Tag Archives: Ethics

Virtual Heritage: How Could It Be Ethical?

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Latest book chapter in the works:

Virtual Heritage: How Could It Be Ethical? Invited chapter for The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Ethics, Andreas Pantazatos, Tracy Ireland, John Schofield and Rouran Zhang (eds.), Routledge, 2023.

Ranging from modified adaption of commercial games (game mods) to multi-million dollar 3D visualizations and web-based projects, virtual heritage projects have showcased cutting-edge technology and provided insight into understanding past cultures. While the research field of virtual heritage (virtual reality and related immersive and interactive digital technology applied to cultural heritage) is several decades old, its specific ethical issues have not been extensively addressed.

Six issues will be discussed in this chapter: cultural ownership; the depiction of humans no longer with us; obsessions with photorealism rather than the complex topic of authenticity; environmental costs; accidental social alienation; and the gamification of serious, traumatic, or personal content.

Virtual Heritage: A Guide

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, publication, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , , , ,

“Virtual Heritage: A Guide” is published and open access!

Why did we write it? For all those interested in an introduction to virtual heritage, but facing steep purchase costs for academic books, so it is especially suitable for university undergraduate courses. Download what you need, for free.

And given it was written from go to whoa in less than a year and to a tight word limit, I am very grateful to the authors for their time…

Cite: Champion, E. M. (ed.) 2021. Virtual Heritage: A Guide. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://lnkd.in/gNkNWiB. License: CC-BY-NC.

Virtual Heritage Article free to download until 21 April 2016

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Elsevier have kindly let me and others download the below article from the Journal Entertainment Computing, (Volume 14, May 2016, Pages 67–74) up until 21 April 2016. From 22 April it will be behind the Elsevier paywall again.

http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Se406gYiZRYG4
No sign up or registration is needed – just click and read!

Title: Entertaining The Similarities & Distinctions Between Serious Games & Virtual Heritage Projects

Abstract:
This article summarizes past definitions of entertainment, serious games and virtual heritage in order to discuss whether virtual heritage has particular problems not directly addressed by conventional serious games. For virtual heritage, typical game-style entertainment poses particular ethical problems, especially around the simulation of historic violence and the possible trivialization of culturally sensitive and significant material. While virtual heritage can be considered to share some features of serious games, there are significantly different emphases on objectives. Despite these distinctions, virtual heritage projects could still meet serious games-style objectives while entertaining participants.