One of the most satisfying things I’ve learned growing up, is that my parents while right 99% of the time, were wrong about one thing. That being, that playing a ton of video games CAN help you get better in school. I’m a prime example. If I hadn’t played each Assassin’s Creed game for 100+ hours, then I very well may not have learned what Ancient Athens could have looked like, or who Peracles and Socrates was. The main takeaway I have from reading this week, is that I was right all those years ago when I told my parents that yes in my 4 hours a day trekking through Ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey did help me learn.
Seriously, if you look at some of the scenes from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, it’s hard to imagine anyone playing not wanting to learn more once they’re done. “Fiction’s true power lies in its ability to recreate the sensation of the past through it’s adherence to experienced time.”. Sabina Murray’s quote sums up what I believe, and it’s that experiences, in particular hands on ones are what drive people to love history. Being in a virtual recreation of a space just has such a deeper meaning as opposed to simply reading about it with words on a page. Seriously, what would you rather do, walk along the streets of Ancient Athens, or read about what it was like?
Beyond me simply being happy that people are seeing video games and other virtual recreations as legitimate tools, there is a much larger implication. Traut says that simply using VR to make people ‘feel for’ victimized individuals, and argues that we more so need to show people true perspectives from these people. This really reigns true, as I don’t believe that we need people to simply feel bad for people who were victims of slavery, racism, colonization etc, a deeper understanding is needed and perspective is the most important part of getting past all our original biases and develop a foundation for political analysis , critical thinking and most importantly solidarity.
Seeing is always going to be more effective then anything in terms of learning, and that is the bigger goal of projects like Seeing Lost Enclaves and the Slave Voyages. The models of ships and all of the data they’ve collected in Slave Voyages is as incredibly impressive as it is tragic that these things happened. The staggering numbers in the bar graphs they also display do a great job of showing, even if someone doesn’t read the numbers themselves seeing the graphs themselves do an effective job of telling the story itself. The timelines of the ships and history of the slave trade along the Atlantic as well is incredibly helpful especially for a person who may not be familiar with the subject.
The message of this week in all readings and digital projects seriously resonated with me, due to the fact that this is essentially how I grew up learning history. A lot of my knowledge and love for learning, all came from watching history YouTube channels, readings books and playing history related video games. Seeing that as the years have gone on, using virtual settings to help learn about history has become more and more mainstream is really, really amazing to see and makes me feel a bit more validated. Often times growing up I thought myself as less of a historian, or not up to snuff with some of my history major peers, because I like to learn so much from these virtual and digital projects. So, seeing that this has become more and more widely accepted, has done wonders for my own personal research.
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