Authenticity and Communicating the Past

Day 1 of #ComPDA conference (program) at the University of Cologne and authenticity is a big topic in Q&A

I wonder if

1. a workshop session on writing a charter/guidelines on Authenticity in Digital and Interactive media would be of interest.
2. A gane idea where exoloring and avoiding or collecting the most authentic would be part of the gameplay
3. A tool inside a game/VE to show levels of contestation/interpretation/historical authenticity can reveal the schema/paradata postplay or preplay..

Xavier from Edinburgh is now talking about the exciting non educatonal aspects of Assassin’s Creed (Origins vs Odyssey for example) – I wonder if someone has done a survey of the game assets/narratives and scored/compared their educational/authentic-inauthentic/’fun’ levels and areas. Are fun and education really always directly opposed in these sort of games?

References

Assassin’s Creed

• https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/a3a33g/assassins-creed-origins-ancient-egypt-architecture
• https://business.financialpost.com/technology/gaming/how-ubisoft-montreal-used-historians-to-make-ancient-egypt-authentic-in-assassins-creed-origins
• https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-general/new-assassin-s-creed-has-most-realistic-reconstruction-ancient-egypt-ever-produced-021686
• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/assassins-creed-origins-recreated-ancient-egypt-ubisoft
• How accurate is the representation of Egypt in Assassin’s Creed Origins?
• The Assassin’s Creed Series Is Full Of Historic Inaccuracies
• The Real Historical Context in ‘Assassin’s Creed Origins

General

• The Nara Document on Authenticity
• Experiencing Authenticity at Heritage Sites: Some Implications for Heritage Management and Conservation
• 3-D Virtual Replicas and Simulations of the Past: “Real” or “Fake” Representations?
• The Thing about Replicas—Why Historic Replicas Matter
• The Fallacy of Reconstruction
• Heritage authenticities – a case study of authenticity perceptions at a Danish heritage site
• Amphiboly of Digital Heritage: Why to create authenticity through gamification
• Authenticity through VR-based documentation of cultural heritage. A theoretical approach based on conservation and documentation practices
• Authenticity and cultural heritage in the age of 3D digital reproductions

Communicating the Past, 12-13 Oct, Cologne

This is a great looking program, looking forward to catching up with some old friends.

My abstract is

Games People Dig: Are They Archaeological Experiences or Archaeological Systems?

One of the many but important dilemmas we may encounter in designing or critiquing games for archaeology, (and for history and for heritage), is determining the why: why we should develop, buy, play, and teach specific games for the above disciplines. For archaeology, I propose there is a further interesting bifurcation: between games aiming to convey an experience of archaeology (the what, what it is to experience archaeology), and games aiming to show how systems, methods, findings and unknowns interact either to produce that experience, or to reveal what is unknown or debated (how knowledge is established or how knowledge is contested). Central to this investigation is the question of whether video game genres or games as modes of interaction can be compared against what is learnt from that interactive mode or genre of interaction. Can a schematic framework show what can be communicated and why it should be done? Can it help (schematically) accomplish these goals, and provide criteria for determining when this is or is not useful? Or are we risking a banal gamification of archaeological learning?

Conferences (CFPs)

*START*	DUE	CONFERENCE	THEME	LOCATION
12-Oct-18		C. the Past	Communicating the Past in the Digital Age	Cologne Germany
28-Nov-18	15-Aug-18	VRST18	Virtual Reality Software and Technology	Tokyo Japan
28-Nov-18	20-Jul-18	NZAA	NZ Archaeological Association: Trans-Tasman Dialogues	Auckland NZ
11-Dec-18	14-Nov-18	Linkedpasts	Linked Pasts IV (11-13 Dec) [posters]	Mainz Germany
06-Feb-19	29-Oct-18	3D ARCH	3D Arch/CIPA	Bergamo Italy
17-Mar-19	01-Oct-18	IUI2019	Intelligent User Interfaces	LA USA
10-Apr-19	06-Sep-18	SAA	Archaeogaming session Society for American Anthropology	Albuquerque New Mexico
15-Apr-19	01-Oct-18	CAADRIA	Intelligent and informed	Wellington NZ
23-Apr-19	10-Oct-18	CAA2019	Comp. Apps & Quantitative Methods in Archaeology	Kraków Poland
04-May-19	14-Sep-18	CHI2019	Weaving the Threads of CHI	Glasgow UK
08-Jun-19	26-Oct-18	ECSW2019	Euro Conf on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work	Salzburg Austria
22-Jun-19	30-Nov-18	ISEA2019	25th International Symposium on Electronic Art	Gwangju, South Korea
26-Jun-19	14-Sep-18	CAADFutures2019	Hello, Culture!	Daejeon South Korea
09-Jul-19	?	DH2019	Digital Humanities	Utrecht Netherlands
06-Aug-19	05-Feb-19	DiGRA2019	‘Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo Mix’	Kyoto Japan
01-Nov-19	?	SiggraphAsia	Siggraph Asia 19	Brisbane Australia
06-Jul-20	?	WAC#9	World Archaeological Congress	Prague, Czech Republic
22-Jul-20	?	DH2020	Digital Humanities	Ottawa Canada
01-Oct-20	?	ICOMOS2020	ICOMOS WORLD 2020	Sydney Australia
START	*DUE*	CONFERENCE	THEME	LOCATION
17-Mar-19	01-Oct-18	IUI2019	Intelligent User Interfaces	LA USA
15-Apr-19	01-Oct-18	CAADRIA	Intelligent and informed	Wellington NZ
23-Apr-19	10-Oct-18	CAA2019	Comp. Apps & Quantitative Methods in Archaeology	Kraków Poland
08-Jun-19	26-Oct-18	ECSW2019	Euro Conf on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work	Salzburg Austria
06-Feb-19	29-Oct-18	3D ARCH	3D Arch/CIPA	Bergamo Italy
11-Dec-18	14-Nov-18	Linkedpasts	Linked Pasts IV (11-13 Dec) [posters]	Mainz Germany
22-Jun-19	30-Nov-18	ISEA2019	25th International Symposium on Electronic Art	Gwangju, South Korea
06-Aug-19	05-Feb-19	DiGRA2019	‘Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo Mix’	Kyoto Japan
09-Jul-19	?	DH2019	Digital Humanities	Utrecht Netherlands
01-Nov-19	?	SiggraphAsia	Siggraph Asia 19	Brisbane Australia
06-Jul-20	?	WAC#9	World Archaeological Congress	Prague, Czech Republic
22-Jul-20	?	DH2020	Digital Humanities	Ottawa Canada
01-Oct-20	?	ICOMOS2020	ICOMOS WORLD 2020	Sydney Australia

