Historical Game Consulting: A Modular Syllabus

A Polish research team, Mochocki and Kot, developed a modular syllabus published in Homo Ludens in 2024 to train historians as consultants for game development. The central premise is that historians already possess the subject knowledge that developers need, but lack the skills to translate that knowledge into forms usable by production teams. The syllabus therefore focuses on this translation gap rather than on general game design, which existing curricula already cover. Its modules are autonomous, multi-week blocks that can be combined into different programs, and the authors frame historical accuracy and alternative scenarios as central to player engagement.

The curriculum spans a broad range of subject areas, including Polish architectural history, 20th-century military vehicles and equipment, medieval arms and armour, heraldry, and military history from antiquity to the 21st century. Each module pairs source research with practical deliverables, such as architectural drawings, iconographic records, technical data, paint schemes, and photographs, and assessments typically require students to plan and present independent research evaluated for accuracy, historical context, and suitability for game use. Later modules introduce the Historical Problem Space framework, which structures a game world around a player agent, goals, resources, obstacles, and genre conventions, along with practical tools such as Unity, Unreal Engine, QGIS, and LIDAR.

The materials also address field research and information management. Students are trained to locate sources through open-access databases such as Europeana and Polona and through major Polish archives and museums, and to organize findings using tools such as Zotero, Tropy, and Anki. A multi-week field project requires documenting a museum, archive, or private collection and producing developer-oriented recommendations.

The authors argue that Polish history faculties have been slow to respond to industry demand, citing academic incentives that prioritize research over teaching, weak ties to business, and a dismissive attitude toward games. They recommend interdisciplinary, project-based, and portfolio-based instruction and advocate an "entrepreneurial university" model. The work is instructional rather than empirical, presenting no quantitative findings, and its scope is centered on Polish institutions and the Central and Eastern European games industry.