March 3, 2018
Professor of History and American Studies Serena Zabin traveled to Boston with Martin Hoffman ’19 for the Old State House’s annual reenactment of the Boston Massacre to playtest their historical game, Witness to the Revolution. The game grew out of Professor Zabin’s research and led to a collaboration with Professor Austin Mason, Assistant Director of the Humanities Center for the Digital Humanities and Lecturer in History, and involved work by several students.
In the game, the player must explore colonial Boston in search of individuals who witnessed the Boston Massacre. The player collects depositions from these witnesses, and ultimately must make a choice about what they believed happened based on the conflicting information from these depositions. The depositions themselves are historical depositions given in response to the event, and Professor Zabin hopes the game will encourage a greater understanding of how history is created and how historians must interpret the evidence provided.
During the day of the reenactment, Professor Zabin and Hoffman solicited feedback from visitors to the museum on their game in order to develop a clearer picture of next steps of the project.