Category Archives: game

Out in print oh so soon

Academic, Announcements, augmented reality, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, Virtual travel

Books

Playing with the Past: Into the Future (second edition, ebook out soon)

Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, the Virtual, and the Cinematic-I’m a co-editor but have a chapter on videogame tourism in there somewhere..

Book Chapters

Working on now/sent

  • Champion, E., Stadler, J., Lee, C., & Peaslee, R. (Eds.). (2023: In press). Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: the Real, the Virtual, and the Cinematic. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Screen-Tourism-and-Affective-Landscapes-The-Real-the-Virtual-and-the/Champion-Lee-Stadler-Peaslee/p/book/9781032355962. 
  • Champion, E., & Hiriart, J. (2023: In press). Workshopping Board Games for Space Place and Culture. In C. Randl & D. M. Lasansky (Eds.), Playing Place: Board Games, Popular Culture, Space. MIT Press. 08/2023.
  • Champion, E. M. (2023: In press). Digital Heritage Ethics. In A. Pantazatos, T. Ireland, J. Schofield, & R. Zhang (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Ethics. Routledge. 
  • Champion, E., & Emery, S. (2023: Pending). Gamification of Cultural Heritage as a resource for the GLAM sector. In J. Nichols & B. Mehra (Eds.), Data Curation and Information Systems Design from Australasia: Implications for Cataloguing of Indigenous Knowledge in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. Routledge. 
  • Champion, E. (2022: In press). Not Quite Virtual: Techné between Text and World. In B. Mauer & A. Salter (Eds.), Reimagining the Humanities. Parlor Press. 

Conference paper

Game Design Prototyping Workshop

Academic, Announcements, board game, game, serious games, workshop

Prototyping games in a workshop format..just published a short paper on a “Game Design Prototyping Workshop” with Simon McCallum in Wellington NZ @ACM_ISS 2022 (also trying out Kudos, in partnership with ACM) https://www.growkudos.com/publications/10.1145%25252F3532104.3571472/reader

Game Design Prototyping Workshop, November 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), DOI: 10.1145/3532104.3571472.

book chapter out: Reflective Experiences with Immersive Heritage

Academic, Announcements, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality

Google told me I can buy my chapter today in this book out soon “Difficult Heritage and Immersive Experiences” my chapter is “Chapter 2. Reflective Experiences with Immersive Heritage” #chapter #difficultheritage #darkheritage

In this chapter I will examine difficult and dark heritage. Others have articulated the overlap and potential different connotations and spheres of influence of dark heritage and difficult heritage (Thomas et al. 2019). For the sake of expediency, I will not attempt to distinguish between difficult heritage and dark heritage (a term imported from dark tourism) as I am particularly interested in the difficult interaction aspects of communicating dark heritage due to the technical challenges of virtual heritage, gaps or immaturity in virtual heritage as a distinct scholarly field, and the still to be fully explored role and impact of virtual heritage as an immersive and interactive medium capable of coaxing, encouraging and affording reflectivity.

PhD Project Call, no fees

Announcements, augmented reality, Digital Humanities, game, job, PhD, serious games, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , , , , ,

PHD project in Adelaide, no scholarship but no fees, with cool museum partner (https://mod.org.au):

The successful candidate will investigate and design learning kits for museums, communities and small classes to create escape rooms either physical or hybrid, or via a game engine. The kit will provide resources and interaction strategies to help budding escape room designers plan escape rooms for their compatriots, and in doing so learn for themselves how to create tricky interactive puzzles, quizzes and physical riddles based on principles in science, mathematics or history. The instructions will be either via virtual examples through a game engine or game engine exporting to VR, or via online instruction videos using the latest instructional video expertise.

Successful completion of the project will provide you with experience in boardgame, physical escape room, digital game or VR escape room design including scripting, prototyping, digital modelling, and potentially animation experience. As well as a background in human-computer interaction and education. Thus, you will be provided with the skills for a successful and exciting research or industry career in a diverse range of areas. 

What you’ll do

In this project-based research degree, you will review, design and evaluate design resources (physical and digital) for the creation of escape rooms by design students.

You will engage and partner with MOD. staff and deploy IVE, VR and AR equipment, as well as run and evaluate escape room design workshops.

