Preface

The relationship between gaming, digital or otherwise, and history has experienced a surge of interest in recent years. Scholars have used it as a vehicle to promote public history by looking at games as a way of representing history in popular media or to analyse how historic stereotypes of gender or race have been perpetuated by computer game characters. Relatedly, in post-gamergate, contemporary culture war discourses, game representations of the past have become a key site of conflict. In the heritage sector, ‘gamification’ of museum experiences is pursued to attract new, younger audiences. From a political and pedagogical point of view, then, there is much at stake in making sense of the role games play in structuring our understanding of the past.