I read a really fun post over at Gamesradar entitled, “The Top 7 Historical Figures Defamed by Video Games.” Most of the references were obscure or really bizzare. A lot were Asian warlords. Go ahead and check it out. It got me thinking about the time I wasted playing the game Caesar in Elementary School. I have a feeling this was a really key moment for me in starting to like Ancient History.
I was brought onto this game after I had mastered Sim City. I had created the ultimate city and was now ready for a new challenge. Let’s create a city in Ancient Rome. I had a blast. I wasted countless hours developing the ultimate city state. With a little help from some online gaming websites I had figured out the perfect formula.
Soon I branched out to other games like Sid Meier’s Civilization. I am currently working with Rob Cloutier, a 3d designer who worked on the game. Please visit his website www.3dhistory.com to see some of his work. He’s very talented. Civilization took the history angle to a new level. Now I was starting multiple cities and managing entire military campaigns. Beneath the framework of fun, a lot of educational building blocks came into place. You had to elevate from the stone age to the bronze age, by discovering certain aspects of science. You could only progress in your building by collecting more natural resources. Pretty tremendous all around.
Eventually you can find a way to reshape a lot of the historical landscape. I actually conquered the planet Earth with the United States. It was pretty awesome. USA! USA! USA!
Shawn Graham at Electric Archaeology has taken this to a new level. Many of these games allow for modification of your own campaigns. Shawn has added campaigns to Civilization IV and Caesar IV and began using them as teaching tools for his students. He believes that he can edit parameters of the game to help teach his students different aspects of Roman History.
“I want to use Caesar IV as a simulation to explore Roman economics. The idea is, I’ll get my students to play this scenario, and in playing it, it highlight/contrast game mechanics with the current understanding of how the Roman economy works (if you think modern economic thought is dry, you ain’t seen nuthin’ till you’ve read the ancient version… gaming economics ought to be way more fun for my students!)”
As great as it is to use Video Games to teach history, it is also fun to just ride around cause havoc. My friend Doyle just bought Red Dead Redemption. The game is Grand Theft Auto set in the Wild West. I played for about 10 minutes and was immediately hooked. Correlating with all 3d history, video games give us not only a chance to see the past, but to interact with it. Due to the lowering attention span of our youth and the increasing amount of technology in schools, I would not be surprised to see video games being used as a teaching tool 10 years from now. Educational games are already out there, let’s just bridge the gap.
All of this has gotten me wanting to play some games. I am going to dust off my copy of Age of Empires!