Where you’ll be based

You will be based at UniSA Creative, incorporating the South Australian School of Art, which brings together the disciplines of architecture, planning, art and design, journalism, communication and media, film and television and the creative industries to produce flexible graduates with multidisciplinary capabilities. Our research explores the complexities of the world around us. We engage in future-focused, cross-disciplinary research and consultancy to produce inspired solutions that are human-centred and sustainable.  

https://www.unisa.edu.au/research/degrees/designing-an-escape-room-toolkit

Game Prototyping Workshop in NZ

game, serious games

I am hosting the Workshop on Game Design Prototyping at ACM ISS (Interactive Surfaces and Spaces) conference, 20 November 2022, with Simon McCallum, Wellington, NZ.

This workshop will take place over half a day and focus on tools and example projects that break down necessary and sufficient elements of effective game design, tips to create and encourage small group design ideas, and potential environmental challenges that can be overcome or at least approached with low-cost and accessible tools and platforms. We will focus on physical prototypes but can also examine games using game engines or specific XR formats but we don’t expect to have HMDs available.

Call for Participation

This workshop will take place over half a day and focus on tools and example projects that break down necessary and sufficient elements of effective game design, tips to create and encourage small group design ideas, and potential environmental challenges that can be overcome or at least approached with low-cost and accessible tools and platforms. We will focus on physical prototypes but can also examine games using game engines or specific XR formats but we don’t expect to have HMDs available.

We will work in groups of 3 and 4 on provided game challenges, ideas developed by individual groups or we can (with enough notice) work on improving and game-testing ideas and prototypes provided by attendees.

The proposed schedule will be:

SectionMinutes
1. Introductions for all20
2. Overview: games, gamification20
3. Discussion of technologies, methods + prototyping10
4. Group suggests ideas.10
5. Short break/questions.20
6. Selection of teams10
7. Work on game ideas as prototypes, and playtest solutions.90
8. Present prototypes/suggestions in class.30

TOTAL HOURS: 3.5

Outcomes

Ideally, by the end of the workshop, the participants will:

  • Provide (at some stage of the experience), a framework in which the player (or perhaps, here, participant is a better word) gains an overview of what has been documented, simulated, or construed.
  • Convey a sense of the historical context, and the way in which that shaped the actions of the inhabitants.
  • Affordances to help participants understand and explain the information in a way that suits them rather than the designer and to allow for different pathways, actions and goal selection.
  • Encourage the participants to seek out more information for themselves beyond the immediate simulation.

Organizers

Enterprise Fellow Erik Champion, has organized game design workshops in Australia, Italy, Poland, Qatar, Finland, and USA. He specializes in virtual heritage and serious games for history and heritage.

Simon McCallum is a games expert and has over 25 years experience having taught games in New Zealand and Norway. Simon has also spent some time working for games companies in Norway. Simon helped setup the NZ Games Development Conference in the early – mid 2000s.

Face to Face Attendance

This workshop will be physical but the first 45 minutes (introductions and background to tools and techniques) could be accessible online if required. Ideally, the workshop will be 12 to 20 people.

Contact

Please contact Erik.Champion@unisa.edu.au for further information about submissions.

Registration

To register to attend the workshop please see the ACM ISS Registration Information.

Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes

Academic, Announcements, Book, book chapter, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, Virtual travel,

If anyone would like a review/inspection copy of the edited book “Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, the Virtual, and the Cinematic” (out 30.12.2022, cover to come) there is a link on the webpage.

  1. Introduction
  2. Screen Tourism: Marketing the Moods and Myths of Magic Places
  3. Windshield Tourism Goes Viral: On YouTube Scenic Drive Videos of U.S. National Parks
  4. “Forever Bali”: Surf Tourism and Morning of the Earth (1972)
  5. Locating Fellini: Affect, Cinecittà, and the Cinematic Pilgrimage
  6. Walking in Cary Grant’s footsteps: the Looking for Archie walking tour
  7. Vancouver Unmoored: Hollywood North as a Site of Spectres
  8. Always The Desert – Creating Affective Landscapes Through Visual Storytelling In Breaking Bad
  9. Nordic Noir and miserable landscape tourism
  10. Serial Killer Cinema and Dark Tourism: The Affective Contours of Genre and Place
  11. Down the Rabbit Hole: Disneyland Gangs, Affective Spaces, and Covid-19
  12. Immersive Worlds and Sites of Participatory Culture: The Evolution of Screen Tourism and Theme Parks
  13. Hobbiton 2.0, 20 years on: Authenticity and Immersive Themed Space
  14. Swords, Sandals, and Selfies: Videogame-induced Tourism

Escape Room Archaeology

3D and game editors, Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, heritage, Open Access, publication, serious games, virtual heritage, ,

Next project: edited collected chapters (free online): DIY archaeology (history, architectural/art history and heritage) escape rooms children/students can create at home or in class (written and illustrated like cookbook recipes). Now, just how to write up the proposal & find the right designers, writers, & experts! 

