Affective Negotiators of World War I How Video Games Battlefield 1 and Valiant Hearts: The Great War Engage in Cultural Discourses of History

Date of Award

2026

Document Type

M.A. Essay

First Advisor

Miya Xie

Second Advisor

Roopika Risam

Abstract

This paper compares how the video games Battlefield 1 (2016) and Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014) engage with cultural understandings of authenticity of World War I. The comparison focuses on how the games use game mechanics and genre, narration and characterization, and archival structures to engage with their historic topic. I argue that the games’ specific approaches to these elements reveal different affective relationships that the games build towards the history of World War I that in turn influences what players experience as historically authentic. Drawing on Laura Saxton’s definition of authenticity in historic fiction, Chris Kempshall’s investigation of the historiographic process of the video games Battlefield I and Valiant Hearts, Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling,” and Aubray Anable’s affect based game theory as a theoretical framework, the paper argues that the perception of historical authenticity can be formed through the affective relationship between player, games, and historical content. The analysis compares the games’ use of game genre and play-perspective, characterization and narration, and archival structures.

Battlefield 1’s first-person shooter perspective, and comparably weak affective potential in its narration and archive create an experience centered on game conventions and the soldier perspective. In contrast, Valiant Hearts uses unconventional play perspective, character focused narrative and highlighting of archival structures that foregrounds individual experiences of family, care, survival, and loss. Its fictional characters and historically grounded contexts allow the game to create affective connections to the past without relying on factual accuracy alone. The paper therefore argues that Valiant Hearts demonstrates the potential of video games to shape historical understanding when they utilize their affective potential. Valiant Hearts example demonstrates how video games can build authentic structures of feeling through which players can experience historical events through personal perspectives and individual fates.

Original Citation

Leithe, Tobias Peter Ulrich. "Affective Negotiators of World War I: How Video Games Battlefield 1 and Valiant Hearts: The Great War Engage in Cultural Discourses of History" (2026). Comparative Literature M.A. Essays.

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