Video Games and History Learning

Abstract

Research in areas such as Bandura's social learning theory and cognitive learning, suggest that humans learn and gain knowledge in many aspects of life. This principle may be extended to the learning of historical information from playing video games. Therefore, people could tend to learn about history from playing games with historical content. To collect the useful data for future research on using video games to teach history, this research aimed to explore which genre, ESRB rating, and the type of video game platform has the most historical content. A content analysis was done to analyze the data collected from the top 10 video games of all time from each genre listed in three video game websites, namely: www.ign.com,www.gamefaqs.com, and www.gametrailers.com in October 2013. The result of the study showed that the sports video game genre had the most historical content. The ESRB rating that had the most historical content was E for Everyone. Finally, games on the computer platform had the most historical content. With this information, researchers and instructors who study history, learning, or video games may be better able to find video games that suit their needs.