Modern Age in Virtual Games: social representations and didactic applications

Technology has allowed the generalization of new forms of leisure time thanks to new resources such as video games. There are many investigations in which its use as an educational tool is analysed. In this way, concepts such as edutainment or learning by playing are increasingly known. Thus, among other issues, the use of video games in the teaching of history is interesting due to its possibilities to immerse the student in multisensory virtual environments that bring them closer to historical places and times, represented or simulated, transmitting, and constructing images and representations of the past tangentially. However, this tool must meet requirements like historical rigor and teachers' supervision to guarantee its use with educational benefit. After conducting a survey among future teachers, it was found that few students know video games that can be used for the teaching of the Modern Age in the classroom. The mostly referred games belong to the strategy genre (Age of Empires, Civilization and Europa Universalis) and the action-adventure genre (Assassin's Creed). This article focuses on knowing the image of the Modern Age that is being transmitted in these video games, as well as making an approach to the educational potential of them through the analysis of research, experiences and didactic proposals that have been published in the last years.