Playing With the Past: Dr. McCall Quoted in The Economist

Dr. Jeremiah McCall, Upper School history teacher and recognized international expert on teaching history through gameplay and game design, recently had the honor of being quoted in the highly esteemed magazine The Economist. His words were used in an article titled “What if the best way to learn about history is by playing with it?” which describes history-based games and their benefits.

What is The Economist, and how did you end up being quoted in it?

 "The Economist is a major international news journal that has a reputation for providing solid, well-supported international perspective to global events. I was contacted in December by a journalist there who wanted to do an article on video games about history. He had discovered that I was an expert in the subject and wanted to interview me. I think the article's neat because it helps to spread the concept of games in history. I'm glad that some people who might not otherwise know what I'm doing can learn about it.”

What first inspired you to explore the connections between video games and history education?

 "I always liked games growing up, so that was probably part of it. I first started messing around with creating physical board games, which I made for students about 26 years ago. The idea of trying something different and more active than a lecture was exciting. Over the past 20-plus years, I've been trying to figure out what it is about games that makes them a really interesting way to look at history."

I know that you have created quite a few historical games yourself. What do you think the biggest challenges are when trying to keep a game historically accurate while still making it enjoyable and creative?

 "A lot of times, when people try to make games that are historical, they make them too complicated. The biggest thing is debriefing about the game first, making sure you have a conversation about what's historical and what's not before jumping into the game. The real learning comes from analyzing what worked and what didn't work, and what actually happened in history."

Do you worry that alternate histories and games might distort players’ understanding of a real event? 

“Sometimes a question like this presumes that there is one correct history that has to be conveyed. While there are certainly better evidence-based arguments about history, it's not just a list of facts. The ability to engage, critique, and think for yourself is really important. I am worried that the vast majority of history that people get in the world does not come from history classes. The possibility of distorted ideas is real, and it's a concern. It's really important as an educator to try and get my kids to look at sources and recognize what good evidence is.  I want them to have a sense of greater criticism when they go out in the world.”

Based on your personal experience, what historical events do players learn most effectively through gameplay?

"History is selective, and whatever medium you choose to represent it in is going to change it. In games, history becomes a player that is driven by some kind of goal, and the player makes choices to reach that goal. Games turn the exploration of history into ‘this is who I am, this is what I'm trying to do, and these are the choices.’ So, the more a subject can be seen that way, the easier it is to make it a game.

It's absolutely easier to make games about politics and war than other things. Things that involve people in history competing with each other and having a sense of winning or losing, those are the easiest to do, but they're not the only ones that can be good games. What I'm trying to do with my students and myself is not just give in to that easy, obvious option, but rather look for everyday people throughout history that we can illuminate. You can make a game about basically anything.

Do you think games about war are easier to make because games are typically played with a winner and a loser?

 "Something like three-quarters of historical board games are about war and empire. So there's absolutely this burden of colonialist baggage, where these games are being used to reinforce, and sometimes even have inappropriately positive views of war and imperialism. And I have wondered at times whether the definition of games that we have in Western countries – this idea of competition and winners –  is imperialist or colonialist in some ways. Games pretty much always have rules and a winning condition, as well as some kind of competition. So all of that is to say, I'm not quite sure, but it is something I think about a lot, because one of the things I try to do as an educator, particularly in modern world history, is educate my students about imperialism and colonialism and their impact."

Have you seen evidence that students who play historical video games, like the ones that were mentioned in The Economist article, do better in history classes or understand history more thoroughly? 

"I have found time and time again that the depth and quality of the questions students ask me about their games is usually much higher during these projects than during other activities. When you're researching and designing a game, you have to actually see how all the evidence fits together. You have to build it into a system. And so, students tend to ask me a lot of really high-level questions about what things actually mean.  Looking at something representing the past, looking at evidence, and seeing how the two match or don't match, is critical. Making games supercharges people's historical investigation."

How do historical games encourage critical thinking about the cause and effect of past events?

“Games revolve around agency: the idea of being able to make choices about actions.
It's a debatable term; here are a number of people who would say ‘agency’ is a Western concept. And it's kind of a privileged concept, because so many people are marginalized and don't necessarily have a lot of agency. But everybody has some ability to make choices towards some goal. And that's not to say everybody is free, and that's not to say nobody is oppressed; as sentient beings, we have the ability to make decisions. Games crystallize that concept, turning it into: Who’s your player agent, what are their goals, and what kind of choices do they make? It's putting choice and effect front and center. I did my first talk on games in history 20 years ago, and one of the things I said then is worth saying now. I don't want my students to take in a video game, or a reading, or a documentary, or even me, and think, ‘This is history, and this is how it happened.’ It’s why debriefing after the game is critical; it is where some of the real thinking about cause, effect, and agency comes out.”

Can you tell us about some historical games you have made?

“I'm making one right now called Rhetoric and Revolution. It's on the first assembly in the French Revolution, and the goal of the game is to pass laws. I have a game that my ninth graders are playing, The Dawn of Cities, that looks at how the first villages in Mesopotamia developed. I have a couple of Roman history games. One's called Path of Honors, in which you roll dice and attempt to move up the political ladder. You're in a cutthroat competition to defeat your rivals in politics, but if you compete too much, the whole system collapses.

I have the epic peasant agriculture game where you roll bunches of dice and find out how incredibly horrible it is to live in a subsistence level. I am revising that because the original version I did was okay, but I'm not satisfied with the historical details and gameplay. I try to design games that will fit some real needs in my classes. For example, the reason I created Rhetoric and Revolution is because nobody ever talks about the first constitution that the French drafted. And so, I made this little game in which you are competing to draft a constitution. I’m trying to keep designing those kinds of games because they feel like niches. I also want my students to design their own games, so I role model what it looks like.”

If you'd like to read the full article in The Economist, you can read it here.

Article written by Melanie Young `29