In this week’s bulletin, we discuss projects which play with the past, theme parks with ‘historical’ narratives, Age of Empires II, Minecraft Sustainability, King Arthur: A Knight’s Tale, Imperator: Rome 2.0, Bucket of Bolts, VALUE in de Volkskrant, Mass Effect’s data corruption, Valheim and a call of papers by NASTA!
This article is the first in a series of deep dives into alternative historical depictions of Africa and Colonialism in video games, primarily games by Paradox Interactive. In many popular Hearts of Iron IV mods, Germany controls large swathes of Africa as colonies. How would this colonial entity operate, and could it even exist the way it does in those mods?
We asked Liam McLeod to write a review of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for us. He’s one of our beacons when it comes to medieval England, so he’s bound to have some good opinions on the game. Liam mainly discusses the landscape and the larger narrative, so no worries about (big) spoilers!
In this week’s bulletin, we discuss Mars Horizon, Hades and masculinity, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Shao Jun, Charles Games’ Engine, an interview with Mohawk Games, new Civ VI DLC, a free GDC Showcase, Epic moving to films and our In Depth & Stratigraph of this week!
“What-if” history tends to get a bad reputation in the world of academia for being imprecise and subjective, yet the process behind making alternative history models for video game scenarios can be as complex as any proper research. How does alternative history benefit the gaming experience and how are these scenarios made?
Last week (15th of January), Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary. Those who watch some of our streams know that Wikipedia holds a special place in these play sessions, as we often need to look things up in the online encyclopedia (Wiki-crutch). Because of all that it’s done for us and you, here’s an ode to Wikipedia!