The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games

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 or Assassin’s Creed to innovative indies like Never Alone and Herald, games have integrated heritages and histories as key components of their design, narrative, and play. This has allowed hundreds of millions of people to experience humanity’s diverse heritage through the thrill of interactive and playful discovery, exploration, and (re-)creation. Just as video games have embraced the past, games themselves are also 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.

Table of Contents

Tutorial: An introduction to archaeology, heritage, and video games
Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos

Part I: Ethical Approaches to Heritage and Video Games

1. Storytelling for the Next Generation: How a nonprofit in Alaska harnessed the power of video games to share and celebrate cultures
Cook Inlet Tribal Council

2. Tradigital Knowledge: Indigenous video games, copyright, and the protection of traditional knowledge
Gabrielle Hughes

3. Chickens in Video Games: Archaeology and ethics inform upon complex relationships
B. Tyr Fothergill & Catherine Flick

4. Herald: How Wispfire used history to create fiction
Roy van der Schilden & Bart Heijltjes

Part II: Analyzing and Designing Games from an Archaeological Perspective

5. Designing and Developing a Playful Past in Video-Games
Tara Jane Copplestone

6. Video Games as Archaeological Sites: Treating digital entertainment as built environments
Andrew Reinhard

7. Single White Looter: Have whip, will travel
Erik Malcolm Champion

8. On Games that Play Themselves: Agent based models, archaeogaming, and the useful deaths of digital Romans
Shawn Graham

Part III: Playful Heritage Outreach

9. Playing the Archive: Let’s Play videos, game preservation, and the exhibition of play
René Glas, Jesse de Vos, Jasper van Vught & Hugo Zijlstra

10. Explaining Archaeological Research with Video Games: The case of Evolving Planet
Xavier Rubio-Campillo, Jorge Caro Saiz, Guillem H. Pongiluppi, Guillem Laborda Cabo & David Ramos Garcia

11. Crafting the Past: Unlocking new audiences
Julianne McGraw, Stephen Reid & Jeff Sanders

12. The Potential for Modding Communities in Cultural Heritage
Jakub Majewski

13. Looking for Group: A collective chapter writing game
The Interactive Past Community

Leveling Up: The future of interactive pasts
Angus A.A. Mol, Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Krijn H.J. Boom & Aris Politopoulos

Afterword
James Portnow (Extra Credits)

Angus Mol is a post-doctoral researcher. He works on the theory and methodology of past and present socio-material networks, ranging from entanglements at Çatalhöyük and cultural encounters in the Caribbean, to the materiality of online multiplayer games. His writings have appeared at Sidestone Press, in a number of international journals, and, as Dr. Random, on www.valueproject.nl.

Csilla E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke completed her PhD as part of the ERC-Synergy project NEXUS1492 at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. Her dissertation explores Caribbean museums and the practices and processes through which they engage with a diversity of communities. She is continuing as a researcher within the same project and faculty, now working to catalogue Caribbean collections in European museums.

"Krijn is a PhD Candidate at Leiden University, Faculty of Archaeology. He works within the framework of the European NEARCH project and researches the socio-cultural impact of public activities in archaeology. Being a passionate gamer and having a background in graphic design, communication and archaeology, VALUE provides him with the ultimate ‘end-game’ research environment.

Key Publications

Dries, Monique H. van den; Boom, Krijn H.J. & Linden, Sjoerd J. van der. 2015. Exploring Archaeology’s Social Values for Present Day Society. Analecta Praehistoria Leidensia 45: 221-234."

Aris is a PhD candidate at Leiden University, Faculty of Archaeology. Aside from video games, he is passionate about the Near East and more specifically the Assyrian Empire and its capital cities. He investigates the reasons for the construction of new capitals, as well as their function within the imperial system. He is also interested in all forms of storytelling and narratives – from Dungeons and Dragons to history-telling.