Playing with Herstory. Representing Femininity in Historical Video Games

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DiGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the 2016 Playing With History Workshop
Dundee, Scotland: Digital Games Research Association and Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games, August, 2016
Number: 3
Volume: 13
ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666


We propose a set of six topics of inquiry into historical games as regards their feminine characters, and we illustrate them through an analysis of This War of Mine, Valiant Hearts and 80 Days. Historical games may include documented historical characters and fictive characters as well; the latter may aim to represent a type of real persons, or may be individualized as a purely fictional character. We argue that This War of Mine, Valiant Hearts and 80 Days have both strong and weak points in their construction of feminine characters, when taking into account the proposed set of indicators.