Education or fun? Creating video games to promote archaeological thinking
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 13/01/2021

Video games are one of the most appealing media at our disposal to communicate knowledge about the past. The unique combination of interaction and storytelling they offer allows the player not only to see the recreated world, but also to experiment in it.

The engagement with a game is explained by the fact that the player needs to take an active role inside the recreated world. This world should always be crafted to strengthen game mechanics and this requirement presents a challenge to anyone that wants to use games for archaeological outreach; the most accurate version of the past will be meaningless if the story, characters and dynamics of the game are unable to capture interest. The creation of a video game created to inform about the past should be guided by the basic requirement that the game needs to be fun.

The need to accomplish two parallel goals (player engagement and outreach) introduces challenges and constraints while designing the game. Additionally, educational games typically have very low budgets so how can they compete for players’ interest against multi-million-pound commercial games which are not even restricted to these educational requirements?

We explore here these questions by discussing the development and release of two video games funded by outreach projects: Evolving Planet (2016) and Ancestors: stories of Atapuerca (2018). Our main aim is to promote debate on the best ways that video games can be used to present archaeological research to audiences not typically engaged by more traditional outreach initiatives.


Xavier Rubio-Campillo, University of Edinburgh, School of History, Classics and Archaeology / Murphy’s Toast Games