Historical Game Consulting: A Modular Syllabus

"Historical Game Consulting: A Modular Syllabus" presents a curriculum designed to train historians to supply accurate, usable historical knowledge to game development teams. Its central argument is that the field lacks educational material at the intersection of historical scholarship and game production, and that practitioners must learn to convert research into documentation that developers can apply. The authors deliberately exclude game design instruction, since existing resources already address it, and focus instead on research skills, source analysis, and professional communication. The syllabus was published in 2024 as part of a Polish project funded by the Ministry of Culture.

The modules cover a broad range of subjects, including architectural history with an emphasis on Polish styles, twentieth-century military vehicles and equipment, medieval military history and weaponology, heraldry, and early modern and modern warfare. Each module specifies learning outcomes, typically assessed through participation, research plans, and final presentations, and emphasizes delivering technical data, drawings, and documentation in formats suited to development teams. Source types range from monographs, museum collections, and archives to photo databases, vedute, and interdisciplinary materials from archaeology and art history. Later sections add digital research tools such as Zotero, QGIS, LIDAR, and Nodegoat, alongside a survey of Polish archives and museums and a five-week field documentation project.

The syllabus also introduces analytical frameworks, notably Jeremiah McCall's Historical Problem-Space model and workshop exercises using decision-tree models to explore alternate historical outcomes. Its guiding conclusions are that historical accuracy is a prerequisite for authentic game worlds, that unique primary sources and expert consultation add substantial value, and that poor presentation of historical material risks player backlash. The authors further identify structural barriers, including academic incentives that favor research over teaching and commercial collaboration, and a scholarly skepticism toward games, while proposing additional modules on costume, interior design, economic history, and worldbuilding documentation.