Playing through to Europe? Depiction and Reception of the First World War in the Videogame Valiant Hearts

Abstract

The video game Valiant Hearts, released in 2014 for the First World War centenary, sold over 2.5 million copies and can be considered one of the major contemporary pop-culture historical representations of this war shaping public interpretations of this event. The paper explores how Valiant Hearts, as a kind of informal institution affecting historical remembrance, constructs and encourages a specific framing through the deployment of Europeanizing elements of anti-war narrative, Franco-German reconciliation narrative, and the de-nationalizing logic that indirectly legitimizes the European integration. The analysis of the videogame in the context of the historical film Merry Christmas (2005) is complemented with a close reading of illustrative empirical examples of Let’s Plays (paratextual user-generated videos where people record themselves while playing videogames) that indicate how Europeans of different national backgrounds interact with the game Valiant Hearts. The examined cases point to how the everyday, seemingly apolitical leisure activity of playing and watching videogames dealing with history can advance Europeanizing narratives and present occasions for informal Europeanization.