Expectations of Historical Games

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.