This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Alicante Journal of English Studies 31 (2018): 195-199 The Great War and the Use of Video Games as Historical and Educational Resources: A Conversation Stefan Aguirre Quiroga Independent Researcher stefanaguirre@gmail.com Iro Filippaki Johns Hopkins University afilipp6@jhmi.edu Iro Filippaki and Stefan Aguirre Quiroga exchange their views on the potentiality of video games as historical and educational resources in the study of the First World War. Stefan (S): What kind of key historical facts are presented in these games and what impact do they have on the narrative (and therefore the creation of collective memory)? Iro (I): Both games have different relationships with the facts of the Great War, strictly speaking. STA references the muddy landscape, the inexperience of soldiers, and the ambiguous role of doctors. True, it would be a bit of a stretch to read anything more in STA, as it is comedic shooter, but it is interesting to see that even the ridiculed aspects of the game rely on accepted collective memory. VH is different; it clearly has an educational purpose and the developers seemed to want to share a less discussed aspect of the Great War, as they have included collectible items and fact cards that, upon collection, pause the game and give factual information to the player. In both cases, for reasons that lie beyond narratology and enter the realm of game design, the game narrative is perhaps inevitably a mixture of collective “official” memory and fictional, highly stylized narration. S: VH/STA are different from BF1 in many aspects. Both VH/STA are comedic, highly stylized games in which the player is reminded by the aesthetic choices done by the game producers that they are indeed playing a video game. For example, STA has a great deal of “goofy” and fantasy elements such as the case of scimitar wielding monkeys attacking the player. BF1 on the other hand tries to be as realistic as possible in its visual representation. In your opinion, how does this affect the creation of an affective memory? Does “realism” or attempts at realism makes it