What Does Assassin's Creed III Have to Do with a Museum?

One weeknight at the Hamilton Military Museum, a scout group was scheduled to come in and participate in our Red Coats and Muskets program, which would help fulfill the requirements of their Heritage Badge.

During our programming, I tend to ask the kids a lot of questions to get their brains ticking. Although the other scouts were very excited to raise their hands or even shout out answers to my questions about the War of 1812, one in particular did not have any interest in participating. He was actually becoming quite disruptive – until I started asking questions about the use of flintlock muskets by British soldiers.  You could almost hear something clicking in his head.  

I showed the leather bag used to carry the ammunition and asked what you would put in a musket to make it fire. For the first time, this scout raised his hand and confidently said “They are called cartridges; they aren’t bullets!” Before I could ask my next question, this boy who had previously shown no interest at all starting excitedly running off facts about the use of a musket – "you’d bite the end of the cartridge paper with your teeth to expose the gunpower; you'd use the ramrod to shove the entire cartridge into the barrel; then you’d use the flintlock to make a spark to ignite the musket; it  is very slow and doesn’t shoot very far, and makes a lot of smoke" etc. etc. 

All true by the way, and all important to understanding how the available technology affected battle in the War of 1812 – for example, the smoky muskets is one of the main reasons why the British wore bright red: so they could see their own soldiers through the fog of the battlefield! 

At first I thought it was a little strange that this 13 year old knew so much about muskets after showing no interest at all in military history. So after praising his knowledge, I asked him how he’d learned all this. He told me his favourite video game was called Assassin’s Creed III.

This is a popular video game, which creates an alternate history of the American Revolution; it features Red Coat soldiers and muskets, and battle tactics that were very similar to those used in the War of 1812.

Now, I’m not saying it is great that this 13 year old was playing violent video games rated for adults. I am saying that sometimes you can get kids to connect with history in unexpected ways. Once this scout saw the connection between his game and real history, he was much more excited to learn and participate.