Unorthodox Professors: WWI in videogames and on YouTube
Jordan Crocker - University of Victoria
1. Background
- Videogames are becoming
increasingly popular in today’s world.
- 77% of men and 57% of women
between 18 - 29 have played
videogames.
- Historical videogames dominate the
market. Battlefield 1 contributed to
EA’s 7.4% increase in revenues for
the third quarter of 2016 and Call of
Duty had its beginnings in the
historical videogame market,
depicting WWII.
- YouTube boasts over a billion users
and reaches more 18 - 34 and 18 - 49
year old audiences than any cable
network in the United States.
2. Videogames
3. YouTube
4. Conclusion
- Battlefield 1 has a destruction system, where the landscape
changes and craters are left. Trenches are often not in the game
and the weapons used (the tanks, rifles, etc.) are generally too
modern.
- Victoria II does not depict actual combat. Instead, this game
allows you to play any nation in 1836 and guide it until 1936.
WWI can come about through an international crisis and this
game also forces you to research technology and become a
great power.
- Crash Course World History is a YouTube series which examines the
past and makes it relatable to the average audience. Its series on WWI
goes over the causes of the war, but does not place blame on any one
nation or leader, unlike many academic articles.
- History Respawned attempts to reconcile videogames and history, while
being a series on YouTube.
- The Great War is a series which goes through WWI week by week and
also uploads in-depth videos about nations, leaders and technology.
- Videogames and YouTube are great ways for students and the average learner to gain an
awareness of WWI. Given the relative lack of attention this war has received (as compared to
WWII), these mediums serve as a positive. However, we must be careful with the inaccuracies
that can occur as a result of these mediums. Videogames and YouTube are entertainment, after
all, and lack the in-depth analysis that a historian could provide when interpreting the past.
- As a result: historians should seek to become more involved as editors and consultants on
videogame and YouTube projects so we can ensure accuracy, while also acknowledging when
people need to have fun with history.
5. References
Aldrich, Chris. Learning by Doing: A Comprehensive Guide to Simulations, Computer Games, and Pedagogy in e-Learning and
Other Educational Experiences. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2005.
Black, Jeremy. The Great War and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Continuum, 2011.
Brose, Erin Dorn. A History of the Great War: World War One and the International Crisis of the Early Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Chapman, Adam. “Privileging Form Over Content: Analysing Historical Videogames.” Journal of Digital Humanities 1,2 (Spring 2012): n.p. Journal of Digital Humanities.
Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. New York: Harper Perennial, 2012.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Movie or Monograph? A Historian/Filmmaker’s Perspective.” The Public Historian 25, 3 (Summer 2003): 45-48. JSTOR.
De Groot, Jerome. Consuming History: Historians and heritage in contemporary popular culture. London: Routledge, 2009. Duggan, Maeve. “Gaming and Gamers.” Pew Research Center (December 15, 2015).
http://www/pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/gaming-and-gamers/. EA Games. Battlefield 1 (October 21, 2016).
Egenfeld-Nelson, Scott. “Beyond Entertainment: Exploring the Educational Potential of Computer Games.” Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2005. http://egenfeldt.eu/papers/third_generation_JEM_egenfeld-nielsen.pdf.
Hirumi, Atsusi. Playing Games in School: Video Games and Simulations for Primary and Secondary Education. Washington, D.C: International Society for Technology in Education, 2010.
Kempshall, Chris. The First World War in Computer Games. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/book/10.1057/9781137491763.
Paradox Entertainment. Victoria II (August 13, 2010).
Rosenstone, Robert. History on Film / Film on History. 2nd edition. New York: Pearson, 2012.
Tharakan, Anya George. “EA profit, revenue top estimates on strong ‘Battlefield 1’ sales.” Reuters. January 31, 2017. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-electronic-arts-results-idUSKBN15F2LQ.
Whitaker, Robert. “Backward Compatible: Gamers as a Public History Audience.” Perspectives on History (January 2016): n.p. Perspectives on History.
YouTube. Crash Course World History. YouTube. The Great War.
YouTube. History Respawned.
YouTube. “Statistics.” https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html. Images
The Rock of the Marne, Wikimedia Commons,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Rock_of_the_Marne._DA_Poster_21-42.jpg, Creative Commons
Battlefield 1, Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/bagogames/26768623172, Creative Commons
YouTube logo, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Youtube-logo-red.png, Creative Commons
