Guns out of Cardboard – War boardgames and History Learning

The potential of board games as historical representation and their status as historical texts has been supported by much academic research in game studies (Jason PEGY 2015). This notion plays into boardgames being place in the cultural memory of the framework (Pegy 2015). Especially with war boardgames, it serves as a perfect medium to participate in “constructing cultural memory” because they tend to stimulate real historical events and engage players in the games’ interpretation of such historical moments. Its role as a transmedia storyteller (Brown & Waterhouse-Watson, 2016), then, is educational and worthy to be discussed.

As a Vietnamese and seeing how the history of my country is taught and interpreted in different cultures of the West and the East, I am deeply invested in how war boardgames play into this narrative (or, should I say, narratives). Even more interesting, a list of Vietnam War Boardgames…