BarBalkans, an English/Italian project powered by The New Union Post, covers Western Balkans with a special emphasis on the Yugoslav Wars. Recently it featured an interview with Vladimir Petrovic in order to get an insight into the logic behind CISI’s gamification of the Yugoslav collapse through alternative history scenarios.
Petrovic detailed on how this idea came about, of the design, production with SENSE center and the logic behind it. He emphasized the importance of digital history for contemporary teaching process. Particularly its interactive form has the potential to engage younger generation, prompting them to learn basic facts, but also teaching them that no historical outcome was predetermined. Structural causes and individual actions, inner and foreign politics, and even mere coincidences intertwine in complex historical processes. The main role of historians is to shed a light on what had happened. However, it is too easy to slide into historical determinism and conclude that something had to happen just because it happened. Games like this play with alternative histories to remind us that just because something happened, that does not mean that it was inevitable.
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