vnavarro

@ThisIsPete Wow! We (the two teachers of our History class, Beatriz and me) love Evercade: we have the VS, the EXP, and a Super Pocket; we mention it in our classes and recommend it as an excellent effort in preservation. We're even planning on using it in our classes Super honoured to read your comment here.

@Diogmites No worries! Your comments were perfectly sensible and on point! My aside was more about the belief that the history of games is interesting in itself, especially if you play these games and discover some of them have historical value, some are still good, and some teach you about the present. Also, it's hard to compete with a million options for entertainment: no teacher will ever be as entertaining as Fortnite + Netflix + Twitch + ...

Thanks again for commenting

Hi everyone! Victor (the History teacher in the article) here. Thanks a lot for your lovely replies! It's clear to me that this is a topic the TE community cares about.

John put it beautifully, but I want to insist on a few things that are coming up here in the replies:

• our experience is generally good, the problems we are facing (worldwide, it seems) are more about the start of our courses and the state of students when they enroll them
• it is perfectly normal that not everyone is going to be interested in the history of games, even those that want to be gamemakers
• when something becomes institutionalised (as a subject), it loses appeal - it's part of the process
• the main thing we are seeing is that the current context of media saturation is blocking students from getting curious and exploring playfully the history of their medium - yes, there's a million YT channels and so on, but not the ideal spaces to just play and get the feel of games
• we generally have a very good relationship with our students (I don't want them to find me interesting, but my classes!) and some even discuss this media saturation with us
• teaching is always hard, teaching the history of games, with the problems in preservation we have, doubly so

Cheers

Thanks a lot, John! I read TE every day and having you in the conference was an honour and a blast - I am still telling my colleagues about things you said in your keynote. It's heartening to know that you are listening, and rest assured that academia is listening to you