Historiography, Critical Thinking and Gaming Discussions

Over the past couple weeks; discussions surrounding gaming have been rather heated involving certain people and their practice.  Gaming, like other forms of leisure and art, finds itself having very strong opinions one way or the other with a limited central representation.  As it has been discussed for many generations; we associate by what we exclude and this carries onto hot-button topics not just in gaming; but in politics and social status, economics and welfare, artistic forms and interpretation, and so on and so forth.  That being said, I’m not too interested in this debate and it would do this blog a disservice to ‘pick a side’.  Because of this, we’re going to review why people may have a particular opinion and the potential weight to said opinion.  In history, this comes under the discussion of Historiography. 

Historiography is the discussion of the opinions behind an event and the correlation between them.  Historians naturally find themselves writing about important events (wars, political premierships, etc.) and over time a group of people will have similar opinions.  This is known as a school of thought and there are a number of factors behind this.  To give an example we’re going to briefly review the Cold War and its Historiography.

The Cold War was a significant event after WW2 that shaped world events for a course of 40-50 years (that to some extent still do) between Russia and the USA.  Throughout the Cold War there were 3-4 schools of thought that changed for a number of reasons:

1 – Traditional / Orthodox.  Coming from American historians starting in the 1950s, this view was naturally a pro-American viewpoint.  It discussed how America was in the right and it was protecting the world against the Russians and communism.  Such things discussed are the domino theory and the iron curtain. 

2 – Soviet / Socialist.  The opposite view coming from Russian historians of the same era, this was a pro-Russia viewpoint.  It discussed how Russia was treated unfairly and was a country on defence, looking out for its people.  Such things discussed are the capitalist vs. communist conflict and America’s missile bases in Europe. 

3 – Revisionist.  The alternative view coming from American historians in the 1960s.  This decade brought the ‘peace not war’ mentality and the Vietnam War; a conflict that caused a split opinion on the home front.  It looks to critique the traditional view and consider America’s own mishaps.  Historians of this school of thought tended to have a ‘left-wing’ mind-set although not exclusively. 

4 – Post Revisionist.  There are some differences of opinion to this school of thought, but for this I’ll be looking at the later soviet period and its policies.  Gorbachev, known as the reformer, created the policy of Glasnost (openness) in the 1980s to allow greater freedom of information and less censorship.  Historians of many backgrounds (not just American / Russian) now had a wealth of information to review and produce new interpretations. 

So as you can see, many different factors can come into play when we see someone’s opinion.  We can pair this with Critical Thinking to hypothetically break apart someone’s viewpoint to see what weight we can give them.  In Critical Thinking, we want to analyse things like corroboration, vested interests (bias), data, tone, body language, etc.  The last two are a bit more difficult to discuss on the internet but it’s something to consider.  So, let’s try and create a hypothetical example:

“Are you pro or anti <insert topic here>”

Person X is pro-topic

Person Y is also pro-topic

Person Z is anti-topic

Person X’s previous posts on the subject have been pro-topic as well as their friends.  They fit into a school of thought that believes in said topic.  They may also be other factors like agreeing in association (the friends are together because of this); personal background (parents / community may have this opinion); or dissociation (person X disagrees with someone of the anti-topic viewpoint).

Person Y’s post on the matter mentions a number of resources to back up their viewpoint.  This person is using corroboration to give weight to their view.  That being said, it depends on the validity of said resources and whether they have any particular vested interests.  Like with X, Y may also have some of the traits mentioned above. 

Person Z’s post originally discusses the topic but moves to challenge X and Y.  This person can look to critique the resources or the association concept between them to try and review why they may have the same opinion.  The challenge moves away from the topic so at this point the subjects of tone and body language come into play to see what language they use and what particular viewpoint they’re trying to refer to. 

This of course is a limited example and I’d ask that you do some further reading into the subject of critical thinking.  I should stress that this doesn’t intend to pursue anything but the discussion of ‘why’ which interests me most.  You could see this as a personal reflection and consider where you sit on certain topics and why.  Was it because of a particular news story on the matter, a friend’s mention of it, your own morals related to your upbringing, etc?  

I hope you find this discussion interesting.  Next time, I want to take fragments of this subject into the world of Architecture as we debate ‘form vs. function’ and the concept of Kitsch.