Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer and a mother. When her little daughter came home from school one day and had learned about the middle passage* she noticed that her daughter went very lightly over it and didn’t seem to get the gravity and tragedy of this sad part of american history.As a game designer her natural reaction was of course to make a game about it. And as her daughter played with the little families she had painted she began to feel for them, they ended up crying together.
It goes to show that beside motivation for learning, games (whether they be board games or video games) also offer a deeper connection with the matter. As you spend time playing with characters (real or fictional) you develop a more meaningful connection with them and get a greater understanding by putting yourself in their place by play. This helps tremendously in learning about both history and present and Brenda goes on to make games about other topics such as her Irish roots and Mexican food culture.
*From Wikipedia: “The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa[1] were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade.”
Gamificology 
I like the concept. It helps you understand the emotional experience behind these tragic events, something numbers and words spoken by a teacher just cannot convey.
I believe gaming can give you the same expierence when reading a good book some times. You get invested in the story, you feel like you’re part off that world and thus ‘care’ about that world. It’s something you can relate to. Instead of ‘just a teacher’ telling you about it. You experience it. More and more games are doing this, getting you ’emotionally invested’ in a story, and I think it would be great of those games would focus on certain parts of our history.
True, although in the case of gaming it can be even more powerful, because you actually engage in the game. In the case of her daughter, she actually got to create the little families help them on their journey and even decide over their fate.
I think that’s part of the reason why I don’t really like to game, I miss emotional involvement. I never considered gaming as offering a same experience and involvement as reading a good book (as Sam Laermans pointed out). So I’d certainly like to be pointed in the direction of these games.
Well, quite some games offer this, but they also pose a reasonable threshold for non-experienced players. Oe of the obvious examples here would be journey and flower, but you’d have to find a PlayStation 3 for that.
I think it is quite logical that you feel more connected to a character you are playing with on a game. You put a lot of effort into giving the character a desired ending. After some time you can connect to the character. I think the same effect is obtained when important history ‘stories’ are told in a movie. Think about all the movies about WWII.
I can also think about some games that use historical stories as a guideline. Think about Assassins Creed. BY playing with these characters you can get a feeling about how it must have been to live during that time.
I do however think that games generally don’t deliver a realistic image of reality (again assassins creed), while movies try to be more close to reality. (based on a real story…)
That is where for a example a huge opportunity lies for gamification. To actually make engaging experiences that do provide us with correct information.
If it is really the point of the game to be education, they should indeed stay closer to reality. It will be a challenge to make the game interesting on an educational and entertaining level!
999 games has a game where you can play different characters from the Dutch revolution. Not all the historical facts are correct, but the game enables you to understand why different groups made certain decisions, or why some things were important. http://www.999games.nl/spel/Revolution