History skills for game developers

Zoya Street @rupazero

I want to help you to:

● Rethink how games relate to history● Use historical thinking in game design● Navigate resources to find untold histories● Avoid common pitfalls

Who am I?

Business● Deputy editor at

Gamesbrief, business resource

● Production and consumption in history

Criticism● Hyper, Comics and

Gaming, Memory Insufficient etc.

● Historically informed criticism of games

zoyastreet.com

Stuff I make

Dreamcast WorldsHistory of the Sega Dreamcast told through close readings of games and documentary history

Stuff I make

rupazero.com

Missed opportunities

Or, getting history wrong

Missed opportunities

“Certainly there are both heroes and villains of all colors throughout American history, but this norm of setting games in time periods where white heroes are the only “realistic” choice is an industry-wide filtering that once again privileges whiteness.”

Sidney Fussell, Can Videogames Teach Us About

Race?Memory Insufficient, Issue 10

Missed opportunities

1849, a historical simulation about the California gold rush“There were only 10% women”“We didn’t want to deal with racial issues”

Missed opportunities

“We actually never thought, ‘could this be a woman?’ …from the pirate perspective, there were a few famous women pirates. But it wasn’t common. So we didn’t want that element to be a detail people got stuck on.”

Ashraf Ismail, Assassin’s Creed IV director,

interviewed in IGN

Missed opportunities

“Look at its win states and where it places value. Military Conquest, technological superiority… you don’t win by eliminating hunger or poverty… you get it for very American goals”

Errant Signal (4.57)

Missed opportunities

“Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, are enamored with the universal progress viewpoint probably because it means that they’re winning the footrace. Civilization reinforces this viewpoint.”

Rowan Kaiser

Missed opportunities

‘I gave an in person demo of Escape Goat 1 to a Valve employee at GDC in 2012. When the first screen loaded, he turned to me and said “Just so you're aware, I dislike games that are trying to look like NES games.”’

Ian Stocker

Interesting uses of history

Or, getting history right

Interesting uses of history

Fez doesn’t just pay homage to the games of the past; it imagines what those game-worlds are like for the people who live inside them.

Interesting uses of history

In LA Noire, people are suffering from the effects of war on American culture: trauma, drugs, violence.

Interesting uses of history

Papo y Yo tells a personal history of gaming as an escape from abuse. The link to gaming as escapism is made more explicit in the trailer.

Watch here

Interesting uses of history

Papers, Please humanises the infrastructure of oppression. Is it just about the Eastern Bloc?

Interesting uses of history

Dog Eat Dog is a tabletop RPG where players act out the asymmetrical relationship between colonisers and natives.

Getting to grips with history

Resources

Museums and archives IRL

● When you go to museums for research, go beyond the exhibitions: contact curators, visit archives.

● There are lots of stories that are difficult to tell in an exhibition, but might be perfect to tell in a game.

Museums and archives online

collections.vam.ac.uksi.edu/collectionsfieldmuseum.org/explore/our-collectionsrijksmuseum.nl/en/explore-the-collection...and lots more

Lots of images as well as links to research

Historical critical writing

memoryinsufficient.rupazero.complaythepast.orgcritical-distance.com...and lots more

Read critical writing on how games have dealt with similar histories already.

Arguments on the internet

● Observe arguments without wading in● What’s at stake here?● e.g. why does it matter how we define

“game”?● How do different people end up with very

different perspectives?● History is intensely personal

Email relevant people

Ask open-ended questions after getting pretty familiar with their work.● “Why does ~ continue to be contested?”● “Has ~ changed since you wrote your book?”● “What do people consistently misunderstand

about your work?”

Getting to grips with history

Questions to ask yourself

Questions to ask yourself

● What are my assumptions?● How are they affected by my history?● Who wrote the dominant narrative?● What systemic problems are revealed by this

historical source?● Who was gaming the system and how?

Gamelike (systemic?) histories

19C Japanese used games to reverse social hierarchies.19C British used games to reinforce them.

Gamelike (systemic?) histories

“I’m excited by the possibility of a new age of game design, an end to the dominant era of object collision. We may not be able to palpably experience jealousy through crashing pixels. We may not be able to sense what it it was like for Read to pass as a male pirate through a conversation wheel.”

Samantha Allen

Gamelike (systemic?) histories

“Power is a type of play; it’s as creative as it is limiting. We are formed by the rules social systems set for us, but we aren’t fatalist automatons. We are messy and shape each other.”

Mattie Brice

What are your assumptions?

Turn retro on its head