Category Archives: serious games

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom

3D and game editors, Academic, Book, book chapter, game, serious games, visualisation, ,

Have sent out a proposal to people who use the above game series in the classroom and/or write about it. Have spoken to Ubisoft about this so possibly can work with historians and archaeologists working with Ubisoft as well.

Authors: Will be an ongoing negotiation process, from abstract/title to publisher and external reviews (depending on the publisher).

Audience: Would be useful if it can be used in a classroom (perhaps university-level undergraduate) but with some thoughtful articles.

Content: How Assassin’s Creed evolved in terms of history and simulation, how it is seen (inside and outside Ubisoft) in terms of its potential in education, heritage and tourism. Indeed a book I am co-editing has a chapter on Assassin’s Creed and screen tourism and I have been tasked to write it! But for this project, I would be very happy to get a conversation going between game designers, consultants, historians, academics and game design teachers.

Focus: How could Assassin’s Creed change or create more flexibility for use and reuse and input from these sectors? How do the scholars and designers see new ways of using games to learn about aspects of history that would be of interest to Ubisoft in particular and game companies in general?

Language: I think I should find a co-editor and possibly French-speaking, would it make sense to have French language chapters and or a French version?

Publisher: I don’t have funds for open access publisher fees but ideally it would be (at least in part) free on the web so it could easily be picked up by classrooms. Update: have received some interest already.

Timing: We are looking at a mid to late 2021 final submission by authors so the book might have to appear in 2022.

virtual museum kitset/template paper

Academic, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, serious games, visualisation,

My slides for the below EuroMed2020 paper presentation yesterday are on slideshare. We were told the publications will be available at latest in January 2021.

Time-Layered Gamic Interaction with a Virtual Museum Template

Erik Champion, Rebecca Kerr, Hafizur Rahaman and David McMeekin

Abstract. This paper discusses a simplified workflow and interactive learning opportunities for exporting map and location data using a free tool, Recogito into a Unity game environment with a simple virtual museum room template. The aim was to create simple interactive virtual museums for humanities scholars and students with a minimum of programming or gaming experience, while still allowing for interesting time-related tasks. The virtual environment template was created for the Oculus Quest and controllers but can be easily adapted to other head-mounted displays or run on a normal desktop computer. Although this is an experimental design, it is part of a project to increase the use of time-layered cultural data and related mapping technology by humanities researchers.

Not actually published yet, but accepted

Academic, archaeology, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Journal, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, , , , ,

I’m very happy that my rather large article “Culturally Significant Presence
In Single-Player Computer Games” has been accepted for the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. This is despite its 12,587 words covering 4 major games, and attempting to be more conceptual and provocative than normal in a traditional ACM IT-oriented journal..

Very good reviewers too, actually. They made me work hard. I think my abstract is a bit over JOCCH length so that may change but at moment it is:

Cultural presence is a term that researchers have used to explain and evaluate cultural learning in virtual heritage projects, but less frequently in video games. Given the increasing importance of video games to cultural heritage, this paper investigates explanations of cultural presence that could be communicated by games, especially concerning UNESCO and ICOMOS definitions of cultural significance. The aim is to determine if cultural presence can be communicated via video games and across a range of game genres.

Observations derived from game prototyping workshops for history and heritage were incorporated to help develop a teachable list of desirable game elements. To distinguish itself from the vagueness surrounding theories of cultural presence, a theory of culturally significant presence is proposed. Culturally significant presence requires three components: culturally significant artifacts and practices; an overarching framework of a singular, identifiable cultural viewpoint; and awareness by the participant of both the culturally significant and the overarching cultural framework and perspective (which gives cultural heritage sites, artifacts and practices their cultural significance and relational value).

As awareness of cultural presence requires time to reflect upon, single-player games were chosen that were not completely dependent on time-based challenges. Another criterion was cultural heritage content, the games must simulate aspects of cultural heritage and history, communicate a specific cultural framework, or explore and reconstruct a past culture. Four games were chosen that simulate a culture, explain archaeological methods, portray indigenous intangible heritage, or explain historical-based ecosystems of the past based on educational guidelines. The games are Assassin’s Creed: Origins (and its Discovery Tour); Heaven’s Vault; Never Alone; and a Ph.D. game project: Saxon. Their genres could be described as first-person shooter/open world/virtual tour; dialogue-based puzzle game; 2D platform game; and turn-based strategy game.

