Brownbag Talk: Transforming Public Archaeology Through Digital Games

I’ve been invited to give a brown-bag talk in the Department of Anthropology this week talking about archaeology & serious games.  Here is the talk’s description:

For years, researchers have discussed the educational potential of digital games.  Most recently, this discussion has been framed using the term “serious games” – games whose primary purpose is not entertainment.  It is only recently that these discussions have begun to bear fruit in the form of robust game development and published research. While serious games have been used in a wide variety of contexts such as healthcare, the military, and language training, there are far fewer instances of games being used to teach archaeology & cultural heritage. This is unfortunate, as there are many commercial digital games that are only too happy to use archaeology, in one way or another, as the basis for their gameplay – most often resulting in simplistic, inaccurate, or unethical portrayals of the human past, archaeology (as a discipline), and archaeologists (as practitioners in that discipline).  There is no reason whatsoever that archaeologists and other cultural heritage professionals could not use digital games as a powerful tool for public outreach, education, and engagement.

It is in this context that this talk will explore how public archaeology (and archaeology in general) might best take advantage of digital games in order to more positively impact the public’s perception of the human past. We’ll look at the current state of the commercial games (with an emphasis on archaeologically inspired games), serious games, and explore the ways in which serious games can be used to engage and educate the public around archaeological issues.

Tags: anthropology, Archaeology, brownbag, cultural heritage informatics, Serious Games