Document Type

Honors Thesis

Major

History

Advisor(s)

Liam Riordan

Committee Members

Chris Dufour, Robby Finley, Jordan LaBouff

Graduation Year

May 2024

Publication Date

Spring 5-2024

Abstract

Video games are a wildly popular and growing form of art and entertainment. Yet they are often overlooked within academic fields like history. This thesis examines the unique qualities of video games that make them powerful tools to understand history in a different manner. The interpretative frameworks of simulation and agency are central to this analysis, and they are applied to the history-based video game Europa Universalis IV as a case study of how video games facilitate rich and rewarding historical sensibilities that deepen the connection between past and present, a long-standing goal of professional and popular historians. The study goes beyond a theoretically informed analysis and a close reading of one particular game, to also assess the experiences of a range of college- aged video game players. An online survey with semi-formal follow-up interviews were conducted with players of history based video games. The survey garnered thirty-four respondents, nine of whom participated in interviews. This research yielded a more complete understanding of how gamers play and how their perceptions of historical subjects may be affected by playing history-based games. This research shows that Europa Universalis IV illustrates a connection between individual agency and structuralism which is often overlooked by the manner in which historians approach questions of contingency. This game communicates the “agency of states” to players, who understand that their decisions as players (who act as anthropomorphized states) shape historical developments, but only within a range of possibilities established, which are the structural forces created by the game designers. This demonstrates how video games, through their capacity to communicate agencies that players embody and experience in multiple different ways, can inspire alternative ways of understanding history.

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