The aim is not to evaluate the entire range of interactive and immersive virtual environments and games, but to examine the applicability and relevance of the new theory, and to ascertain whether the four games provided useful feedback on the concept and usefulness of culturally significant presence. A more clearly demarcated theory of cultural presence may not only help focus evaluation studies but also encourage game developers to modify or allow the modification of commercial games for classroom teaching of digital heritage. Game content, core gameplay, secondary gameplay, and game mechanics could be modified to engagingly compel players to consider cultural heritage values and perspectives that are not their own.

Board games expose the triple-layering of mechanics

design, game, serious games, ,

I’ve been thinking, one of the problems with the concept of game mechanics is it is not always clear who the mechanics work for, and at what level. Mechanics can refer to and include:

  1. The designer’s intentions.
  2. The actual consequences and results of the system-based code in the wild.
  3. The understanding and intentions of the player.
  4. The staging and real-world unfolding of events due to code, circumstance, and player’s decisions.

Tabletops (physical boardgames) remove the abstraction of code and system-based rules.

  1. The designer’s intentions.
  2. The staging and real-world unfolding of events due to code, circumstance, and player’s decisions.
  3. The understanding and intentions of the player.

I want to move from simple prototypes to playable boardgames to digital implementations of serious games. Creating reactive rather than reflective players, for this purpose, extrinsic learning, would not be ideal.

And adding the missing layer of code to the playability and immediateness of physical games/boardgames/physical prototypes should not get in the way of engagement and understanding. But it often does. SO: understanding how to add rather than destabilize with that fourth step, CODE, would be of use to me.

 

Assassin’s Creed: What is it doing in the history class?

Academic, AI, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, visualisation

I’ve been thinking of asking historians, art historians and archaeologists, if they would like to contribute to a new edited book, primarily (or only) on Assassin’s Creed. How do they or could they use it for teaching and research. What new features would they love to see? Could we get some of the professional historians who advised on the series to write their thoughts, advice, and experiences? Perhaps even one of the game designers who worked on the series?

What would be a good title?

  • Assassin’s Creed for Academics: What We Wrote in the Shadows? (What We Taught in the Shadows?)
  • Assassin’s Creed: Academics Take Aim
  • Assassin’s Creed: An Educated Stab in the Dark
  • Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: Have Eagle, Will Travel
  • update: Alex Butterworth suggested Under the Hood

References

Rethinking Virtual Places

Academic, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation,

I have written a book on the above which looks like (touch wood) will go into production.

I have about 30 images in the planned book but am wondering if I can or should place there an image (8×11 inches, landscape orientation or portrait if there is an area for the cover page text). Do any of the below look ok? Or should I ask a game company for screenshot permission?

Chapter titles are:

1 A Potted History of Virtual Reality
2 Dead, Dying, Failed Worlds
3 Architecture: Places Without People
4 Theories of Place & Cyberspace
5 Rats & Goosebumps-Mind, Body & Embodiment
6 Games are not Interactive Places
7 Do Serious Gamers Learn From Place?
8 Cultural Places
9 Evaluating Sense of Place, Virtual Places & Virtual Worlds
10 Place-Making Interfaces & Platforms
11 Conclusion

Initial image: Microsoft HoloLens in the Duyfken showing mixed reality maps and 3D models (Mafkereseb Bekele PhD project); Ikrom Nishanbaev and Susan at Ballarat Heritage Weekend, Ballarat Town Hall; Ikrom and public member, Ballarat; the HoloLens demo’d at the WA State Archives..

free Critical Gaming eBook for 7 days

Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Biofeedback, Book, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, HCI, heritage, infrastructure, Open Access, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage  (2015 edition) is in a Routledge campaign for May (2020), which allows anyone to register and get free access to the book (via this link) for 7 days. After this 7-day period, they can buy a copy for £10/$15!  *Trust me this is a lot cheaper than before!

Also check out the official Routledge History, Heritage Studies etc. Twitter page

Is there a catch? I honestly don’t know but don’t think so!

Book chapter to write for 2021

book chapter, digital heritage, game, serious games, , , ,

With Dr Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller and Dr Katrina Grant (both at ANU), I have decided to write a chapter on serious games for medieval(!) purposes for an edited book by Dr Robert Houghton (publisher still to be confirmed) on medieval games.. but this is not due until March 2021. Still, does this sound potentially interesting?

Chapter 12 by Erik Champion, Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, and Katrina Grant explores the ways in which Skyrim can be used and modified by undergraduate and postgraduate students to explain, through play, three related aspects of medieval society: the distinctive, related and unique characteristics of Romanesque and Gothic architecture, the art, craft and preservation of calligraphy, literature, inscription and lore; and the importance of the medieval landscape in art history.