Playing the Prize Papers - Seminar with game development

sponsored by forschen@studium of the University of Oldenburg in cooperation with APEX Ideenschmiede and Lukas Boch from Boardgame Historian as well as Jule Sommersburg from IGS Flötenteich.
Public game sessions sponsored by Spiel des Jahres e.V.

Seminar at the University of Oldenburg in the winter semester 2023/24

Description:

This seminar combines research on the Prize Pap ers - early modern privateer court collections, i.e. confiscated documents from on board once captured ships (logbooks, passports, letters, objects) - with research on analogue games with a historical setting and their possible uses at universities and in schools.

In the seminar, a new analogue game will be developed together using previously unexplored original sources from the Prize Papers. A first prototype will be presented at the end of the semester at a public event in the lecture hall centre.

The Prize Papers allow research on topics ranging from naval wars, trade routes, letter communication and languages to revolutions and colonialism. A higher goal of the seminar is to develop a high-quality game concept and thus create awareness that it is also possible and instructive to deal with these topics in a game.

Developing a game on the Prize Papers as a project of research-based learning, independently, out of the seminar, in which the creativity of the students meets the eagerness to research that the inventory evokes, promises to be an instructive experience during the course. As in a seminar paper, game development is about developing a topic, a question and an interest in knowledge, analysing how, when and why something can be presented in order to arrive at a conclusion, which must also fulfil the practical condition of 'functioning' as a game objective.

Carrying out research-based learning through game development always means asking self-critically whether my research idea is relevant, which is reflected in particular in whether and how the game is suitable for transferring knowledge about the research object to potential players.

Procedure: In addition to the introduction to the research on the prize papers and analogue games, the sessions will be coupled with an online series of lectures in which renowned researchers from various German-speaking games and education locations will have their say. We will combine the game with game sessions in which we will test different games and get inspiration from them. The experts Lukas Boch from Boardgame Historian and Martina Fuchs from Spiel des Jahres have also been invited as guests. We are once again working together with IGS Flötenteich.

We will be supported in the seminar by two experienced game authors from APEX Ideenschmiede. The event is funded by the Department for Study Affairs with funds from forschen@studium. The game sessions are supported by the Spiel des Jahres e.V. funding programme.