![]() ¹ Archaeology is the study of the ancient and recent human past through material remains in pursuit of a broad and comprehensive understanding of human culture.² In archaeogaming, archaeology is not used as an analogy or metaphor for a certain kind of analysis. What Is Archaeogaming?Īrchaeogaming, broadly defined, is the archaeology both in and of digital games. These scenarios are examples of archaeogaming. No Man’s Sky is the first video game to feature an accidental catastrophic event that forced human players to flee en masse, and now archaeologists can conduct archaeological investigations into how a digital Vesuvius compares to the historic one and if people reacted similarly in the natural and synthetic worlds. Over the next few days I make my way to their abandoned, icebound homeworld and see the memorials they left as they said goodbye. I wonder who they are and what they left behind in their haste to evacuate the planet for another star system. It’s 2017, and I have just learned about a climate-induced mass migration of thousands of people. Still, it’s fun to raid these tombs (and to critique the game while I play). I’ve just earned my masters in archaeology, and it feels good to blow off steam playing as Lara Croft for the very first time, although I’m conscious that this is definitely not representative of archaeology or of how archaeologists behave. Francis in Greece, having solved several puzzles, nearly falling to my death on several occasions, searching for the tomb of a ruler of Atlantis. It’s 1996, and I am working my way through the monastery of St. On the third day of digging, hundreds of Atari cartridges and boxes surface, and the archaeologists catalogue and photograph these artifacts of Late Capitalism, part of a generation’s material culture and digital heritage. The salvage excavation begins the next day, a backhoe puncturing the ceiling of a landfill cell in search of the largest (and possibly only) assemblage of video games ever dumped. This is all the proof needed to mark the spot with an X. After a few test holes, the auger recovers printed cardboard and a few pages of what appears to be an instruction manual. It’s 2014, and a team of archaeologists arrives in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico, to watch as a bucket auger drives thirty feet into the earth to retrieve evidence of a 1983 burial. Any video game-from Pac-Man to Super Meat Boy-can be studied archaeologically. Video games also serve as archaeological sites in the traditional sense as a place, in which evidence of past activity is preserved and has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and which represents a part of the archaeological record.Īrchaeogaming, broadly defined, is the archaeology both in and of digital games… As will be described in the following chapters, digital games are archaeological sites, landscapes, and artifacts, and the game-spaces held within those media can also be understood archaeologically as digital built environments containing their own material culture… Archaeogaming does not limit its study to those video games that are set in the past or that are treated as “historical games,” nor does it focus solely on the exploration and analysis of ruins or of other built environments that appear in the world of the game. Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. ![]() Moreover, his personal anecdotes and gameplay experiences with different game titles, from which his ideas often develop, make it very enjoyable reading.”- Antiquity “he author’s clarity of style makes it accessible to all readers, with or without an archaeological background. A general introduction to archeogaming describing the intersection of archaeology and video games and applying archaeological method and theory into understanding game-spaces.
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