Counterfactual Communities

Strategy Games, Paratexts and the Player's Experience of History

Bibliographic Data

ID3007228
AuthorsThomas Apperley (0000-0002-6390-6593, Deakin University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume4
Issue1
Publication date2018-03-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOpen Library of Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2056-6700 • E-ISSN: 2056-6700
PublisherOpen Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.16995/olh.286
OpenAlexW2793752343
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited11

The genre of history strategy games is a crucial area of study because of what is at stake in the representation of controversial aspects of history in popular culture. Previous work has pointed to various affordances and constraints in the representation of history, based on the framing of the game interface, the alignment of goals with certain strategies and textual criticism of the contents of the games. In contrast, this article examines these games from the perspective of the player’s experience of play in relation to a wider gaming community. It is in these counterfactual communities that players negotiate their individual experience with their knowledge of the history that is presented in the games that they play, indicating that the relationship between digital games, players and history is highly contextual. The relevant practices of players of history strategy games are illustrated with examples from the official and unofficial communities of the Paradox Interactive games Europa Universalis II and Victoria: Empire Under the Sun . The shared paratexts demonstrate how positions are negotiated in relation to the ‘official’ version of history presented in the games. These negotiations are made tangible through the production and sharing of paratexts that remix the official history of the games to include other perspectives developed through counterfactual imaginations. These findings indicate the importance of including perspectives from gaming communities to support other forms of analysis in order to make rigorous observations about the impact of digital games on popular history

Advertising · Affordance · Counterfactual thinking · Media studies · Negotiation · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Educational Games and Gamification · History · Literacy, Media, and Education · Psychology · Social Psychology

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