Exploring the Renaissance Through Videogames
Shortly after Assassin’s Creed 2 came out, gamers noticed the rich historical detail included in the game’s setting. The protagonist who players guide through the game is sent back in time to Italy, AD 1499, there to prowl around buildings and streets and attack villains. The developers, self-avowed history nerds, hired consultants to ensure the buildings were rich in period detail. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal reported on their efforts:
They hired Renaissance scholars to advise on period garb, architecture, urban planning, weaponry and the like. They took tens of thousands of photographs of interiors and streets. They used Google Earth liberally to piece together the ground-up and sky-down perspectives through which the action flows. …
The game’s creative director, a Montrealer named Patrice Desilets, lived in Italy for some years, where he acquired a feel for the vivid intrigues of the Renaissance. He grew fascinated, he says, with the notion that “finally people can control time, and relive the past, through games.” The producer, Sebastien Puel, was born in the south of France, in the fortified medieval French town of Carcassonne, and grew up surrounded by history. The head writer, a Harvard graduate from Los Angeles and former screenwriter, Corey May, was driven, he says, by the challenge of “telling a story that feels real and is set among real people who existed.” …
Overall, though, Assassin’s Creed II is as close as we’ve managed to get to real time travel. The grown-ups can lap it up as a kind of virtual tourism. For the high schoolers, still the main audience, the video offers a kind of education by stealth. History matters more if your life depends on it, even as Ezio, and even if you’ve got lives to spare.
The amazing thing is developers of a highly anticipated release would even care to get most of the details right. If modifications of the game are allowed, it may find its way into history courses. It may find its way into classes regardless. Other academic efforts, such as Rome Reborn offer students only the opportunity to explore architecture. In AC2 students can fight bad guys while exploring.
Now, another major game focusing at least in part on the Italian Renaissance is due for release. This one is based on Dante’s Inferno. Yes, players will plumb the depths of hell, as envisioned by Dante, in this game from Electronic Arts. As you might imagine, hell is a bit graphic. Also, if you’ll recall, Dante described levels associated with the seven deadly sins. In the game, the level for lust is particularly graphic, replete with phallic symbols and nudity. This and other extreme graphics earn the game an M rating.
Producers are releasing a print edition of the poem illustrated by pictures from the game, hoping to encourage players to read Dante’s original work. Maybe kids who talk their parents into buying the game, despite its M rating, can actually learn something about the original work. But, I suspect parents would prefer the old-fashioned text version of the poem rather than an explicit video game.
References:
Kaylan, M. (2010, January 12). Time travel gets closer to reality. The Wall Street Journal, D7.
Tags: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2 educational, Assassin's Creed 2 educational content, Assassin's Creed educational, Dante's Inferno game, Dante's Inferno Videogame, Renaissance Education, Renaissance Educational Games, Renaissance Games
Electronic Arts, Game Discussion, Making Video Games, Virtual Reality, WSJ | John Rice | 
February 15, 2010 11:56 pm
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By Brian, February 20, 2010 @ 12:56 pm
Cool article… I really like games that have a lot of little details like that. I remember playing games like Oregon Trail in class when I was younger, and it was something I looked forward to.
I think incorporating even a little portion of a video game into a class where kids could play and explore, and still learn, would motivate kids to go to class, and hopefully also motivate them to learn more about the setting or story of the game, since it would related to the topic in class. However, I don’t think that having kids just play an entire video game in class would really increase learning. If they would be used, they should probably be used as a portion of the lesson rather than taking place of the lesson.