In recent years, video games have become an excellent way for history to be taught to younger audiences through interactive storytelling and throwing players directly into history. Andrew Denning, a history professor who teaches a popular course on Nazi Germany at the University of Kansas, seems to agree on using historical gaming as a learning tool as he has noticed that quite a few of his students became interested in history not from books and film, but instead from video games on PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
“My students and the wider public are very much coming to know Nazi Germany through video games,” Denning says in his recent publication, The American Historical Review. He continues on, stating that “it’s really important that professional historians really think about this and engage with how those entertainments shape public knowledge of the historical past.”
As part of his research, Denning played through several titles in the Wolfenstein series, where he recognized the gaps in how history was presented in the series, but also found that the title could create new ways to talk to students about World War II and the Third Reich. While he found that the World War II shooter offered some unique perspectives (particularly its fascinating alternative-take on history), he also found that it presented history in very broad strokes. For example, all of the Germans in the game are presented as bloodthirsty Nazis, with there being no gray area. The game doesn’t go as deep as showing the German politics when there were domestic Germans, sympathizers in occupied France, and so on. The game presents Nazis as a single entity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, it is somewhat limiting the player’s comprehension of the historical event.
In The American Historical Review, Denning describes video games as “forms of digital history and public history, not ones that professional historians produce… but ones that shape public understanding before and oftentimes in lieu of our input.” Denning argues that if historians criticize or dismiss the interactive medium for “placing entertainment and aesthetics over-analysis and significance,” we effectively ignore gamings’ massive influence that it has on the creation of public knowledge of history. This is an excellent point, as video game industry is now absolutely massive, with it now larger than both the film and music industries combined. Instead of ignoring historical video games and dismissing them for their inaccurate portrayals of history, we should be working to help improve the medium and use them as a teaching tool.
Denning compares historical video games to films and museum exhibits, arguing that “they will help historians more accurately understand the forms history can take and the myriad ways that the public consumes history beyond the academic monograph…” By acknowledging historical video games, historians will be able to better comprehend its treatment of history in both specific contexts, as well as how history is translated into games on a more general level.
With such a wide audience, historical video games have a massive influence on the public’s perception of particular historical events and settings. By studying these titles and acknowledging their potential, perhaps historians will be better equipped to teach audiences and correct the various misconceptions that might be created from the medium.
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(This article is credited to Ben Price. For as long as he can remember, Ben has always loved playing, discussing, and writing about video games. Since receiving his B.A. in English, he now writes about them for a living.)