The “Let's Play History!” project is the first in the German-speaking world to focus on the concept of streaming and playing historical computer games. While computer games with historical content are already the subject of intensive research, we want to place the commentary level at the center of the discussion.

The conference brings together scholars, streamers, consumers, and people from the field of political education for a discussion. Our goal is to stimulate social discourse and draw the attention of the academic community to the opportunities, problems, and challenges of streaming and Let's Play historical games. In this respect, the conference enables a connection between the University of Paderborn and the business community and lays the foundation for longer-term cooperation.

The project will kick off with a conference featuring lively participation from the academic and streaming communities. The presentations will be published in an anthology and used as a basis for developing suitable teaching and learning materials for teacher training students, taking didactic considerations into account. The handouts are to be published by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, with whom contact has been established. Such a collection of materials is intended to serve as a didactic aid for future teachers to work with and teach the medium of streaming in an appealing, knowledgeable, and competence-oriented manner, both in their studies and in the classroom.

After all, the streams are being consumed anyway – but so far there has been a lack of scientific and didactic reflection that would enable prospective teachers and researchers themselves to approach this complex topic in an appropriate manner, in order to make it fruitful but also to question it critically. The project seeks to close this gap.