HIST494: History through Gaming

This past semester, I have been experimenting with a course that combines computer/video games with history. Students have played an array of historically-themed games from the popular Assassin's Creed series to strategy games like Civilization 5. Students have written blog posts about the course games, researched and presented on unassigned games, and are developing their own hypothetical "dream" historically-themed game by doing historical research and incorporating game design and mechanics. As a class, we constantly seek elements of game-play that are factual and educational, as well as questioning when developers go beyond the realm of history into fiction. For more information about the course and links to student blog posts see the course website: https://spitt9.wixsite.com/historythroughgaming).

Joe Gardner presenting on Call of Duty 3,
which focuses on the Invasion of Normand.

The class has also benefited greatly from St. Bonaventure University's new eSports Club, the officers of which generously invited us to use their gaming room. Without this offer, teaching games like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Battlefield I, and Call of Duty: WWII, would have been impossible.

Joe Gardner, Connor O'Keefe, and Brendan Fischer playing Battlefield I, which follows the stories of WWI soldiers across Europe. Those chairs in the eSport Club gaming room are amazing.    

History through Gaming students playing Battlefield V, which takes place during WWII. Battlefield V has had its share of
controversy over historical accuracy and including women in combat roles. 

Logan presented on Oregon Trail, one of the first historically-themed games used to teach history. He even played through the game although the pace at which he played ensured that everyone rapidly died. 

Luke presented on Assassin's Creed: Origins, which takes place during the Ptolemy Dynasty in Egypt. This game has a tourist mode where players can visit sites in Egypt and learn about them.  

Noah presented on his favorite subject, Ancient Rome, with the game Ryse: Son of Rome. 

 

History 206: Introduction to Public History

MWF 11:30 to 12:20 -- Dr. Phillip Payne

Like the Civil War?  Like to get your hands dirty?  Thinking about a career in museums, archives, or an education-related field?  History 206 is the class for you!

What is public history?  It’s history all around us.  It’s about how people create, experience, and use history.  It’s on the web, in museums, in archives, in parks and all sort of places.

How will we do it?  Students in the Public History class actively create.  You will convert research into games, among other things.  Along the way, students learn:

• Original Research
• Presentation for the public
• Gamification
• Design Principles   

Connecting the dots between liberal arts and careers

It may be to the outsider that some of the things on appearing on the blog don't add up - what's up with a history department and GIS, THATCamp, Escape Rooms, Game Design, and other stuff.  Yes, we still teach history. Students read books and write papers.  That's not going away.  In fact, the bulk of what we do falls into those categories.  The ability to deeply read a text, write a clear paper, and use content knowledge to place events in context has never been more important.

However, we're also adding some spice to how things have been done in a history class.  Some of it, frankly, is experimentation with the goal of having fun.  Why not?  Fun is a powerful thing when it comes to learning.

 But as you can tell from other postings, we're giving serious thought to the relationship between the liberal arts and careers.  For starters, reading, writing, and content are important for life and work, but we also live in an age when things are changing rapidly and much of that change is driven by technology and data.  For those of you who graduated pre-internet, think about how much our work, entertainment, and lives have changed.  Frankly, there are now many careers that didn't exist 20 years ago and who knows what will exist 20 years from now.

There is a lot being written about this topic.  We're urged to "adapt and survive" and to "race with the machine."

Fair enough.  How?

This brings us back to the innovations we've been introducing to history classes.  There is one word you need on your resume today, and that is digital and so you see our work in digital history.  This is why we're working in GIS, website creation, podcast, and such.  Students should have digital on their resumes in a concrete and professional way.

We're also giving some serious thought to how design fits into this - hence the game design and gamification.

We've been working with Bill Bechdel of XPhobia and Jennifer Pulver of SBU's events office to create an escape room summer camp.  Don't know what an escape room is?  Check out the Olean Times Herald story on Bill's room.  According to Bill, “It’s like stepping into a movie — you’re a part of the action,” he said. “My idea is to bring as much immersion to this as possible.”  For participants, it is an authentic, immersive experience.  

For educators, it's a chance to blend content with design in the curriculum.  It's a chance for educators and students alike to learn.  The next step is to take the ideas we develop with the escape room camp and bring them into classes.  That, it seems, is the key to adapting - and having fun.

