why do teachers tell us to play video games

“Some time ago, we passed the line where historical video games are at the same level of influence and demand the same level of critical analysis” as historically themed movies or TV shows, Devereaux told me. Academic historians, he wrote in a four-part post on his blog, must now grapple with a new breed of students “for whom Paradox is the historical mother tongue and actual history is only a second language.” Prompted by Mulder’s confusion, Devereaux hoped to illuminate the historical assumptions that underlie the games. And yet to many players, exactly what they’re learning from these games remains a mystery. Spending that much time engaged with any sort of historically themed content will affect one’s understanding of history. Read: How will historians study video games? The average Europa Universalis player spends hundreds of hours on it. Millions of people own the games, which allow players to take control of a historical nation or individual and guide the course of history. The games made by Paradox Interactive, the Swedish studio that produces Europa Universalis, are among the most popular strategy titles in the world. But the fact that video-game developers, rather than professional historians, were responsible for shaping so many young people’s understanding of history deserved greater examination, he thought. Bret Devereaux, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, saw Mulder’s tweet as an opportunity to explain a new phenomenon.ĭevereaux plays Europa Universalis and likes it. Students kept enrolling in his course on modern Europe because of the game, which he had only recently learned existed. Last year, Nicholas Mulder, a history professor at Cornell University, asked his Twitter followers to help him understand a certain kind of student in his classes: players of the video game Europa Universalis.

Why do teachers tell us to play video games