Virtual history : how videogames portray the past / Martin A. Wainwright.

Includes index.

Historians, consumers, and the videogame industry -- The meaning and presentation of history -- Portraying historical research -- Designer preference vs. marketability -- Designer intent and consumer reception -- Theme and mechanics -- Mechanics -- Compression and focus -- The problem of hindsight bias -- Contingency and determinism -- The scholarship of counterfactual history -- Contingency and technology in civilization -- Great individuals and events -- Wars and battles: Hastings and Gettysburg -- Economics and resource-management -- Economic history -- Resource management -- Trade -- Mercantilism in games portraying the early modern era -- Laissez-faire and planned economies -- Ecology and the environment -- Environmental history and the Columbian Exchange -- Applying the Columbian Exchange in the virtual world -- Disease -- Climate change and geological events -- Culture and ethnicity -- The cultural turn in history -- Characterizing cultures in action videogames -- Characterizing cultures in strategy games -- Religion -- Gender -- Gender in the study of history -- Sexism and the female market for historical videogames -- Female characters in the virtual past -- Male characters in the virtual past -- Portraying non-heteronormative gender roles -- Violence and oppression -- Historical scholarship on violence and oppression -- Combat and the treatment of civilians -- Slavery and genocide -- The future of the virtual past.