When you were growing up, did you ever ask your history teacher why you and fellow classmates had to learn about events that happened before you were even born?  They probably gave you the usual response of, “If you don’t learn history, you are doomed to repeat it.” And although they are right, the method in which they teach this lesson usually goes through the ears of most students, but it doesn’t have to.

More often than not, a history teacher instructs students to memorize dates and names of individuals associated with the most significant events in human history. Now let me ask you, is this the proper way to teach kids history with the end goal being that they do not repeat the bad parts of it? All they are being taught are names and numbers that they will forget once they become adults. This is where my experience as a game designer can help.

As a game designer, my primary goal is to keep my audience entertained and attentive. Whether I send people on dangerous and grueling journeys or put them in a situation where they have to make a tough decision with unknown consequences, I have to start each game with purpose and motivation.

Believe it or not, exciting gameplay and explosions only get you so far. Ask a gamer who the main protagonist of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is, then ask them to play Zelda’s Lullaby from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The reason why nobody remembers the protagonist but can recall that song has to do with the purpose of why you learned that song and the motivation to use it in the fight against evil. Purpose and motivation are essential to constructing stories that are memorable and develop characters and lessons that stick with you into adulthood.

Now, of course, a teacher cannot make up a more thrilling story about history. However, they can teach the reasoning (purpose) behind certain events. If a teacher can communicate to their students the reasoning and thought process of important individuals, they will better understand how a historical event began, how it unfolded, and how it ended. This will motivate students to adopt the good traits of those who helped history and identify and extinguish the negative ones. Instead of learning data, history becomes engraved into a student’s personality where they will subconsciously make better decisions and have better though processes.

In other words, it is up to the instructor to give the full story of why an event played out the way it did in human history. Important players have to be humanized and not put on pedestals, and those in our history who have committed heinous acts should not be condemned but understood as to how they came to be that person.

There are no better stories than those that have actually happened. Truth is always stranger (and more interesting) than fiction.