When designing a game for cultural heritage, one is walking
a very fine line between being an educator and an entertainer. But it is not a
matter of choosing one over the other, but rather finding a way to embed the desired information into the game so there's no real distinction. Katy Meyers, an archaeologist who’s interested
in the role of games for outreach and education in archaeology and cultural
heritage has written in one of her replies to an article in the blog “Play the Past” :
“I think one of the major problems with archaeological games
is that they use archaeology as a gimmick. I recently was gifted the Indiana
Jones Game of Life. Needless to say, it did not add to my archaeological
education nor was it actually any fun.
Of course, there are games like Dig! The Maya Project
(http://digthemaya.org/) which attempt to take a more educational perspective.
However, there is a dearth of actual fun. Games like this spread the
misconception that an educational game has to be boring, or has to follow more
traditional methods of transferring information such as through text only.
Educational archaeological games need to find a way to integrate the learning.
I’m often shocked at how much information I know about the world of Halo or the
language of The Sims. The question is, how do we harness this unconscious fun
learning?”
Well, I don’t think there’s a magic formula for this
education & entertainment merger, but if we look at the kind of information
we plan to impart through the game, I believe we will see it is not so out of reach. Whether we are
dealing with archaeological material, historical texts, or both, what we have are
stories, events, phenomena, each with its set of rules. For example, the method
of creating a certain tool, the process of embalming in ancient Egypt, or the
sitting arrangement in the Roman theatre, all had a certain mechanism or a set of rules
to them, and we can also look at more intricate systems, such as social structures,
economic systems and so on… the rules of these events or systems can be used
when designing a game by embedding them in the mechanics of the game.
I know, easier said than done, but certainly doable. In our case, we’re dealing with historical and
archaeological information about Roman and Medieval Bologna, two rather vast subjects,
so we needed a more focused theme. And thus, five sites were picked, most of which are connected both to roman Bononia and 13th century Medieval
Bologna: The roman bridge/Medieval street; The roman basilica/13th century soldiers residence area; Roman theatre; The Isis temple/Vitale and Agricola church and The roman forum.
It is of course not mandatory to visit the archaeological
site which you intend to include in your game, but if there’s an option to do
so, it is recommended, you never know what might inspire you… So I got on a
train to Bologna (only 3 hours! ) and met Sofia (my supervisor) and the team at Cineca. Trying
to think of what the game would be like, Sofia and I brainstormed into the wee
hours of the night and came up with many ideas which I will not reveal (don’t
want to ruin the game for you…) but we decided it would be a first person game
with the characteristics of a quest. The next day Sofia took me on a personal
guided tour in the archaeological sites that would be used in the game plus
some visits to the lovely shops in the area. During our tour we met some of
Bologna's finest who generously shared their knowledge of the sites with us. I
only understood bits and pieces, as my Italian is rather basic, but Sofia gave
me a summery at the end and it was very enlightening, so thank you kind people
of Bologna! After our tour Sofia and I went to meet the team at Cineca where we held
another online meeting with all the people involved and at the end I had guidelines
and a general framework in which to create the narrative and a storyboard for
the game.
That’s it for this entry.
Next time, a little bit about narratives and games…
