There was a point in my graduate school career when I stopped playing games entirely. “If I start Civilization, I’ll never stop,” I told myself, and so got in the habit of avoiding games in order to keep up with the all-encompassing workload. The only time I picked up games were when I was learning to code. I started dabbling in Python, and, to put tutorials to the test, I began making RPGs for my daughter. At that point, it was “You are a cat. Do you attack the mean dog with your (1) Claws, or (2) Sword?”-type stuff, but completely engrossing to make. It took me back to the days of writing choice-based games in BASIC during computer class on the Apple IIe.
Lately–largely after playing Meg Jayanth’s 80 Days far too much this summer–I’ve begun thinking about games in academia. In particular: how can games BE scholarship? I made a Twine game about a time-traveling cat for my daughter (draft here), a short satirical take on satyr plays, and some Twine works for classes. But fun as they are, these didn’t really DO very much.
I’ve seen some fantastic Interactive Non-Fiction out there, and I’ve been reading and researching games-as-scholarship. The best I’ve seen is Play the Past. Games have an untapped potential to communicate vital information and experience to students AND fellow academics. I’m currently writing a text-based game for the itch.io M’Devial Game Jam that I hope begins to address this potential. In the game,working title “An Anchoress’ Tale,” you are a twelfth century woman taking a vow to become an Anchoress, a type of religious practice where women sealed themselves in tiny rooms to live the rest of their lives in prayer, poverty, and isolation. You will have to navigate the difficult systems of lay devotion, church hierarchy, and medieval society. While it won’t advance a deeply significant argument (there has been plenty of good scholarship on Anchoresses), it should clearly communicate a few key points:
- That medieval devotional practices were more complex than is generally represented. This is a point I always make as a scholar: history is always more nuanced than our narratives give credit for. Most of the events of the game come from historical examples, so it should illustrate the wide range of experiences an anchoress could have.
- To break down the binary between religion and society, or isolation and community. Even though the rhetoric of Anchorites was about divorcing oneself from society in one of the most extreme ways possible, these women were often deeply integrated into their local communities.
- To show how HARD this life was! Anchoresses were not subject to any local authorities. You will have to judge what you think is sin and how to achieve penance while maintaining a balance between the key statistics of piety and health, humility and reputation.
- To acknowledge that medieval Christianity offered a much richer and robust variety of religious experience than we tend to associate with the period.
Playing this should be a kind of embodied scholarship that could communicate context and aspects of historiography to students and non-specialists in the field. And it’ll include footnotes (which will be toggle-able), so there’s that.
After that, I’ll be thrilled to get back to a project that’s been on my mind for a while, a Twine critical edition and game of George Foster’s 185o guide New-York by Gas Light because who doesn’t want to play through the nightlife of 1840s New York?
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