Historical board games are often associated with the long-standing ‘hex and counters’ tradition based on maps, counters, charts, dice tables and dense scenario rules. These games remain an important p...

Is individual memory a reliable thing? What about collective memory? A nation’s history connects its people to their past, providing them with a sense of who they “ought to be” as citizens. But what h...

It is a simple enough question, and one I have been asked thousands of times. Growing up in Liverpool, my parents ran a corner shop. We were there everyday, serving the same neighbourhood, getting to ...

How is national identity encoded into video games played all around the world?

Games are a significant medium through which ideas of nationhood, identity, history, and cultural belonging are produced, circulated, and contested. Whether through historically themed simulations, mi...

Videogame genres have long served as the kindling on which game studies discourse fires rage. As long as there have been discussions around the categorisation of videogames, the specificities that cha...

Venture into the medieval kingdom of Dyfed in Tales from the Mabinogion. As King Pryderi, traverse dense forests, rugged mountains, and windswept coastlines. Uncover long-held secrets, face the forces...

Around two and a half years ago I set out to adapt The Mabinogion as a video game. The text itself is a collection of medieval Welsh tales, and one of the most significant works of Welsh literary heri...

Alex Humphreys explores the legacy of video game music, from classics to modern anthems.

If you take a look at famous combat-flying action game franchise Ace Combat (Namco, 1995-), at first glance it would seem an innocuous pastime. You pilot jets shooting at others, focused in its tightl...

Codice Lugo 1945 – Le Carte della Liberazione is an urban card game created by PopHistory ETS (an Italian association of various types of professionals operating in the field of public history) and co...

This book brings together a selection of papers delivered at the Video Game Cultures 2024 conference, held from 12 to 14 September 2024 at Birmingham City University, UK. The conference theme was ‘other’ in all its permutations: other, others, othered, othering, otherness, and beyond. The aim was to centre marginal practices, marginal identities, peripheral national traditions, and consider researcher positionality in/as other. Participants were asked to reflect on other spaces and sites of gaming, discuss other approaches and methods to studying games, players, and gaming cultures. Core questions were: What can we learn from (or about) other researcher practices, other…

Games are a significant medium through which ideas of nationhood, identity, history, and cultural belonging are produced, circulated, and contested. Whether through historically themed simulations, mi...

Historical Games Network Panel - Analogue – Teams, Tue 19 May 2026 - Join us for the 14th Historical Games Network Discussion Panel on the 19 May 2026 (16:00-17:30 UK time), on the theme of "Analogue"...

Since May 2020, I have conducted over 200 interviews for my podcast, Beyond Solitaire. A significant number of these focus on historical gaming, and one of the most common recurring themes among them ...

Historical Games Network Panel - Analogue – Teams, Tue 19 May 2026 - Join us for the 14th Historical Games Network Discussion Panel on the 19 May 2026 (16:00-17:30 UK time), on the theme of "Analogue"...

Many museums in Britain have their foundations firmly planted in the colonial project. I am a White British woman, educated through the English national curriculum and I work as a Digital Learning Off...

PhD in Historical Game Studies: study past in games, playful methods or game heritage. Interdisciplinary research, teaching & museum/industry links. Full-tim...

Historical Games Network Panel - Analogue – Teams, Tue 19 May 2026 - Join us for the 14th Historical Games Network Discussion Panel on the 19 May 2026 (16:00-17:30 UK time), on the theme of "Analogue"...

Introduction Over the past two decades, scholarship on historical games has tended to privilege digital forms, whether that is strategy games, simulations, role-playing games, or those with distinct h...

USAWA is an Afrofuturist impact game I co-created with the Kenya-based game studio Jiwe in collaboration with the Malian NGO Donkosira and communities in southern Mali. Set in a speculative future sha...

This interview features Dr Victoria McCollum and Dr Andrew Sneddon (Ulster University) in conversation with Kirstin Mitchell (PhD student with Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru/Research Assistant...