Presence at History: Toward an Expression of Authentic Historical Content as Game Rules and Play

Schott and Redder's paper argues that game developers are increasingly functioning as historians, using practice-led research to build authentic historical experiences rather than treating the past as decorative backdrop. The authors trace how historical games have evolved from early titles such as Oregon Trail, whose mechanics drew on pioneers' diaries, through modern war shooters and strategy games that they critique for selective authenticity, linear storytelling, and anachronistic depictions of warfare. Their central claim is that a newer wave of titles pursues authenticity in the sense of living socio-cultural systems rather than mere accuracy of surface detail.

The paper's core argument is that some recent games embed historical research directly into rules, mechanics, and play. Examples include Assassin's Creed: Origins, developed through consensus-based research with Egyptologists and linguists; 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, informed by more than forty interviews with people who were present; Kingdom Come: Deliverance, whose combat systems were reconstructed from medieval fighting manuals with martial arts experts; and Titanic: Honor & Glory, which recreates the ship in close detail and makes social class shape movement and survival. These cases are presented as qualitative illustrations drawn from developer and scholarly accounts rather than as measured findings, and the authors acknowledge that genre conventions and violent gameplay often undermine historical meaning.

The most extensive analysis concerns Titanic: Honor & Glory (2015). The game includes roughly 200 real passengers, among them lesser-known figures, and the authors contrast its sensitivity with James Cameron's film, which portrayed Captain Murdoch negatively before later partial corrections. The authors argue that such games express history through conduct and performance, using historically informed mechanics and social rules, and frame the past as a "resource for empathy" by placing players in the four days before the iceberg collision. The paper concludes by calling for more analytic study of how historically grounded games perform and present the past, identifying upcoming titles such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance as a future research focus.