Single Character 2 Person Climbing Game

A French student Agathe Limouzy (Toulouse) was an intern here at Curtin, I mentored her for a game design project. It was supposed to be cyber-archaeology but morphed slightly into a two person controlling single character climbing game, using an HTC Vive and a leap Controller (tracking hands) attached via a bandana. The person with the Leap can climb or send hand directions to the person in the head mounted display, who controls the legs.

Short video at: https://twitter.com/curtinmakers/status/1042714070120448000

Game prototyping workshop in Turin

At the Politecnico di Torino, Turin Italy, I gave a talk on Monday in their summer school on Cities Cultural heritage and Digital Humanities, on Virtual heritage and publication issues.

Yesterday I ran a workshop on game prototyping especially for history and heritage games.

The slides from the workshop are here

I am particularly interested in developing the conceptual framework for teaching this, on slides 3-4 (with a better diagram!)

Lecture and workshop on Virtual Heritage, Turin Italy

I am presenting a lecture on virtual heritage research and publication on Monday 17 September, and a Tuesday 18 September workshop on game design and virtual heritage

for the Digital Humanities Summer School at the Politechnico Turin Italy. Students are coming from Europe and America (UCLA is also involved)..

URL: http://digitalhumanitiesforculturalheritage.polito.it/index.html

Virtual heritage 40-60 minutes

1. Introduction, overview of important controversies, debates, issues
2. Overview of important journals and conferences
3. Suggestions to improve the field
4. Techniques to improve paper selection
5. If time, discussion of papers the attendees are writing or areas of research worthy of writing in the futures (10-20 minutes)

Game design 4 hours

1. Introductions for all (10-20 minutes)
2. Overview of game design, serious games and gamification (50-40 minutes) finish at 9:30
3. Discussion of technologies, methods and prototyping tools (20 minutes). I will suggest for most they can use twine: http://twinery.org/ ***
4. Group suggest ideas (10 minutes)
5. Short break/questions (20 minutes)
6. Selection of teams (10 minutes) Finish at 11:30
7. Work on game ideas as prototypes and playtest solutions (50 minutes)
8. Present prototypes to all (50 minutes) finish at 12:30

Given the location is in a castle I think some relevant examples would be a good thing to have.

New Journal article out in print

• Champion, E. (2018). Computer Games, Heritage and Preservation. Preservation Education & Research, published by the National Council for Preservation Education, USA. URL: http://www.ncpe.us/about-ncpe/ Not yet online.

Abstract

The video game industry is a profitable one. Juniper Research predicted that worldwide it would pass 100 billion dollars in revenue in 2017 (Graham 2017). Virtual heritage (sometimes defined as the application of virtual reality to cultural heritage), has been an academic field of research for at least twenty years (Addison 2001). In recent years, there has been increasing synergies between video games and virtual reality, thanks to increasingly powerful computers and the development of consumer-priced head mounted displays (HMDs), see-through augmented reality HMDs (such as the Microsoft HoloLens or Meta’s Meta 2), and smart-phone based augmented reality systems. In archaeology there has been recent investigations of “archaeogaming”, defined as “the archaeology in and of video games” (J. Aycock & Reinhard 2017), while virtual heritage designers are moving away from the principle goal of photo-realism, towards the potential of interpretation and conceptual learning (Roussou 2005).