The game of making an archaeology game : proposing a design framework for historical game design

Hiriart, JFV

Abstract

In the last years, game technologies have been increasingly raising the interest of archaeological communities as means to communicate the scientific data, process, interpretations, and findings from sites. This interest is evidenced by numerous examples of projects using game-type interactions and gaming technologies to communicate archaeological information. Although these projects have undoubtedly contributed to moving this discussion forward, still the problem of designing archaeological games able to mobilise the full potential of the medium remains a challenging task. In many cases, the preferred approach consists of “picking up” an existing game or game genre from the shelf of commercial titles, adapting their representational layers to fit the specifics goals of the project. In our view, this approach seriously limits the perspective of what games can do as a historical medium and excessively constraints their design space. In this presentation, I would like to propose a design framework developed to guide the effort of translating historical data and information into meaningful gaming experiences. In line with the spirit of this session, I will describe the ideas and functioning of the framework through a board game: the game of making an archaeological game. By playing this meta-game, participants will follow the decisional steps of the design framework, gradually moving from the messy tangle of initial game ideas, archaeological data, and interpretations, to a workable first definition of a game prototype.

Citation

Hiriart, J. (2018, March). The game of making an archaeology game : proposing a design framework for historical game design. Presented at Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) International Conference, Tübingen, Germany

• Presentation Conference Type: Keynote
• Conference Name: Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) International Conference
• Conference Location: Tübingen, Germany
• Start Date: Mar 19, 2018
• End Date: Mar 23, 2018
• Publication Date: Mar 23, 2018
• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 20, 2018
• Related Public URLs: https://caa-international.org/
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference