Historian backs the use of video games in the classroom

Yes, "historical" video games are filled with inaccuracies. Yet more than a limitation, these inaccuracies can serve as a pretext for discussion. For example, what factors, beyond sheer ignorance, caused these inaccuracies in the first place? How do various cultural influences, such as the conventions of cinema, shape the way in which they present history? How do they relate to ethical and commercial considerations? It is rather striking to see how far, for example, the creators of the original Assassin's Creedwent to remove any religious contents from a game inspired by a group that an earlier generation of historians presented as Islamic terrorists. Indeed, merely raising these questions often pushed classroom discussions toward the relationship between these inaccuracies and ongoing historiographical debates—for example, by looking at how scholars today criticize older scholarship on the Nizâris and by trying to identify the historians whose works might have guided the choices of game designers