ERIC Number: EJ1293133
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2159-449X
Available Date: N/A
Designing Role-Playing Games That Address the Holocaust
Jessica Hammer; Moyra Turkington
International Journal of Designs for Learning, v12 n1 p42-53 2021
Role-playing games offer powerful opportunities for players to engage with history, such as allowing players to fictionally situate themselves in a historical period. When it comes to the Holocaust, however, games face serious issues such as the potential trivialization of the Holocaust or players learning to blame the victims. In this design case, we show one way that these issues can be addressed through game design techniques. We bring together the literature on games and Holocaust education to define a set of design challenges for Holocaust-related historical role-playing games; we describe "Rosenstrasse," a role-playing game in which players adopt the roles of Jewish and non-Jewish Germans in mixed marriages in Berlin between 1933 and 1943; and we illustrate specific game design decisions within "Rosenstrasse" that address the challenges identified in this paper. This work aims to help other designers address the same set of challenges in their own game design process.
Descriptors: Role Playing, Death, Jews, Educational History, Marriage, Intergroup Relations, Design, Victims, Instructional Design, Foreign Countries, Misconceptions, History Instruction, Perspective Taking
Indiana University. 107 South Indiana Avenue, Bryan Hall 203B, Bloomington, IN 47405. Tel: 317-274-5647; Fax: 317-278-2360; e-mail: ijdl@indiana.edu; Web site: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/ijdl
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany (Berlin)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

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