Emergent Historical Consciousness in Ahistorical Games through Lore and Game Experience

Honour's Research Project 2015-2016

Ryan Pickering

This is my repository for notes and blog-post updates, as well as additional material, for my HIST4910 thesis project with Dr. Shawn Graham at Carleton University. These updates are intended to be rough outlines of my ideas and concepts and are not necessarily going to be represented in the final project.

I'm going to be exploring ideas of historical thinking and historical consciousness emerging in ahistorical videogames through processes of community narrativization. Hopefully, looking at examples of this in Dwarf Fortress and select AAA games will illuminate some of the processes that engender historical thinking in videogames that can possibly be translated to "real" history videogames.

Please reach out to me at @rapickering with comments, questions, ideas, etc. Enjoy!