History Through Gaming

Throughout the past semester in our History Through Gaming class we have played many different games. From construction management and civilization builder games like Civ V and Tropico V, to first-person shooters like Call of Duty: WW2, and a stealth game like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. My liking for the games usually increased as the games went on. There are a few reasons for this, one being the fact that I enjoyed how the games were set up. In the first couple of games (Civ V and Age of Empires 2) I really could not stand the graphics and the gameplay. To me, Civ V was such a boring game, it just did not really draw me in. As the games went on, I really appreciated them. I especially enjoyed Tropico V and Call of Duty: WW2. Mainly because the graphics were much better and the main idea of the games were more up my ally. I also certainly enjoyed how Call of Duty: WW2 was on a console not on a PC. I also enjoyed the individual presentation that I did. I presented on Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and it really helped me to better understand the way of life for Ancient Egypt. I enjoyed this aspect of the class because it really brought me out of my comfort zone and forced me to play the game. A few things that I really enjoyed in this class were the different types of games that we played in order to teach different eras of history. I also enjoyed the blogs because it forced me to really play the games, which helped me learn. One thing I did not like was the group presentation, I did not really like our idea for our game, but that’s more of a personal level, not on the class. Overall, this class taught me a lot about history in a different way, which I very much appreciate.

Graphics for Civ V: Not very good, a little blurry
Graphics for Call of Duty: WW2, graphics are much better

Call of Duty: World War 2

For the past two weeks I have been playing Call of Duty: World War 2 in my History Through Gaming Class. This game is my favorite game, and unlike all of the other games that we played in this class, I owned the game before enrolling in the class. The game is centered around World War 2 in which you play on the side of the Allied Powers against the Axis Powers. The Allied powers consisted of Great Britain, France, Soviet Union, the United States, and China, whereas the Axis powers consisted of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The game has three different modes: campaign, zombies, and multiplayer. In the campaign you travel the European Theater as a soldier on the Allied Powers and fight against the Axis Powers. The campaign mode is the most historically accurate. The campaign had guns that actually existed, like the M1 Gerald and FG 42, battles that actually existed, like the Battle at the Bulge and the Battle of Kasserine Pass, and people that actually existed, like Robert Zussman and Ronald “Red” Daniels. Zombies is not very historically accurate, let’s face it, they are zombies. The only thing that is historically accurate is the guns, which are the same as they are in the campaign. The multiplayer mode isn’t very historically accurate either, besides the guns. The places you play are not real, and of course none of the battles actually happened. The campaign mode follows Red Daniels as he leads the 1st Infantry Division in many battles against the Axis Powers. You are mainly fighting the German army the whole time due to them having concentration camps, you are trying to help end the camps. At the conclusion of World War 2, it became very evident that there was a, “…rise of the United States to a world power (and) the eclipse of Western Europe as an undisputed center…” (McNeill, 794). The game did a great job of showing the rise of America and the fall of Western Europe (mainly Germany). As a patriotic person, this game was great because I love to see it when America prospers. If I was to analyze this game as a psychologist, I would say that this game would be a very good game to teach young people who want to go into the military that there are some real dangers. As a psychologist, it is important to show people what they are getting into, or it could cause them some serious psychological harm. Like I said, this was my favorite game by far, and I think that the makers did an excellent job at creating this game to make it not only very interesting and fun to play, but also historically accurate.

“Red” Daniels, the Protagonist of Call of Duty: World War 2

McNeill, William Hardy. The Rise of the West: a History of the Human Community: with a Retrospective Essay. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001.

