so-called serious games are suitable for this purpose, or whether, on the contrary, mainstream blockbuster games – here specifically the first-person shooter Wolfenstein: The New Order  – can find ways to maintain the memory of the Holocaust without trivializing it. We approach this question by analyzing chapter 8 of Wolfenstein: The New Order , in which protagonist William “B.J.” Blazkowicz allows himself to be deported to a Nazi concentration camp. We discuss this camp scene dialectically, on the one hand, as an encouragement to rethink the first-person shooter and, on the other hand, as a reproduction of a superficial iconography of the Holocaust.

This paper explores the need and opportunities for historians to recognize the importance of video games to their research in modern American history. While this paper is rooted in examples specific to United States history, the call for historians to examine video games, engage with the rich field of games studies, and explore video games as sources in historical scholarship is a universal one, applicable to all fields of history. In this paper we argue that digital games are an essential part of media and cultural history and while media scholars and others interested in game studies have taken up the mantel of video games history, historians have been slow to respond to the medium and even slower to engage with video games as historical sources.

Hear, Here is a critical oral history project developed in two gentrifying urban neighborhoods in Canada and the United States. Recorded by our university students, residents and visitors can listen to short first-person stories on their cell phones, the location of which is marked by orange street signs with a toll-free phone number. The process of gentrification results in community groups staking claims to their version of history embodied in the built heritage and cultural landscapes under threat by neglect and demolition. Hear, Here seeks to amplify the voices of those who typically go unheard, and advocates that oral history can be used to challenge policy, preserve diversity, and reveal that gentrification is not inherent in urban change.

This article explores the challenges and opportunities presented for the teaching and practice of public history in a post-conflict society that remains deeply divided over its past. It examines some of the negative ways in which history is used in the public arena, but also the potential of public history initiatives for building a more cohesive and forward-looking society. It examines how students can use the rich cultural landscape of Northern Ireland and engage with a wide range of experienced practitioners to learn more about the ways in which history divides; how we can negotiate these divisions over interpretations; how different communities understand, represent, and engage with their past; and why this matters.

This article provides an overview of how public historians and other actors collect material on the global COVID-19 pandemic. Their common goal is to archive a diversity of perspectives to document these historic times. Focusing on initiatives that collect from a broader public and that incorporate some sort of crowdsourcing, I distinguish between two approaches: projects that collect something specific and projects that formulate their call more openly. The article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, what opportunities they open up, and what limits they impose on future research on the pandemic. The 10 selected case studies are based in 10 different countries, represent the variety of institutions that are involved in participatory collecting, and have all published their collections online and are thus useful for teaching and research worldwide.