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For example, if you are a nazi, then you probably think 90% of video games are horrible, slanderous, libelous, and a gross distortion of history.

If you're not, you probably find them fun.

Even games that have accurate summarizations of history in their story rarely use it to much good effect beyond a sort of flavorful seasoning. It's not really playable history that makes you think about it, in the way good historical fiction helps you understand and imagine aspects of history. If anything, the use of history in educational games like Oregon Trail is the closest to that, and even there it's a little superficial. (The article does correctly point out that alternate history has been dealt with pretty well in games... but oddly, real history, not so much.)

We do, for whatever reason, have that more with current events to some extent. In the mid-1980s, Chris Crawford [wikipedia.org] released the excellent Balance of Power, which attempted to use gameplay to interactively illustrate [erasmatazz.com] some aspects of the Cold War. More recently, there's been a flurry of interest in "newsgames" and "persuasive games" [amazon.com], using games as a sort of editorial-cartoon-style take on smallish current issues, like tainted spinach outbreaks [shockwave.com].

But where's playable history in any real fashion? It doesn't have to be pedantically boring, designed by Professors of Roman History to illustrate some sort of minutiae of interest to their field. Even semi-accurate, dramatized history of the History Channel variety would be interesting if it were playable in some significant sense, not just "you're playing an RTS that has Roman legions as units". Or something as good as the alternate-history games, but with actual history. Lack of interest? Too hard to figure out how to make it work? I mean this as a serious question, fwiw, not as berating game designers. It seems there's a lot of popular interest in at least some kinds of history, as evidenced by things like the History Channel, and yet in games we've gotten only really superficial elements. It may just be inherently impossible / really really hard, but somehow it seems to me that it ought to be doable.

What do we really know about history, anyway? You get different accounts of the same event by people who were actually there. Then, as the stories are propagated by those who weren't there, you get even more different stories. Eventually, things may be written down, and you may find evidence that fits with some stories but not others, but, in the end, what do we really know?

Even in cases where there is agreement among people who have actually studied a historic event, what people at large believe about it is usually based on parroting what they hear from others. So, what we "know", then, is not actually what historians believe actually happened. And even that is only a belief.

In that light, I see the more important aspects of games to be how much fun they are to play. Is the gameplay good? Is the experience immersive? Is the story believable enough? Feeling realistic and being in line with historic events (as applicable) is an important part of that, but I wouldn't say it is overwhelmingly important for games (it's different if you build a simulator for training, of course).

And let's face it: if we went for total realism, there wouldn't be any game to play. There would be only one way to proceed, and that would be the way it actually happened in real life. That's not a game, that's a movie - and a specific genre, quite apart from the big hit movies. So let's not be too tough on games that deviate from history a bit more than others, given that none can possibly give a completely accurate account, anyway.

On the other hand, if you are going to base your game on a historic event, you might as well faithfully depict the historic setting as we know it. Otherwise, what's the point? Unless you're making a parody, of course. :-)

Where you don't have to pay royalties for the ideas. In that sense, in video games, it plays the same role as a franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. Just as with history, with them you get major characters, direction of story (a plot), costumes, backdrop, and "feel".

Now, I know with anime, most games don't get 'canon' exactly correct. Why should we expect they get history correct? In the end, it's just attribute it to artistic license.

Moreover, the important part about the study of history isn't specific facts about narrow things, but the recognition of repeatable patterns due to human nature, and avoiding the same mistakes twice. For some reason, most history classes ignores this part, and zooms in on meaningless facts (such as dates) and the teachers almost never are concerned context, or the greater lessons learned, etc. The interpretation of most lessons is almost always left with the students, many of whom won't consider anything but memorizing the basic facts to pass the test.

I had one excellent history professor, he lambasted the history channel for their distortions and mistakes. Why should we expect anything more out of a purely entertainment medium such video games than an (entertainment) TV channel supposedly dedicated to history? The best lesson to learn here is simply not to believe everything you read, see, or what someone tells you to without verification.

Video games can also grossly misrepresent evolution [spore.com], driving [wikipedia.org], archaeology [lucasarts.com] and just about anything else they're based on. They are for the most part a source of entertainment meant to create a virtual world that may or may not have anything to do with real life. That is the point. They're supposed to be fun. Sometimes the historical inaccuracy is the whole point; It can be fun to interact with a world that isn't historically accurate; alternate timelines for example.

Of course thanks to the genius of Holywood we all know the Enigma machine was really stolen by a bunch of Americans (U-571) and not by Poles....

Movies have been playing silly buggers with history since the first movies, video games are no different. Both are forms of escapism from reality.

Why's this a) a suprise and b) taken so long for some to figure out?

The idea that history is "factual" rather than a rolling series of arguments is both interesting and amusing.

I wonder, with what vehemence, slashdotters would react if historians of science and technology ceased reporting on the human practice of science, and began advising on code design?

"Games have utilized historical narrative extensively, but to what extent does the platform take liberties with, and perhaps misuse it."

Mainstream media rarely depicts the historian's conception of history as currently practiced. At best it is Whig history (telling history to create moral lessons for today). At worst it is a fantasy purporting to a relationship with reality. Do you really expect games to speak into the complex construction of self-identity? The formation of power within classes leading to social conflict? The institutional factors behind the limits of political decision making within and between states? Or the emergence of sub-altern narratives (the utterly voiceless repressed) through careful emergence of non-standard documentary traditions?

At best your demand is Grognard: that the belt-buckles are accurate and that Division X was not in Location Y. If you truely want to look at games serving history, look up Stalin, a three turn economy simulator designed to test Stalin / Trotsky / Bukharinite debates about preventable deaths.

The content is rather shallow for an article entitled "History in Video Games", it's just a few recent cases. History plays an important part in several old video games: the majority of wargames (Civilization, Ages of Empire, Centurion Defender of Rome, Nobunaga Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, North and South, Napoleon), which he did not even mention once, semi-educative games like the Carmen Sandiego series and even your occasional action game !

I was reviewing SNK's Guerrilla War on NES last week on my website. The Japanese version, entitled Guevara, is clearly a depiction of the Cuban Revolution, all the key names and some locations have been retained; you play as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and the final boss is Batista.

And a better example than Final Fantasy, among old RPGs, would have been The Battle of Olympus on NES set in Ancient Greece. Not to forget all the games from Japan who have references to their own history and myths, like Samurai Shodown.

For example, in 500AD, President Julius Ceasar of the Roman Empire discovered railroads, which led to Charles Darwin's Voyage, which as every schoolboy knows resulted in the Romans immediately aquiring the knowledge of both Amphibious Warfare and Economics, thus allowing them to finally end their 3000 year war with King Abraham Lincoln of the United States. This expansion led to much unrest amongst the populace, however, and in order to maintain order Ceasar was forced to convert nearly 35% of his worforce into Elvis impersonators.