A House of Ashes Is a House of Archaeology: An Argument for Using Video Games as Public Outreach

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.

In his 2018 book, “Archaeogaming,” Dr. Andrew Reinhard presented compelling arguments and research for video games and board games being important areas of study for archaeologists. In the years since the release of this titular book, many archaeologists who are also “gamers” have begun studying the cultural environments of their favorite games while also utilizing them as teaching tools. Newzoo reported that at the end of 2020 there were approximately three billion people worldwide who played games of some kind. Archaeology-based science communication and outreach often struggles to compete with pseudoarchaeology-based entertainment like “Ancient Aliens”; the use of gaming to communicate important archaeological concepts and ethics could be a valuable asset in reaching the general public. This poster will look at Supermassive Games’ 2021 video game “The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes,” as an example of how archaeogaming can be utilized for public outreach in order to discuss archaeological concepts, ethics, and the impact of pseudoarchaeology.

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): 37239.0