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poperamone

Using Games as a documentary medium

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Hi Thumbers, 

 

I was wondering if I could pick your collective brains...

 

I am currently studying for a MA in games design in the UK and am trying to do some research for my dissertation.

 

I am looking into how games can be used to  tell a true story or as a documentary. 

 

For instance the cat and the coup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_and_the_Coup

 

has any one stumbled across any other examples of documentary games I could use as research?

 

 

Thanks guys

 

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My guess is this is going to be a rare occurrence (aside from online flash games made in a few hours spoofing this or that political event) if only due to sensitivity over the treatment of subject matter. Seeing as games are an interactive medium, it's difficult to claim authenticity of documentation when the player can jump on top of a table or walk into a wall while Important Events are happening. Though the example you cite is a sound one and there are surely others.

 

The early Call of Duty's recreated historical battles such as Normandy. Though admittedly a super Hollywood-ized version. I guess the simulation genre of games (flight in particular) cover a lot of historical wars and battles.

 

I do think an alternate area of study could also be in games that simulate real life systems - rather than events - that still have historical relevance. Papers, Please! in terms of national borders and anti-terrorism and Prison Architect in terms of prison management and ethics spring immediately to mind.

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But that's a good example of the problem I'm talking about. Lots of games, especially world building and top-down strategy use historical figures as pawns but necessarily fictionalize the events that play out to account for player agency. (or just make up a crazy sci fi narrative for the hell of it like in asscreed) Nothing wrong with that at all but not exactly what OP is asking for I think.

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Battle of the bulge has some really nice history lessons built in. Each Day in game time you can read about the actual events if the day, why your tanks can't move and what was incoming as reinforcements. I have little interest I history but i really enjoyed looking at these.

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There was that Twin Towers game/mod/thing that was controversial but serious, right? You basically had the choice to die in the fire or jump out of the window iirc.

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There was that Twin Towers game/mod/thing that was controversial but serious, right? You basically had the choice to die in the fire or jump out of the window iirc.

what is that? sounds horrible !

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i've been seriously racking my brain and the best i can come up with is Pete Sampras Tennis

 

actually yeah, joking aside Sports games.

 

There was this F1 game on the N64 which had historical challenges which would recreate and stick you in the middle of a race as (for example) Damon Hill with a damaged gear box and you had to finish the race in the same position as Damon Did. perfectly recreating history. BOOM suck it i win

 

edit

 

Noyb wins :getmecoat

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Autobiographical games:

Anna Anthropy's dys4ia and Aegis Wing

Mainichi

Conversations With My Mother

All the Pleading Emoticons

Depression Quest

There Ought to be a Word

scarfmemory

My First Kiss EXP

Nineteen

Kim's Story

December 2012

 

History/politics games:

Games about the Italian Election

Richard Hofmeier's Secret Agent 47% and the other Play the Year 2012 games

Avant-Garde

Most of Molleindustria's work

Double Tap

Gametrekking

Fate of the World

 

Real time newsgames:

Game-O-Matic - academic attempt to procedurally generate newsgames based on simple relationships provided by the user

Games By Angelina - a few attempts to create newsgames by parsing articles for key words and images to shoehorn into a generic platformer engine

 

UI:

18 Cadence - fictional to my knowledge, but a fascinating interface for exploring/collating history

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Dot Gobbler?

 

Assassins creed has always used real historical characters :/

 

does 

Dot Gobbler?

 

tell the story of Obama inauguration?

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Autobiographical games:

Anna Anthropy's dys4ia and Aegis Wing

Mainichi

Conversations With My Mother

All the Pleading Emoticons

Depression Quest

There Ought to be a Word

scarfmemory

My First Kiss EXP

Nineteen

Kim's Story

December 2012

 

History/politics games:

Games about the Italian Election

Richard Hofmeier's Secret Agent 47% and the other Play the Year 2012 games

Avant-Garde

Most of Molleindustria's work

Double Tap

Gametrekking

Fate of the World

 

Real time newsgames:

Game-O-Matic - academic attempt to procedurally generate newsgames based on simple relationships provided by the user

Games By Angelina - a few attempts to create newsgames by parsing articles for key words and images to shoehorn into a generic platformer engine

 

UI:

18 Cadence - fictional to my knowledge, but a fascinating interface for exploring/collating history

 

 

Thanks Dude. don't suppose you fancy knocking up 10,000 words on the topic by novemeber for me too?? 

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fuck me that game was amazing

 

you should write your dissertation on fucking robocop vs fucking terminator fuck, this is video games

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From one point of view, Papa y Yo was about a true story.

 

Also, the History Channel has made a series of games. Not sure exactly how historical they really are, but they might be worth looking into.

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There are a lot of historical board games. 1960: Race for the President is about the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon presidential race. There is a deck of cards; each card is an event that took place during that campaign with an accompanying line of text and picture. Here's an example: 

 

eAIae2l.jpg

 

Twilight Struggle is basically the same game, but set in the Cold War. It too has event cards. There are actually a ton of these card-driven historical board games that are really fun and are interesting ways of exploring history. 

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The upcoming game Meriwether (about the Lewis and Clark expedition) comes to mind...more history than documentary, though. I can't think of anything that has the same sort of incorporation of true-to-life characters in a modern setting, at this moment. MORE'S THE PITY.

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At the IF Demo Fair at PAX East 2011, Sarah Morayati was demoing some sort of text-adventure-as-journalism thing that was kind of interesting (it basically tried to recreate a real place and let you explore it and learn about its history). I don't remember many details or know what it was called or if it's online anywhere, but you could probably ask her about it.

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