Tom Apperley’s research while affiliated with Deakin University and other places

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.

This article outlines a model for teaching both computer games and videogames in the classroom for teachers. The model illustrates the connections between in-game actions and youth gaming culture. The article explains how the out-of-school knowledge building, creation and collaboration that occurs in gaming and gaming culture has an impact on students' understanding of their own lifeworlds. The authors demonstrate how the development of curricula around and with games and gaming cultures can incorporate and capitalise on approaches to learning and collaboration, design and identity that students have developed in their own gaming practices.