Careers and the History Major

Paul Sturtevant's article for the American Historical Association, "History is Not a Useless Major:  Fighting Myths with Data," offers up some data from the American Community Survey on the fate of history majors as they pursue careers.  We've long known that most history majors don't go on to become professional historians, but that doesn't mean they don't pursue careers.

Check out one of my favorite points from the article, screenshot ⇩ Turns out history majors get jobs.

However, we're not oblivious to the concerns who fear that studying history.  We're incorporating digital and design projects into our classes, especially the digital and public history classes, to help students learn 21st-century skills and articulate the skills and knowledge they develop in our classes.

Turns out nearly half of history majors go on to graduate school ⟱ and many go on to work in education, law, and business.

Public History Game Design is back for the Fall

Is it fun?  Are games fun?  What is fun?  Should we play?  Here are some thoughts...

Next fall we will be doing the game design assignment again in History 206:  Introduction to Public History.  Prepping for that Dennis Frank send us a link to a collection of Ted Talks on Board Game Geek about board games.

While we're at it, let's check out video games in the classroom with Classroom Game Design.

Gamification and the Civil War's 154th Regiment

Game Design Summer Camp

Gaming 

Let’s learn how to design and build a game!

Like games? Like playing games? In this camp, we’ll explore the principles of game design focusing on board games.

Games are all around us. The rise of computers and the internet has led to an explosion in gaming – obviously video and mobile games but also board games. It turns out gamers and the internet go together. Not only do we play games, but we use games to advertise, to get in shape, to learn, and the list goes on. The use of games for other purposes is called gamification.

Together we will answer these questions. What makes a game? What makes a game good? Fun? Interesting? Marketable?

• Instructor: Dr. Phillip Payne (Professor of History)
• Eligibility: Ages 10 and above (pre-college students). Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until all spaces are filled.
• Location: TBA, on the SBU campus.

Public History Class calls it a wrap

Thursday was the last Public History class.  Since we have stressed iterative design all semester, it seemed appropriate for the students to give us feedback on the class and the new assignment.  We got some good insights for future tweaks.  All in all, the class was a learning experience for students and instructors alike... and it will be better next time.

Pictured are the brave students who stuck the class out along with their games.  I am genuinely impressed with the work and creativity they put into the class and the games.  They created a variety of games exploring different aspects of the war.  They recreated the Battle of Gettysburg, home life, railroads, the march through Georgia.

Eddie Keen

Overview of Eddie's game

Overview of Jeremiah's game

Overview of Ben's game

Overview of Mike's game

Alicia Henning

Ben Barnhart

Dan Leopold

Jeremiah Horrigan

Mike Wesolowski

Political Zingers

On December 8 Larry Raymond spoke with the Public History class about his game, Political Zingers.  Political Zingers fits into the theme of game design, because, according to the game's web page, "With Zingers!, talking politics with your friends is fun and you won’t ruin the evening.    You put words into the mouths of politicians and pundits, telling the truth as you see it through a cartoon vocabulary.  You  can speak your mind, get a laugh and not offend anyone."  The games ability to get people (translation students) to discuss potentially difficult topics has real educational applications.  Students in the class have a variety of political opinions and levels of engagement, but they all enjoyed the game.  The game moved quickly, provoking both discussion and laughs.  Larry also discussed how the game related to his long and varied career including his fascinating work with metaphor mapping in the corporate world and the United Nations.

Meeples Visit Public History - More Games Designed

The Public History class continues to explore the intersection of game design, historical content, and education.  Our second round of game design included not just game mechanics, but the games had to illustrate or incorporate a real-world theme.   

The students came up with two games.  Black Gold is a resource management and territory occupation game with an eurogame feel that used the theme of competing oil companies.

The other team built a game to explain the college experience.  Players had to advance through four years of college.  Here is a classic example of taking a theme and then finding the mechanics.  Both games worked in play testing today.

Plus, we now have meeples in the class!

Our next challenge is incorporating the Civil War themes from the 154th into a game and we're looking taking the first steps toward seeing how this plays out in the digital world with Gameblox and Minecraft.

First Round of Game Design Complete

Our teams of students (seen in action above) have completed the first round of game design.  The two teams built some interesting card games.  As part of this mad scientist approach to public history, we're next discussing the hows and whys of education outside of the traditional classroom and school - museum education and its many, many relatives.  How do we, as students and educators, make history, in our case the specific case study of the NY 154 in the Civil War, accessible, understandable, and exciting?

