Interesting talks

Tutoring and corrections got the better of me, but here is nonetheless some writeups of talks within the CTP 2015 conference. These are the ones that have particularly stood by me in regards to influencing research direction and also provided food for thought for the last two months (time does fly when you're correcting work).

More Than Decoration: Exploring History Through Game Mechanics 

Josh Unsworthy

Josh Unsworthy gave a great presentation that looked into game mechanics informing the diegetic (narrative) history of videogames. In the same way that Rowan Tulloch (and man do I cite that guy a lot) talks about how the use of game objectives reinforce the narrative of Bioshock (Would you kindly...) Unsworthy argues for a greater use of historical resources in order to inform gameplay.

Although Unsworthy doesn't point to a particular scholar to cement these ideas together, his points echo my own concerns regarding storytelling within videogames, gameplay should be able to influence narrative. Unsworthy does one better and runs with this idea of gameplay reinforcing history, but furthermore that it should get away from military and nation building (Total War), and look to other alternatives (Valiant Hearts was nearly discussed to death during questions, and then again the next day when there was a panel on it - however it has good alternative gameplay mechanics).

I liked the presentations as well as the scope of games that Unsworthy looked at, so I'm very interested to see where the final product takes him. Hopefully there will be a few more alternative solutions to the violent gameplay mechanics and a few more civic tasks that are capable of changing perspectives on what history is within games (more than a backdrop). Maybe they'll start influencing the direction of stories? One can hope.

The Great Divide: Differing Expectations of Accuracy and Authenticity in Heritage Video-Games

Tara Copplestone

Tara Copplestone presented an interesting talk detailing the expectations of three different groups: developers, historians and gamers, in relation to depictions of history within videogames. In this numerous questions were asked regarding the authenticity and accuracy of history in videogames through their application, implications, and differences (or improvements). In anycase it was something I was interested to hear as it was quantifiable research (152 surveys), and for two it provided a good overview of what each group expected from the medium (a lot of people including myself at the conference presupposed a 'good student' mentality on the part of players).

Copplestone's findings were that expectations and concerns of each group were not shared by the others, as such what was made clear as a result of this research that there was a lack of communication evident between all three groups. For a more detailed analysis you can look to a blog which Copplestone's put up.

There's a lot more to go in here regarding the concerns and worries of each individual group, however a large portion of that is simply interpreting Copplestone's data rather than looking through her findings. What I liked about the presentation was that it didn't simply present the data and say "do with it what you will," but offered a good analysis of what the data meant, and looked for ways to solve this divide between different stakeholders in historical mediums. Something which I'd like to think I was also trying to do with my idea of applying references withing videogames, although not communication in an active way (not a lot of web 2.0 to and fro action occurring) it's at the very least being transparent about historical sources.


Will do more in time/have a lengthy post quicksmart (tutorials finished this week).