Tag Archives: Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or A Stab in the Dark?

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The book contract is signed, the chapter authors are completing their chapters, and we have a book cover image from Ubisoft (not this one, this is a screenshot from AC Origins Discovery Tour), I just need to update my own chapter and references.

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or A Stab in the Dark?

Editors: Erik Champion, Juan Hiriart

Publisher: De Gruyter, Video Games and the Humanities series

Section 1: History Through Play

  • Historical Video Games and Teaching Practices,  Marc-André Éthier, David Lefrancois
  • Discovery Tour Curriculum Guides To Improve Teachers’ Adoption of Serious Gaming, Chu Xu, Robin Sharma, Adam K. Dubé
  • Christian Vikings storming Templar Castles: Anachronism as a Teaching Tool, Ylva Grufstedt, Robert Houghton
  • Ludoforming The Past: Mediation Of Play And Mediation Of History Through Videogame Design, Julien Bazil

Section 2: Cultural History, Tours And Tourism

  • Studying Greek Culture Through Historical Characters In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Nathan Looije
  • Empathy and Historical Learning in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Discovery Tour, Juan Hiriart
  • Ubisoft’s Ancient Greece Discovery Tour as a Pedagogical Tool for a School Trip, Kevin Péloquin, Marc-André Éthier
  • Discovering The Past As A Virtual Foreign Country: Assassin’s Creed As Historical Tourism, Angela Schwarz

Section 3: Narration, Creation, and Exhibition

  • Classical Creations in a Modern Medium: Using Story Creator Mode in a University Assignment, Hamish Cameron
  • Assassin’s Creed @ the Carlos: Merging Videogames and Education in the Gallery, Kira Jones
  • From the Sketchbook to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: An Experiment in Architectural Education, Manuel Sanchez Garcia,  Rafael de Lacour
  • Assassin’s Creed As Immersive and Interactive Architectural History, Erik Champion

Book Chapters on the way (provisionally)

book chapter, , , , , , , , ,
  1. Champion, E. (2021: pending). Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity: Virtual opportunities. In E. Wandl-Vogt (Ed.), Biodiversity in connection with Linguistic and Cultural Diversity. Vienna, Austria. Written.
  2. Champion, E. (2021: under review). Not Quite Virtual: Techné between Text and World” In Texts & Technology: Inventing the Future of the Humanities, edited by Anastasia Salter and Barry Mauer, University of Central Florida, Orlando Florida USA. Written.
  3. Champion, E. (2021: under review). Workshopping Game Prototypes for History and Heritage. In Digital Humanities book, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Aracne Publishing Company. Written.
  4. Champion, E., & Hiriart, J. (2021: pending). Workshopping Board Games for Space Place and Culture. In C. Randl & M. Lasansky (Eds.), Playing Place: Board Games, Architecture, Space, and Heritage. Written. Publisher being negotiated.
  5. Champion, E. (2021). Reflective Experiences with Immersive Heritage: A Theoretical Design-Based Framework. In A. Benardou & A. M. Droumpouki (Eds.), Difficult Pasts and Immersive Experiences. London, UK: Routledge. Abstract accepted.
  6. Champion, E., Nurmikko-Fuller, T., & Grant, K. (2021: pending, invited). Blue Sky Skyrim VR: Immersive Techniques to Engage with Medieval History. In R. Houghton (Ed.), Games for Teaching, Impact, and Research UK: De Gruyter. Abstract accepted, full chapter due March 2021.
  7. Champion, E. (2022: pending). Swords, Sandals and Selfies: A Tour You’d Kill For. In C. Lee & E. Champion (Eds.), Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes Publisher to be confirmed.

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.

game-induced cultural tourism slides available

3D and game editors, archaeology, Conference, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Presentation, , , ,

My presentation slides for virtual The Interactive Pasts Conference Online 2 (TIPC2), (held 5-6 November, notionally, at Leiden) are on slideshare.

The twitch stream for the conference is at https://www.twitch.tv/valuefnd (my talk from yesterday is on there somewhere).

Swords Sandals and Selfies in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey: The Cultural Tourism Package You’d Kill For

Schedule November 5 Session 2: 12:00 – 13:30

This paper explores Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey as a way to explore idyllic historic landscapes and heritage sites with some degree of questing and simulated danger. It applies Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey in two ways, as discovery tour option mode and as a metaphor to explore in more general and speculative terms how questing and historical dilemmas and conflicts could be incorporated into both fan tourism and cultural/historical tourism  (Politopoulos, Mol, Boom, & Ariese, 2019).

Keza MacDonald views Assassin’s Creed as a virtual museum, Ubisoft regards it as the recovery of lost worlds: “ “We give access to a world that was lost” said Jean Guesdon (MacDonald, 2018). “Discovery Tour will allow a lot of our players to revisit this world with their kids, or even their parents.”

