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In many RPG’s I’ve played, actions taken by players can and will often times influence the way in which players will experience the game. Often times the outcome may be the similar or even the same, but the players path towards that eventual ending, will be different. One thing that I will say is that video games often do provide a great insight to tone, mood, and nature of historical events. Often times game developers care deeply about the way in which the game develops its storyline as well as the way in which the players interact with the game. In the case of historical video games, developers have to balance between an accurate historical narrative and an appealing game in which players enjoy the content of the game and are willing to make the purchase. In the industry developers are expected to create an immersive, user friendly game that appeals to a variety of gamers and to expect a video game to contain 100% historical accuracy is not very fair. Other mediums such as literature or historical films should be expected to contain historical accuracy, but perhaps not video games. Of course, relative accuracy is still important as a historical video game should contain much of the authentic history McCall and Chapman discuss.

To consider the extent to which a video game accurately represents a historical event is a difficult task. A great deal of research and effort is put toward achieving a sense of historical accuracy in many modern video games, but how well can they really depict the events of the past? While we can try to give a player a similar experience to what someone may have had at the time, I argue that it would be impossible to truly represent historical events accurately through video games.

One reason for this is the element of agency, an invaluable aspect of any game, discussed by Adam Chapman and Jeremiah Mccall. “Remove that agency, and the experience is a video, or text, or recording, or graphic novel, but not really a game.” There is only one way in which any given event occurred, and to give players of a video game agency directly contradicts that notion. As soon as they are offered choice in their actions, they can and will stray immediately from a truly accurate representation of the past, and in fact create many different representations. However, without this agency – as Jeremiah points out, we would not have a game, but rather a movie etc.

Though we can’t represent historical events completely accurately in a game while giving a player agency, with accurate information and details about the past, I do believe that we can offer an experience from which a player can learn meaningfully about the past.

What makes a video game historically accurate? The question is simple but the answer is not as simple. Like finding the integral of certain inverse functions, the answer can only be obtained when the question is restricted within certain parameters. The parameters of relevance to this question would be the sequence of events that happen in the game relative to the actual historical archives, causes and effects of the game characters’ actions, and many more as stated by Jeremy McCall. I believe it would be unfair if we considered a video game to be historically inaccurate if it doesn’t entail exactly what the historical records say. The characters in games are fictionalized and given options to eliminate a possible monotony in the game. Also, it makes the concepts of causes and effects much more visible in this way. These game builders do a good job with helping us visualize the past by showing us the kind of equipment used, clothes worn, language and mode of communication used in the past. I believe that once a video game meant to represent a part of history has the general concept of what happened right, the setting, and general appearance of everything right, it should be considered historically accurate.