Many young people - and not so young - spend more hours at the controls of a console than with a book in their hands.
But not everything is wasted time or mere entertainment.
Modern video games have reached such a level of development that they are also an informative source that is not as deficient as it might seem at first glance.
So much so that the new documentary production of the
Historia
channel
in Spain resorts precisely as a narrative element to the universe of video games, a sector that in Spain has a community of
16 million users
, according to data from the Spanish Association of Videogames.
Throughout six chapters,
Gamer Sapiens
immerses itself in World War II, the Roman Empire or the Middle Ages thanks to the analysis that some thirty experts from different disciplines make of
more than 40 titles,
including historical bestsellers such as
Call of Duty
,
Civilization
,
Age of Empires
;
or the long-awaited
Cyberpunk 2077
that has not yet hit the market.
Gamer Sapiens
premieres in History -channel available on the main payment platforms- next
Tuesday, December 1
at 10:00 p.m. with the broadcast of the first two chapters:
Pirates
and
World War II
.
The next two Tuesdays, at the same time, the other four episodes of the series will be broadcast, also in double broadcast:
Alternative Past and Future
and
The Middle Ages
(on December 8);
and
Classic cultures
and
From monkeys to gods
(December 15).
'Rome Total War'.
Historians, military personnel, aviation pilots, master gunsmiths, geographers, anthropologists, engineers or fencing instructors analyze from the areas in which they are experts which aspects that appear in video games with a historical setting are true to reality and which are
mere errors narrative licenses or even pure myths
.
For example,
Gamer Sapiens
teaches that the armor with which medieval knights are usually represented has little to do with reality.
On the other hand, the classic
white pirate shirt
is not only faithful but also has an explanation: dirt could make any cut deadly and the spotless clothing helped prevent potential sources of infection.
Some war game developers even consult with veteran associations for approval before releasing a new title.
"Players are becoming more and more adults and they demand that the video game be more credible and much better documented," says
David Martínez Robles
, editor-in-chief of
Hobby Consolas
magazine
.
As revealed, during the development of a game about World War II, the sound of the comb jump of an
M1 Garand rifle
when the ammunition runs out
was studied in the open field
to replicate it exactly.
"The series combines the narrative quality of a documentary on the Historia channel with the interactivity factor of a video game," underlines
Sergio Ramos
, vice president of programming for The History Channel Iberia, who highlights that this project offers a "completely unprecedented approach on television. ».
"The video game today is the most powerful source of culture in intensity that exists," says
Gonzalo Suárez
, designer of the successful
Commandos
series of games
, carried out by the Spanish company
Pyro Studios
.
If film and television have already contributed to historical dissemination in previous generations, modern video games add value to learning first-person immersion.
A kid who has been moving between screens in
Battlefield
will have quite internalized what the key battles that decided World War II are, just as the
Praetorians
fan will
know the organization and hierarchy of the Roman Army by heart.
"One of the important things that the video game allows and that is not common to other informative tools is to be able to live the story interactively," says
Daniel Ventura
, producer of
Gamer Sapiens
.
'The Last of Us'.
David Martínez Robles emphasizes this aspect: "One enjoys and learns much more when he is the protagonist of the events that are seen in video games".
And he adds: "It is educational not only because of what the video game itself narrates, but also because it is capable of
generating a concern in the player
to investigate the historical field or the characters that appear in their favorite games."
But the didactic capacity of modern video games goes far beyond the lessons for
millennial
high school graduates
.
In a metahistoric twist, consoles and computers
can determine the future course of history
.
Thus, some of the professional simulators that the Armies of many countries use to train their pilots or drivers of armored cars are developed from technologies created by the video game industry, such as
Steel Beast
.
The
gamer
universe
has also served as a field for sociological experiments.
A study by New York University determined that the optimal group in clans to play
World of Warcraft
is
about 50 people divided into groups of between six and 12
.
In the Neolithic, tribes were organized in the same way, according to an anthropologist in Gamer Sapiens.
"In prehistoric times the human being already found the pattern to socialize and nowadays in video game championships those patterns are replicated without looking for it", Daniel Ventura emphasizes.
The story is cyclical: from Homo Sapiens to
Gamer Sapiens
.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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