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

3D and game editors, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, board game, Book, digital heritage, game, serious games

I am very close to submitting to a publisher the edited book (with Dr Juan Hiriart, University of Salford, UK) “Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or a Stab in the Dark?” with 18 writers from history, archaeology, architecture, art history, classics, game design, and education. Thanks to Maxime Durand and Ubisoft for helping getting the party started.

Swords Sandals and Selfies

3D and game editors, Academic, book chapter, Digital Humanities, game, serious games, virtual heritage, visualisation, , ,
An abstract from a draft chapter. I have written the chapter but hope to revise it further. It is for a book entitled Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes, out, I hope, early 2023.

The prospect and potential of videogame-induced tourism has only recently been discussed in academic publications. I will examine three possible reasons why, I will provide evidence to the contrary, and suggest new developments that may accelerate the impact of videogames on tourism (and the related experiencing of affective landscapes). My main case study will be Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. This 2019 game draws the player into the exploration of idyllic and war-torn historic and mythic landscapes of Athens and Sparta, via questing and simulated violence. It also features a non-violent “Discovery” mode, photographical functions, and a Story Creator mode allowing quests (and in-game photos) to be designed and shared with other players. Beyond violent gameplay, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey allows the exploration of idyllic historic landscapes and heritage sites. Given the company employs both high-quality designers and professional historians (and archaeologists), we can employ such sandbox games as both a pre-visitation visualisation tool and as a hybrid fictional and yet also factual learning environment.

PhD scholarship available

Announcements, augmented reality, HCI, heritage, PhD, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,
A Framework for Developing Educational Games in and with Australian Museums

This PhD project focuses on reviewing challenges and successes in Australian museums (MOD, National Maritime Museum and the South Australian Museum) with the aim to develop a participatory open-ended game framework to encourage greater engagement, wider audiences, and increased visitation, as well as reuse of content, data, and related media.

The successful candidate will focus on either the evaluation and framework based on interviews, surveys and workshops with museum experts, or on developing overall game mechanics examples (game prototypes) showcasing best practice game techniques for showcasing Australian museum content, promoting reuse.

This project is funded for reasonable research expenses. Additionally, a living allowance scholarship of $28,854 per annum is available to Australian and New Zealand citizens, and permanent residents of Australia, including permanent humanitarian visa holders. A fee-offset or waiver for the standard term of the program is also included. For full terms and benefits of the scholarship please refer to our scholarship information.

URL here.

Immersive Challenges for Museums & Heritage Sites

3D and game editors, Announcements, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, serious games, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation, Web GIS

I will give a talk tonight via Zoom to UniSA IVE colleagues on the above topic.

Time: 4PM

2022 IVE Research Seminar Series

Please join our next IVE Seminar.

Presenter:


Prof. Erik Champion

Enterprise Fellow, UniSA Creative


Title:
Immersive Challenges for Museums and Heritage Sites


Abstract:

This talk will cover recent and persistent challenges facing museums, practical issues with the implementation of virtual reality, games and gamification, and some case studies exploring potential solutions, particularly in the area of cultural heritage.

Bio:

Erik Champion is currently Enterprise Fellow (Architecture, Creative) at the University of South Australia; Emeritus Professor at Curtin University; Honorary Research Professor at ANU; and Honorary Research Fellow at UWA. He was recently a chief investigator on 4 Australian Research Council grants, Curtin University’s first UNESCO Chair (of Cultural Visualisation and Heritage) and Visualisation theme leader and Steering Committee member of the Curtin Institute for Computation. 

https://people.unisa.edu.au/Erik.Champion

Date & Time: 5 April 2022 (Tuesday) 4pm (Adelaide ACST — Australian Central Standard Time UMT +9 hours 30 minutes)

Where: Zoom

PhD scholarships at UniSA in South Australia

Announcements, Digital Humanities, heritage, job, PhD, serious games

There are two PhD scholarships at the University of South Australia, in Built Environment and Design, that may interest Australian or NZ citizens or Australian permanent residents:

https://www.unisa.edu.au/research/degrees/research-projects/#design-thinking-for-supporting-sustainable-bu

Details of the supervisors are listed against the projects.

No, I am not a supervisor for either, I am currently helping PhD students at my last university submit their theses (two passed so far, three to go!)

