Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History

ISBN 10: 1623567289 / ISBN 13: 9781623567286

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2013

About this Item

Befriedigend/Good: Durchschnittlich erhaltenes Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren, aber vollständigen Seiten. / Describes the average WORN book or dust jacket that has all the pages present.

Seller Inventory # M01623567289-G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1623567289
• ISBN 13: 9781623567286
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship, yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area of digital game play -- the representation of history. The collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past, and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about constructing the present or imagining a future.

What can World War Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games - which represent history or historical change - alter the way we, today, understand history itself.

About the Author

Andrew B.R. Elliott is an independent scholar and has published a range of articles and essays on historical film, television and video games from the classical world to the present. He is the author of Remaking the Middle Ages (2010), which analyses medieval cinema, and he is the editor of Playing with the Past (2013; co-edited with Matthew Wilhelm Kapell), which examines the depiction of the past in video games, and The Return of the Epic Film (2014), which examines the return of the sword and sandals epic in the cinema. His latest book, Medievalism, Politics, and Mass Media (2017), explores the uses of the past in social media and mainstream news reporting.