Archaeology, Heritage & Video Games
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Boom & Politopoulos (eds) & Politopoulos Boom Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Mol, THE INTERACTIVE PAST THE Video games, even though they are one of the present’s quintessential media and cultural forms, also have a surprising and many-sided relation with the past. From seminal series like Sid Meier’s Civilization INTERACTIVE or Assassin’s Creed to innovative indies like Never Alone and Herald, games have integrated heritages and histories as key components of ARCHAEOLOGY, their design, narrative, and play. This has allowed hundreds of millions HERITAGE & VIDEO GAMES of people to experience humanity’s diverse heritage through the thrill PAST of interactive and playful discovery, exploration, and (re-)creation. Just as video games have embraced the past, games themselves are also PAST THE INTERACTIVE emerging as an exciting new field of inquiry in disciplines that study the past. Games and other interactive media are not only becoming more and more important as tools for knowledge dissemination and heritage communication, but they also provide a creative space for theoretical and methodological innovations. The Interactive Past brings together a diverse group of thinkers — including archaeologists, heritage scholars, game creators, conservators and more — who explore the interface of video games and the past in a series of unique and engaging writings. They address such topics as how thinking about and creating games can inform on archaeological method and theory, how to leverage games for the communication of powerful and positive narratives, how games can be studied archaeologically and the challenges they present in terms of conservation, and why the deaths of virtual Romans and the treatment of video game chickens matters. The book also includes a crowd-sourced chapter in the form of a question-chain-game, written by the Kickstarter backers whose donations made this book possible. Together, these exciting and enlightening examples provide a convincing case for how interactive play can power the experience of the past and vice versa. edited by Sidestone Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese- ISBNSidestone 978-90-8890-436-3 Press ISBN: 978-90-8890-436-3 Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos 9 789088 904363 THE INTERACTIVE PAST Sidestone Press THE INTERACTIVE ARCHAEOLOGY, HERITAGE & VIDEO GAMES PAST edited by Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos © 2017 Individual authors Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Artwork cover: Alexander Ariese ISBN 978-90-8890-436-3 (softcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-437-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-438-7 (PDF e-book) Contents Tutorial: An introduction to archaeology, heritage, and video games 7 Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos PART ONE: ETHICAL APPROACHES TO HERITAGE AND 19 VIDEO GAMES Storytelling for the Next Generation: How a non-profit in Alaska 21 harnessed the power of video games to share and celebrate cultures Cook Inlet Tribal Council Tradigital Knowledge? Indigenous video games, copyright, and the 33 protection of traditional knowledge Gabrielle Hughes Chickens in Video Games: Archaeology and ethics inform upon 53 complex relationships B. Tyr Fothergill & Catherine Flick Herald: How Wispfire used history to create fiction 73 Roy van der Schilden & Bart Heijltjes PART TWO: ANALYSING AND DESIGNING GAMES FROM AN 83 ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE Designing and Developing a Playful Past in Video Games 85 Tara Jane Copplestone Video Games as Archaeological Sites: Treating digital entertainment 99 as built environments Andrew Reinhard Single White Looter: Have whip, will travel 107 Erik Malcolm Champion On Games that Play Themselves: Agent based models, archaeogaming, 123 and the useful deaths of digital Romans Shawn Graham PART THREE: PLAYFUL HERITAGE OUTREACH 133 Playing the Archive: ‘Let’s Play’ videos, game preservation, and the 135 exhibition of play René Glas, Jesse de Vos, Jasper van Vught & Hugo Zijlstra Explaining Archaeological Research with Video Games: The case of 153 Evolving Planet Xavier Rubio-Campillo, Jorge Caro Saiz, Guillem H. Pongiluppi, Guillem Laborda Cabo & David Ramos Garcia Crafting the Past: Unlocking new audiences 167 Julianne McGraw, Stephen Reid & Jeff Sanders The Potential for Modding Communities in Cultural Heritage 185 Jakub Majewski Looking for Group: A collective chapter writing game 207 The Interactive Past Community Levelling Up: The playful promise of interactive pasts 225 Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos Afterword 233 Colleen Morgan Tutorial An introduction to archaeology, heritage, and video games Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos A 16th century Dutch windmill stands guard as an army of Roman legionnaires clashes with the riders of the Mongol Golden Horde. They fight for control over Machu Picchu. A terrorist attack damages a World Heritage Site; one month later and several