Origins’ Discovery Tour mode “promises” educational enlightenment (Thier, 2018; Walker, 2018); Odyssey’s additional Story Creator Mode (Zagalo, 2020) adds personalized quests. Beyond the polaroid fun of sharing landscape selfies with other players and ancient history voyeurs across the Internet, there is also the prospect of “Video game–induced tourism:  a new frontier for destination marketers” (Dubois & Gibbs, 2018). Plus physical location VR games. Game company Ubisoft created escape game VR and virtual tours inside physical exhibitions such as Assassin’s Creed VR – Temple of Anubis (Gamasutra Staff, 2019). Is there a market for historical playgrounds as virtual tourism?

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.

Notes to self: Parkour History and Assassin’s Creed

archaeology, Architecture, game, heritage, ,

Notes to self on the above game.

How can the parkour mechanic of Assassins Creeed be better utilised?

  • The game does not have an editor
  • You cannot export assets
  • Can you game play with an avatar
  • Can you have reflection in the game
  • Can you explore interpretation
  • Can you understand East West transfers of knowledge and culture

References
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/253678/The_world_design_of_Assassins_Creed_Syndicate.php

Chris Kerr (2015, September 18). The world design of Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Gamasutra, http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012306/Designing-Assassin-s-Creed. During the production of Assassin’s Creed 2, the design team faced the challenges of an enormous scope, one of the biggest development teams ever assembled and a limited time frame. This session is about sharing our best practices to ship high quality games through a focused and rigorous Design Process while maximizing the output of production.
Patrick, Ploude. This talk demonstrates why identifying core game mechanics is critical to improving the quality of your title. It also shows how a solid Documentation process can made sure that your team follows a clear path throughout production. GDC 2010. URL: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012895/Designing-Assassin-s-Creed

Counterfactual, Counterfictional, Counterfutural: Games of the Future Designed By Archaeologists (the book idea)

3D and game editors, archaeology, Conference, virtual heritage, visualisation, ,

Like Assassin’s Creed but upset over how it could have made history exciting without having to employ and manipulate central historical characters? Love Lara Croft: Tomb Raider if only the tombraiding (stealing) mechanics could be replaced by something more meaningful? Wish that the Total War Series allowed you to employ agent modelling to test competing archaeological theories of migration, colonisation and invasion or just to improve its historical accuracy? Dream you could use the  language, graphic vision and immersion of Far Cry Primal in the classroom to explain (through engaging interaction) the Mesolithic rather than primarily use it as a backstage to fight semi-believable creatures? Then this book is for you. Correction. This book is BY you.

Brief: Archaeologists and historians either take a game with an inspiring concept, technique or mechanic and extrapolate it to a game or simulation of the future OR they share their vision of a game or simulation that reveals, expresses or augments their own research.

1. This becomes an edited book. But wait…

The writers could meet at a workshop, bring their own designs, video cutscenes, and illustrations and media depicting what this new vision would look like or how it could be experienced or how it could be revealed. Or other writers or the public or even budding game designers could provide their own illustrations, walkthroughs, PLAYABLE DEMOS, diagrams or audio recordings of what the original author’s vision could be experienced as.

2. This becomes an online sensory experience mixed in with online chapters of the book. But wait..

3. There can also be a dynamically compiled new online game created from tagged elements of #2. The reader can either choose to read the book, to read and experience the multimedia book chapters online OR select their favourite mechanics, scenarios, techniques, illustrations etc from any or all of the chapters and then the online website automatically creates a multimedia collection to suit the tags of the chosen components..the reader has now designed, experimented, or played with a whole new potential game or scenario of archaeology, history and heritage in the future..

But wait…

4. The game designers who helped in the workshop are so inspired they help the archaeologists design these new ludic visions of the future..

Revolutionary Woe: Notes on Assassin’s Creed III

archaeology, game, heritage, virtual heritage

Invalid Memory

1.

Against better judgment, I always felt compelled to give Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series the benefit of the doubt, an undoubtedly foolish errand motivated mostly by a long-standing craving for a decent blockbuster open-world action series. I consider these games a kind of equivalent to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, titillating a base desire for silly, undemanding madcap fun loaded with swashbuckling rogues and propulsive energy. The first few games are amusing at times, bolstered primarily by the easy charisma of Ezio Auditore in his narrative trilogy. At other times, these early games even touted what could be argued as thematic depth or artistic risk, sentiments that emerge when considering the first Assassin’s Creed’s allegory for a post-9/11 political landscape or the underappreciated Assassin’s Creed: Revelation’s Brutalist architectural abstractions.

But these instances are merely outliers that have more to do with capable critics than the games…

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