To offer a PhD scholarship-supported project at UniSA, I have to propose and have accepted a project, then students can apply. For self-funded PhD study, students can apply straight away.

new book project in screen tourism and landscapes

Academic, augmented reality, Book, book chapter, Digital Humanities, game, Virtual Reality, visualisation, ,

With two fine co-editors our edited book proposal on the above topic has been through the review process and judged fit for publication with helpful and positive comments.

It still has to pass the publisher editorial meeting in January but our editor there does not see any problems. Given we still need formal approval, I hope to announce more details in a month or so. We do still need a chapter or more on Asia but otherwise I am very happy with our authors and draft chapters. Congratulations everyone!

Ph.D. finally added to the University repository

Academic, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, virtual heritage

I deposited my PhD thesis (Evaluating Cultural Learning in Virtual Environments, 2006) at the University of Melbourne but they only just now added it to their new system, here it is:

https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/294933

There is still a great deal of opportunity for research on contextual interactive immersion in virtual heritage environments. The general failure of virtual environment technology to create engaging and educational experiences may be attributable not just to deficiencies in technology or in visual fidelity, but also to a lack of contextual and performative-based interaction, such as that found in games. This thesis will suggest improvements will result from more research on the below issues:

1. Place versus Cyberspace: What creates a sensation of place (as a cultural site) in a virtual environment in contradistinction to a sensation of a virtual environment as a collection of objects and spaces?

2. Cultural Presence versus Social Presence and Presence: Which factors help immerse people spatially and thematically into a cultural learning experience?

3. Realism versus Interpretation: Does an attempt to perfect fidelity to sources and to realism improve or hinder the cultural learning experience?

4. Education versus Entertainment: Does an attempt to make the experience engaging improve or hinder the cultural learning experience?

This doctoral thesis outlines a theoretical definition of place, culture, and presence that may become a matrix for virtual environment design as well as a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of appropriating game-style interaction to enhance engagement. A virtual environment was built using Adobe Atmosphere to test whether cultural understanding and engagement can be linked to the type of interaction offered. The thesis also includes a survey of evaluation mechanisms that may be specifically suitable for virtual heritage environments. In its review of appropriate methodology, the thesis suggests new terms and criteria to assess the contextual appropriateness of various evaluation methods, and provides seven schematic examples of game-style plot devices that lend themselves to evaluation. The test-bed is the evaluation of a virtual archaeology project in Palenqué Mexico using theories of cultural immersion as well as computer game technology and techniques. The case study of Palenqué involved five types of evaluation specifically chosen to assess cultural awareness and understanding gained from different forms of interaction in a virtual heritage environment.

Keywords

virtual reality in architecture; imaging systems in archaeology; computers and civilization


Living Digital Heritage 2021

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, augmented reality, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, heritage, infrastructure, serious games, Symposium, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, visualisation

I was given the honour of opening Living Digital Heritage conference with a keynote today and full congratulations to Frederik Hardtke and the other organizers at Macquarie University’s Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage & Environment (twitter @cachemq) in Sydney, a great range of papers, all presented on Zoom. Finishing Sunday 7 November (when I fly to South Australia to take on a new role so I may miss a little of it).

If you are interested you may be able to follow via the above twitter links, I don’t know if they still accept registration but it was free.

Normal service to resume

Academic, Announcements, Architecture, Grant, serious games

This weekend I leave for the “Athens of Finland”, that’s right, the Aalto city, Jvyäskylä, to be a visiting fellow. The University of Jvyäskylä is a partner in the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (https://coe-gamecult.org). I’ll still have news and posts to update this site with but postings may be irregular (again) for awhile.

To the journals and book editors and conference organizers who seem to regularly ask for my time, I’m sorry, I’m cutting back for the next few months and will only take on assignments close to my heart and/or that I have already promised to complete. I have several book projects and some small commissions that should take precedence.

A view from Aalto’s home in Helsinki. Photo taken a decade ago by me.

update: ‘Rethinking Virtual Places’ Proof Approved

Academic, Announcements, archaeology, Architecture, augmented reality, Book, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, game, publication, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , , ,

I mentioned in the below post that I was on the home stretch with this book (in the Indiana University Press Spatial Humanities series), final proof was approved by me this week. I also noticed it was over 107,000 words. Thanks to Dean and Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel for the comments on the back.

“An essential contribution to a very current topic.” —Marc Aurel Schnabel, Victoria University of Wellington

If anyone wishes to review or consider ‘Rethinking Virtual Places‘ for courses please contact Indiana University Press or email me.

Final touches to next book