The Games of our People. Analysing Populist Nationalist Rhetorics of the Past in Historical Games.

Populist Nationalist movements have been using social media and popular culture as a way to diffuse their rhetorics, by reinterpreting TV series, movies and video games through discourses aiming to seek legitimacy in the history and the past.
In this paper, we reflect on the overlapping between historical ludic experiences and populist nationalist rhetorics of the past, with the goal of contributing to the understanding of the political implications of historical games. The paper investigates the possibility of games aligning with populist nationalist discursive rhetorics of the past under forms of historical resonance, and vice versa, it reflects on their potential to provide forms of friction or alternative historical experiences to those of populist nationalist rhetorics.
To do so, the paper briefly introduces historical game studies and subsequently discusses the political uses of the past and populist nationalist rhetorics of the past. In the following section, it presents an analytical framework that could prompt reflection about the potential overlapping between historical ludic experiences and populist nationalist rhetorics. The framework is designed as a grid comprising a set of questions, which provides a basis to analyse historical games and reflect on their historical ludic experience. The framework is designed to support awareness and practical reflection on the political dimensions of history and digital games. In the final section the framework is applied to the investigation of two historical games, Assassin’s Creed III and Sid Meier’s Civilization V, so as to provide researchers, educators and game designers with a clear and actionable tool.