They Built a Game

First Game (Viking Funeral) in Public History Class

Yesterday public history students warmed up for designing their first game by playing Viking Funeral, a card game by designer Rob Daviau.  We've been using Daviau's interview on Edx and Game Designer Round Table in class.

This gave us a nice way to discuss game mechanics and, perhaps more importantly, to begin thinking and talking about how we can use them in an educational context and apply them to our work with the Civil War.  Plus, we had fun (or at least as much fun as we can have in a class).  Thursday the students pitch their ideas for a card game.

Anticipating Tuesday Game Jam

So.... materials have begun to arrive for the first Game Jam in History 206.  We spent last week talking about museum planning.  We've had some preliminary review of game mechanics.   We've bought some assorted widgets to make games with.  Tuesday, we start building.  Active learning, here we come.

Public History Week One

Students in History 206:  Introduction to Public History started the semester reading about Information Architecture and listened to a Game Design Round Table podcast on collaboration.  Now it was time to put theory into practice by doing a card sorting exercise.

We gave them note cards that I had labeled and shuffled.  The two teams then had to organize the mess. One of the challenges was reading my hand writing.

One group decided that they needed more space.  Next week we start looking at how these concepts apply to museum planning.

Minecraft in the Classroom & ComputerCraftEdu

The blog has been pretty quite this summer, mostly because it is summer.  In some ways its downtime and in other ways it is time to do the the behind the scenes stuff that makes a university work.  I just finished with page proofs - important but not very interesting to anyone but me and my publisher.  I'm also planning for the fall.  As many know, I've been looking for ways spruce up the Public History class; to that end I've been looking at Minecraft.  This isn't as crazy as it sounds.  Minecraft has launched an educational arm and is showing up in the K-12 system.  Check out "Using Minecraft as a Learning Tool" for more on that.  The video is from the Minecraftedu YouTube channel.  I also need to thank various people who have been sending me articles about this.  Pretty cool.

Leah Brownstein at 2015 Arts & Sciences Exposition

As noted elsewhere on this blog, Leah Brownstein has been working on an independent study on Game Design, Gamification, and History with Phillip Payne and Dennis Frank. Thursday Leah presented her work at the The Arts and Sciences Student Research and Creative Endeavors Exposition. The independent study gave Leah the unique opportunity to help us plan our game design assignment for History 206: Introduction to Public History offered next fall. Games and gamification is exploding in education so we're looking forward to using it the public history class. Leah's insight as a graduating history major proved extremely valuable in the planning process.

Leah at Expo

Friday Afternoon Gaming

 As mentioned in previous posts, the History Department and History Club hosted a game event as part of Leah's independent study on game design and gamification in history.  We had a good turnout, as you can see in the pictures, as folks played a variety of games including traditional winner-take-all games like Risk and cooperative games like Flash Point,  Ticket to Ride proved popular although, sadly, there were no takers for Settlers of Catan.  We'll have to fix that in the future.  We also broke out a micro game and a Civil War themed combat game.  While this was part of an academic event, perhaps more importantly lots of people had lots of fun with some pizza.

Game On

Join us March 20 in the basement of Friedsam Library where we'll be playing board and/or tabletop games starting at 2:30.  Since  we're going to be playing board games, it wouldn't be a complete experience without ordering pizza.  So stop by, role some dice and eat a slice.  This is a relaxed event, so if you can't be there at 2:30 that's okay.  We'll have a several games going so folks can hop in or head out as need be.

Why are we doing this?

This semester Leah Brownstein, Dennis Frank, and I have been exploring the academic side of games and how games can be applied in the classroom and history.  We're planning how students enrolled in History 206:  Intro to Public History (Fall 2015) can build games themed around the collection of the New York 154th Regiment.

There is a long history (get it?) of historically themed games.  Oregon Trail anyone?  Of course, video games have exploded and with that the historical trend has continued.  Assassin's Creed?  In recent years board games have made a comeback (more fun to play as a group in person?).  Gamification has also emerged out of primarily video games, which is using game elements for non-game purposes.  Even if you haven't heard of gamification you have seen it, almost anytime you get on the web and see a leader board, badge, patch, or similar thing.  LinkedInn has them.  Obviously, Facebook not only uses gamification but also has a lot of games available.  What I haven't figured out is how Angry Birds relates to history.  Yet.