Ten years of historical game studies : towards the intersection with memory studies

Abstract

As a multidisciplinary field of study, historical game studies has become increasingly established as a stand-alone branch, albeit one having clear interdisciplinary links with (and significance for) both history and game studies. Recently, many historical game scholars have increasingly been dealing with the concept of memory. Concepts such as Landsberg’s ‘prosthetic memory’ (2004), ‘media memory’ (Neiger et al. 2011; Erll & Rigney 2009), and the study of how digital games play a significant role in cultural memory-making processes have enlarged the field to include more open-ended and broader approaches and implications (see also Hammar 2019b; 2020). The article aims to deal with these recent developments within historical game studies. Recent debates and increasingly prominent topics in the literature (prosthetic memory, historical fantasy, pseudohistory, history as metaphor) will be framed in terms of their relation toward memory studies, and further possible developments and open questions within the field(s) will be identified and discussed.