Tropico V

For the past two weeks in our History Through Gaming class we have been playing Tropico V, which is one of my favorite games yet. Tropico V is your typical construction and management game, because the whole time you are building buildings, roads, and transportation, but also managing your economy, troops, and foreign affairs. The game starts off on the campaign mode and I chose to play in the island of Fortuna. You start off by building different buildings like plantations, ranches, and mines. You build these different buildings mainly for one reason, trade with the outside world. From your plantation you can trade things like cocoa or sugar, and you can mine goal to trade. Tropico V illustrates that, “…technology, in turn, entered into a systematic and enormously fruitful relation with theoretical science…” (McNeill 728). Not only could you build things that would help you trade, but you could build things like libraries to help your island develop some smarts. Trade is essential because it keeps you civilians happy, keeps the foreign powers happy, and, of course, gets you money. For the most part you are trading and building and managing your island as you navigate your way through the Colonial Era, World Wars, Cold Wars, and Modern Times. There is a slight problem that you face early in the game. The whole time you have been playing there has been a few nationalists from the country that you are being imperialized from (Great Britain). As a psychology major, it is obvious that you must not let the amount of Great Britain supporters incline, or there will be major problems with your island. That is why as a psychologist, it is essential to focus on your island’s happiness, the happier your people are, the better chance that there will not be any bad situations. Tropico V also did a very good job at illustrating that, “… the non-Western world struggled to adjust local cultural inheritances in all their variety and richness to ideas and techniques originating in the European nineteenth century” (McNeill 730). It was obvious that the island still had very many cultural influences from Great Britain that you as a leader really needed to overcome in order to become a great island. All in all, Tropico V was probably my favorite game, I really enjoyed how it was set on an island, that the graphics were really good, and just the gameplay in general.

This is a port on the island, an essential part in foreign trade.

McNeill, William Hardy. The Rise of the West: a History of the Human Community: with a Retrospective Essay. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001.

Shogun 2: Total War

For the past two weeks in our History Through Gaming class, we have been playing Shogun 2: Total War. This is a strategy based video game set in 16th century Feudal Japan. During this time Japan, “was divided into numerous feudal jurisdictions; and a civil war was endemic.” (McNeill, 645) During the feudal times, every different warlord and section in Japan was fighting with each other. It is part of the larger game: Total War. There are two different parts of the game that you can play, the campaign or the historical battles. I enjoyed the historical battles more, because of the amount of battles you can do, it’s much quicker than a campaign. One of the historical battles that I took part in was the battle of Anegawa. This was a battle across the Anegawa river between two Feudal Japan sections, the Asakura and the Asai. During this battle you get to command your different forces to attack the opponent, and if you’re like me and you like to be in charge and command people under you, this part of the game is a real blast. The other aspect of the game is the campaign mode, which isn’t really my favorite, and in my opinion is harder to get good at. Here you are randomly selected to be a warlord running a section of Japan, I was Kira Masayo in the Hojo clan. In this section of the game, you build your community by training different forces, like archers, focus on economic growth, and advancing your own technology. By far the most important aspect of this part of the game is getting a strong military to fight off any invaders or people you want to conquer. In my opinion, the most important factor of this time period, and of the game, is the use of the military. while playing this game, it is quite obvious that Japan has, “a complex military.” (McNeill, 569) This definitely made it harder for other countries to conquer Japan, but made their civil battles very bloody because both sides were very skilled. The most skilled of their soldiers were the samurai, which were groups of superior skilled professional soldiers. (McNeill, 646) The samurai were a group of elite warriors who made battles in Feudal Japan that much easier or harder, depending on how many you or your opponent had. After all of these Japanese civil wars Japan became peaceful. Being a Psychology major I would apply this to Psychology by saying that someone with a controlling personality would love this game. In order to be successful, you must control your armies a lot, so if you have a controlling personality, you would love this game. Shogun 2: Total War was a very fun game to play, and it really made you think on how to attack your opponents, and based on the readings about Feudal Japan, it was a great representation of what actually happened.

A uni of soldiers from Shogun 2: Total War

McNeill, William Hardy. The Rise of the West: a History of the Human Community: with a Retrospective Essay. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001.

