Incorporating Historical Thinking into Wives of Agency

So Wives of Agency the game is supposed to teach students a few things, of course Tudor history from a feminist lens, critical thinking, and strategy, but also historical thinking. I want the students to attempt to put themselves in the shoes of the wives they play as. It might not always be so simple but if possible I want there to be interaction with the students manipulating primary documents in order to understand the outcome of those documents from the perspective of the person who wrote or experienced the events. I also hope to address some of the misconceptions about Tudor history, which will be shown to the students, so they understand how these events may have been misinterpreted from their original source, if there is an original source.

Making a video game is difficult though, so while I want to include these features, I worry that either the software I chose or my own programming skills may not be robust enough to engage with historical thinking in the manner I intend. The format of the game I’m looking as is a “Visual Novel” which primarily functions by reading through dialogue with accompanying images and backgrounds to set the scene of the story. While there is a precedent for “choices matter” games where picking the right dialogue tree drastically alters the story, there is less so a precedent by incorporating mixed media such as documents, matching games, or other mini games, at least not in visual novels that are not completely hand coded. Because of that, I’m probably going to need to be creative with how I incorporate primary sources and historical thinking exercises into the game.

I don’t necessarily think that incorporating historical thinking activities and lessons into my video game affects my project pitch and idea. I think it shows another level of how complex this project is. I would like to spend some time scripting one of these activities for the game, and how it could potentially work in the software that I’ve chosen, but planning and drafting were going to be an aspect of this project either way.