History Games

I may have spent too much time playing some of these games, but hey, games are fun! For this post I will dissect the games available from the McCord Museum. There are plenty of popular games that employ, whether appropriately or not, historical time periods, characters and themes. The McCord Museum’s games provide a solid platform to discuss the pros and cons of a museum integrating games into their educational outreach efforts.

The McCord Museum offers a variety of games, from role-playing social customs to trivia. All of them are relatively short, taking from 3-10 minutes. The length and variety of games allows visitors get a taste of history without making a huge time commitment. This leads me to believe that their target audience is casual visitors to the website who have an interest in the museum. The games would be fun for students, but I do not get the feeling playing them that the game creators had a specific K-12 educational agenda.

Even though I do not believe students were the only audience, I was impressed that a few of the games contained the right level of snarkiness popular with the 10-14 year age range. When my character got ran over by a horse and carriage then flew off the screen, I was surprised. I was also interested and kept playing enjoying the experience of both choosing period-correct etiquette and watching the ridiculous things that happened when I did not.

One aspect of the McCord Museum games that could be a turn off for some people is that they are specific to Montreal. (I did not realize this until I got stuck on a question that involved liquor laws in the 1920s – not the same in Canada.) This may be where a museum need to question what their purpose is in putting games on their website and who are the games for. Should they have games for people unfamiliar with the institution? Assuming that a website will get non-local traffic, how much background should the game designers assume players have? I did not get frustrated in not knowing much Canadian history because the McCord Museum offered a number of quick games to play, yet I could see how I would in a longer game.

In general I like the aesthetic of these games, but looks also highlight how quickly the technology becomes out of date. The images in almost all of the games were too small for me to really see on my computer. For some of the games this did not matter, but when it was a quiz and I had to answer a question about the image, the game became problematic. Another problematic situation occurred when a scene change notified me of a “Plug-in Failure,” in ‘Mind Your Manners.’ Eventually, the game started working again, but the only reason I stayed long enough to see that happen was because I am writing this post. Games can be great ways for institutions to move their message forward, but they also need constant supervision and updating to stay relevant. Even with their kinks, the games add a needed sense of humor and play to history that historians sometimes leave out of their academic lives.