Remembering with Games

3. December 2025 | Blog » CU REMEMBER
3. December 2025

by Alexander Preisinger [University of Vienna/Gamelab]

On the future of the game-based past

Digital games are probably one of, if not the most dominant form of leisure entertainment among children and young people today (see the ‘Youth, Information, Media’ study). In recent years in particular, there has been a veritable boom in serious games; memorials, museums and educational institutions are now commissioning renowned and specialised studios such as ‘playing history’ or ‘Charles Games’ to design attractive remembrance offerings. It is therefore now appropriate to speak of a ‘remembrance games’ genre.

Image: Alexander Preisinger

Image: playing history (Spuren auf Papier)

Image: Charles Games (Train to Sachsenhausen)

Digital games offer an interesting opportunity, particularly in the field of remembrance culture: they give players agency, require active engagement with the content when the game design is good, and appeal to both cognition and emotion. Games such as “Train to Sachsenhausen” (Charles Games 2022), “Spuren auf Papier” (playing history 2022) and “Through the Darkest of Times” (paintbucket game 2020) tackle serious topics (Aktion T4, the Holocaust, Nazi resistance) with reflective game design. Of course, playable remembrance culture is not a miracle cure; games cannot replace genuine source work or fully substitute for interviews with contemporary witnesses. Many of the games are now free and can be played on a regular smartphone. Like other learning media, digital games do not simply function in isolation and without context. Only a didactic framework leads to learning. For teachers, using digital games in school means not just letting students play digital games, but providing didactic offerings in connection with the game. Teachers should also take into account the technical requirements and, above all, the playing time. However, digital games do not have to be played through completely; in many cases, a specific section is sufficient. Furthermore, Let’s Play videos can also be used, or follow-up communication such as reviews or comments in game-related forums.

Image: Alexander Preisinger

The future of digitally based remembrance in the field of Holocaust education is open and difficult to predict. However, it is clear that with the passing of eyewitnesses and the increasing distance from the events, a variety of forms of remembrance are emerging. At the same time, the commercialisation and repetition of remembrance is leading to conventions and repetitive images of history. In her work (“The Game is the Memory” 2023), Tabea Widmann has pointed to the constantly recurring topoi of global Holocaust remembrance, as expressed, for example, in quotations from “Schindler’s List” or repeatedly cited Holocaust sites (the ramp, the barracks, etc.). Formerly taboo and scandalised approaches, such as in the form of a comedy (Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful”) or a graphic novel (Spiegelman’s “Maus”), are certainly a thing of the past. Conversely, the Nazi camp continues to be ‘accessible’ only in exceptional cases (such as in “Call of Duty: WWII”) and only with a certain framing. VR applications from the perspective of camp inmates currently transgress the ethical boundaries of what is considered appropriate remembrance. Current projects such as “Erzähl mir, Inge” (“Tell me, Inge”/currently not online), a VR application featuring contemporary witness Ingrid Auerbach, point to the potential of gamification, art and factual communication. In “#lastseen,” players must tag historical materials in an attic like historians, gradually piecing together the history of Nazi deportations. The line between didactic serious games and intelligent docutainment is admittedly thin. The hope for total immersion in digital worlds or the belief in a naïve realism of representation (‘history as it really was’) are misplaced overall. It is to be hoped that digital games, as an innovative form of knowledge transfer and storytelling, will offer developers sufficient scope to find forms of responsible remembrance.