thousand kilometres away, a group of people aged 8 to 60 come together and, block by block, reconstruct the monument in the space of an afternoon. In the setting sun of a land far from his home, a Dwarf archaeologist lays bare an ancient ruin of his people. He recovers one of its artefacts and sells it to an Elf at an auction. These scenes may sound like make-belief, but these and many other unbelievably real pasts are experienced daily by millions of people in video games and other virtual interactive media. Although interactive pasts can take a myriad of forms, in this book the focus lies with the virtually playable: video games. The games discussed run the gamut from single player experiences to Massively Multiplayer Online games, from text-based to graphical interfaces, from edutainment to mass media titles, and include mods of games, simulations, and agent based models. The chapters in this book will demonstrate how games can be tied to the past or to the study of the past, showing their relevance for the present and their potential for the future. Whether you are an avid gamer or new to video games, a video game developer or scholar, if you are intrigued by the idea of a playful past, this book may be of interest to you. Incredibly diverse at their core, the chapters range from topics mol et al. 7 Figure 0.1: A triptych of virtual pasts in the present (from left to right): Roman legionnaires and the Mongol Golden Horde fight over Machu Picchu in Civilization V | VALUE’s collaborative Minecraft reconstruction of the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, damaged by IS in 2015 | World of Warcraft’s promotional art for the in-game archaeology profession. such as indigenous game development, to archaeological game mechanics, and the preservation of play. They are written by game developers, archaeologists, heritage specialists, educators, ethicists and archivists, spanning the globe from Australia to Alaska. To make your way through the book, begin by completing this short tutorial – a concept we are borrowing from video games – which will place the development of games and the playful study of the past in their contexts, as well as provide you with a teaser of every chapter. The book also contains a unique feature: a crowdsourced chapter which was written collaboratively by those who financially supported this publication. At the end, we will Level Up with a consideration of what the future of interactive pasts may hold. History of Games (Studies) The enduring rise of virtual, interactive media constitutes one of the major pillars of the digital revolution. The onset of electronic computing in the 1950s almost simultaneously saw the birth of simple, computer-based games that mimicked analogue board games or sports. In the 1970s, virtual, interactive media became accessible for the general public with arcade machines and home gaming consoles. Subsequent developments in hardware, from personal computers to tablets and smartphones, were immediately adopted by game developers and gamers. The ability to play online with others, made feasible by the advent of the internet in 1991, was another major development in the meteoric rise of this medium. By this time, networked, personal computers had already given rise to Multi-User- Dungeons and other text-based, shared virtual worlds. Yet, the internet and better computer hardware allowed for new online interactive experiences, including the graphical virtual worlds that would become the multi-million user online, virtual worlds we see today. To illustrate the extent of the current, growing interest in online gaming, it was responsible for 82 Petabytes of internet traffic in 2015 and this is projected to rise to 568 PB by 2020 (Statista 2016a). In the coming years, virtual and augmented reality technologies are predicted to increase the impact of interactive media in all aspects of daily life and segments of the population 8 the interactive past (Statista 2016b). Clearly, virtual, interactive media are a major economic, social, and cultural force, and, despite lingering stereotypes, the community surrounding it is a heterogeneous group in which people of all genders and ages are represented (ESA 2016). Naturally, computer science is the overarching field that is involved in the study and (more importantly) the creation of all facets of video games and other interactive media, with developments increasingly taking place in the creative industry rather than at universities. Video Game Studies – a mix of critical media and technology studies that take psychological, anthropological, and sociological approaches to play – have also made a significant contribution to this field, by studying and critiquing interactive media as a cultural form (Bogost 2015; Mäyrä 2008). Aside from Video Game Studies, there are more and more studies of virtual, interactive media in which the subject has grown to be a subfield of an established discipline. One prominent example of this is the psychology of video games, and in particular the open and contentious question whether they incite violent behaviour in players (e.g.