Age of Empires II

For the past few weeks in our history through gaming class we have been playing Age of Empires II. This game is very similar to game we previously played, Civilization V, except that it is based in Europe over the Dark, Feudal, Castle, and Imperial Ages. You start out by building up your “Empire” by building homes, farms, castles, and so forth. In order to be a successful empire, you need to take advantage of the natural resources available near your village. You can explore new lands with a scout, build building and maintain crops with villagers, or protect the town center and attack other empires with your troops. This game has some historical accuracy, it runs through the different ages in time, and has different Empires that were prominent in those ages. Unlike Civilization V, this game goes by pretty quick, it isn’t a turn-based game, which I find much more enjoyable. There were two main aspects in Age of Empires II that you need to focus on in order to be successful, the use of villagers and the utilization of land. Villagers are very important in this game, they harvest the resources (wood, food, gold, stone) and build the buildings. Villagers are able to, “…build anew, utilizing elements…” (McNeill 538). from the land around them. The more you utilize your villagers, the better off your village will be. The other important thing in the game is utilizing your land. “Broad and fertile plains…” (McNeill 539), make a great place to plant crops and crow livestock, making it easy for the village to be fed. But the land was not always fertile, once people, “…replaced forests and swamps, new villages and towns arose; population grew rapidly.” (McNeill 545) As a sociology minor (the study of group behavior), one aspect of this game really sticks out to me. The manipulating of your villagers can make you successful. The more groups work in a positive manor towards a goal, the better that goal will be achieved. I really enjoyed playing this game, in my opinion it is a better version of Civilization V. I also think it portrays the Dark, Feudal, Castle, and Imperial Ages in a correct way and is a good game to be used in a classroom setting.

McNeill, William Hardy. The Rise of the West: a History of the Human Community: with a Retrospective Essay. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001.

Image result for age of empires 2

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

The second game that we played in our History Through Gaming course was Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I really enjoyed this game. I like playing games on a console rather than a computer because of the bigger screen, and the controller fits in my hands better. The game follows the life of Alexios, a Spartan warrior who needs to go around and complete a bunch of tasks in order to become a better warrior, and to find his lost mother. He meets many people like Socrates, a philosopher, Herodotus, a historian, and Leonidas, the legendary Spartan warrior. In regards to the game play, this game was fairly historically accurate. It takes place in the Golden Age of Greece. Greece was a very big part of the world at this point in history, it was, “…primarily responsible fro planting the seeds of civilization in these regions” (McNeill, 233). The part of the game that really caught my eye was the use of the horse. The utilization of the horse, “…gave (them) a new military advantage” (McNeill, 236). In that time, it was expected that if you had a horse, you were a warrior, McNeill writes, “… every man with a mount under him and a bow in his hand became a potential first-line soldier” (236). The game illustrates this idea well because if you want to go anywhere that is far away, you can call your horse and you can make it there much faster than if you were to walk to your desired location. Also, the ability to attack opponents from your horse, either with a bow or spear, draws back to what McNeill said that having a horse gives you a military advantage. As a psychology student, having a horse in ancient Greece would make a lot of sense. It would be mentally exhausting if you were given a task as Alexios and the task requires you to travel a large amount of miles, if you had a horse that would lift any mental burdens you would have from trying to wrap your head around an extremely long journey on foot. Overall, I enjoyed this game very much, and after reading about the use of horses at a historical level, I have a new appreciation for how it was incorporated in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

Sid Meier’s Civilization 5

Throughout the past two weeks I have been playing Sid Meier’s Civilization. This was the first time I have ever played a video game on my computer, and this is the first time I have ever played a game like Civ 5, where the goal is to build your civilization and make it the best civilization in the game. Since I am such a novice video gamer player, I have no other games to compare this to, but I really was not a fan of the game. The graphics were not that great, and for me the game was very slow, having to wait for the computer to do moves in between each of my moves. But, maybe if I was more of educated on these types of games I would be able to appreciate the game at a different level. I am playing as Washington and I am well into the Classical Era. I have encountered other nations such as St. Petersburg, Budapest, and Tenochititlan and I have made allies with Moscow. Along the way I have been destroying groups of barbarians to gain money. Also I have been building many things in my city like farms, roads, and a library. There are a few aspects of the game that are historically accurate, and a few aspects that are inaccurate. The images that represent the characters are not very accurate, neither is the geography, Washington is not close at all to Moscow or Budapest. A way that it is similar to history is that each civilization has their own unique abilities, the Washington civilization being a American Warrior, also the way that you battle people seems to be historically accurate. I am a Psychology major and there is one thing in the game that really sticks out to me that has to do with Psychology. The happiness scale of your civilization has to do with Psychology, and is actually quite accurate. When you concur other groups, get more money, and build more structures in your civilization, people become happier, which is correct on a Psychological standpoint. In conclusion, I wasn’t a huge fan of the game, but I didn’t mind playing it that much, I do like how you could learn a little bit of history about what ancient civilizations had as far as resources, structures, and military. In the context of this class, I think it is a good teaching and learning tool.