The Museumification of Video Game Artifact Collecting: The Development of Experiences in Archaeological Video Games from Trophy Taking to Decolonizing and Educating

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Digitizing Archaeological Practice: Education and Outreach in the Archaeogaming Subdiscipline" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Collecting objects forms a core game mechanic. Traditionally, critiques have focused on the trivialization of cultural objects. However, I argue that such collections have grown in their educational and informative ability for players. Furthermore, such games are reflexive, informing the public, drawing in potential archaeologists, and being informed by the archaeological community. While dismissing games for their lack of reality has long been common, there is now a generation of archaeologists that grew up with them. In fact, the discipline has made them reach a much more faithful degree of accuracy and dedicated intent with how they describe and characterize objects and their descriptions from more archaeology-themed, fantasy, and sci-fi games from trophy taking to education. Where once they were only collectibles, now some innovate upon them with full descriptive text, voice-over narration, and photogrammetric models. In some ways, creators have responded to the inherently problematic process of simple trophy taking. These new functionalities demonstrate the new possibilities inherent in keeping such mechanics. Instead, plot and context affect the problematic elements one may find in its use more than the mechanics themselves. These games also give archaeologists things to ponder on digital assets in the museum or collections management context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digitizing Archaeological Practice: Education and Outreach in the Archaeogaming Subdiscipline   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35944.0