The interactive museum: Video games as history lessons through lore and affective design

This article approaches games from the perspectives of design and analysis in order to describe how games might employ pedagogical strategies that capitalize on their strengths as interactive media while avoiding the pitfalls of traditional learning games. Specifically, it draws attention to how games employ world building through lore—such as through item text descriptions—as well as affective game design aesthetics to create a learning experience closer in similarity to touring a museum than reading a textbook. Describing this phenomenon as the interactive museum, the article discusses how the concept operates through an analysis of the game Valiant Hearts: The Great War. The article first addresses games as teaching tools, including their potential to teach about historical wars, while paying close attention to the ethical dilemma of producing an entertaining game that also aims to teach. The design analysis begins by examining item text descriptions, lore and historical world building before describing the affective aesthetic of the interactive museum. The article concludes with a discussion on games’ potential use of tangential learning as a method to teach through interactivity