What a pretentious title! Increasingly I’ve been thinking about this subject lately. One of my lecturers pointed me towards a game called the Peacemaker. I won’t duplicate the content of my post on Karyn’s Blog about it, but it also put me in mind of the Darfur is dying game, although the latter is far less sopohisticated in construction. Both these games seek to inform the player/learner of the challenges facing a group of people in a wartorn situation. On their own, these games may not stand out from the many other games about war, and they may even suffer by comparison. However, used as a teaching aid and placed in context by teaching and discussion about the situation before embarking on the game, the situations must surely become more real to the user than a pure theory lesson. This is a way to make history come alive. It is a way to present history as something other than a sequence of inevitabilities (which is my own view of how it is taught in far too many schools).

I also recently encountered this game (I wish I could remember who gave me the link!) which allows players to take charge of a country and re-enact WWII. The outcome is not predetermined as the defeat of the axis powers by the allies, and players have the opportunity to explore alternative courses of action through to their conclusion.

Now this is history as a study of decisions taken by people, decisions with alternatives. I once read a book called Fatherland by Robert Harris, set in the 60s and written from the perspective of a detective in a victorious Germany. It is a thought-provoking read, and one I would recommend to a high school student studying second world war history, since it serves the same purpose as these games in that it allows the exploration of alternative hypotheses. What if…?

I have lost count of the number of British people who have told me that, if it hadn’t been for their grandfather/father/uncle, we would have been speaking German today. This shows a groan-inducingly unimaginative approach to the possible outcomes of the war. Let’s face it, speaking German is hardly the worst fate that could befall a person – it doesn’t seem to have hindered people in Germany a great deal! I am always tempted to respond, “Is that the best you can come up with?”

But of course, a book presents only one view. A game allows the user to explore several different alternatives. What if the assassination plot against Hitler (or indeed Churchill) had succeeded? What if the Americans had not joined the war? What if Switzerland and/or Sweden had not remained neutral? What if? What if?

The possibilities are endless.