The entire schedule for TIPC-Online 2! Each day has three sessions and one keynote, with breaks between each session. You can expand the abstract to read more about the subject.
Schedule November 5
Session 1: 10:00 – 11:30 CET (04:00 – 05:30 EST)
- Playing (with) Alfred: an “auto-ethnographic” analysis of the portrayal of Alfred the Great (849-899) in two 21st century computer games – Martine Mussies, Utrecht University
Abstract
My proposal for The Interactive Pasts Conference 3 aims to combine two explorations: (dis)abled gaming as an autistic person and the representation of historical figure of Alfred the Great (849-899) in Crusader Kings II (Paradox Interactive 2012) and Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia (Creative Assembly 2018). There is a clear gap in the autoethnographic research on autistic gaming experiences, as well as in the autoethnographic research on turn-based strategy games. Moreover, there is no scholarly writing about the depiction of Alfred the Great in video games yet. An understanding of identity-building methods in games will be beneficial in the context of imaginary creature studies, where virtual manifestations of historical figures remain underexplored as well. Special attention will be given to the ways in which the games’ musics and other audio contribute to the creation of the virtual identity of Alfred the Great. An autoethnographic research journal is used as primary tool to create an analysis combining my subjective gameplay experience with extraludic narratives (such as game guides and “let’s play”-videos), for a layered account of the perceived portrayal of Alfred the Great.
- A Room with a Viewfinder: Archaeogaming and Photography – Florence Smith Nicholls
Abstract
Photography has played an important role in video games and gaming communities. This has manifested itself through the marketing materials that represent gaming experiences, creenshots shared by players via social media, photo modes which allow for greater player control of their in-game photography, and photography itself as a game mechanic.
Charlotte Carter (2015) argues that since the 1960s archaeology has strived for a scientific aesthetic in its photography, using the ranging rod as a prop for legitimacy. Just as photography is one of the primary tools for recording archaeology in the analogue world, it is also indispensable for the archaeological recording of digital spaces. As photographical conventions have yet to be established in archaeogaming, this paper will explore the potential for the photographic recording of video games to embrace self-expression.
As Dia Lacina explains: “Just as Instagram and the ubiquity of affordable smartphones had a democratizing effect on who created and owned images, 2017’s photo modes had the same effect on game photography.” The emancipatory potential, and ethical concerns of community archaeogaming photography will be explored in this paper, along with the importance of recording the embodied context of play.
- Twitch Played Pokémon: A Niche Community Still Remembers – Aris Emmanouloudis, University of Amsterdam
Abstract
On February 2014, an anonymous user began streaming a game play video on the streaming platform Twitch. That stream, named Twitch Plays Pokémon, featured a modified version of the game Pokémon Red, whose play the viewers were able to control by sending inputs all at the same time. Soon enough, apart from just focusing on finishing the game, the fans-viewers had developed communities, along with a plethora of memes, fanfiction, and even a joke religion. In addition, multiple hubs were created with the objective to document and archive the stream’s history, records, and even contributions from the fanbase.
Nowadays that the stream’s popularity has dropped, and while it is in a state of declined viewership and participation, there still remains a niche audience bent on maintaining the community and its ideals. More remarkable is the fact that despite significant changes to the scope and orientation of the community, those archives of the past fame have been left unscathed, and are quite respected by its members.
Based on research by Axel Bruns (2013) on the affordances of streaming and user- generated content, I examine how this case transcends the regular case of user- generated fan art, and becomes one of the first examples of pure fan-generated narrative. Clearly a case of a very peculiar “poaching”, in the words of de Certeau (1984), this community of resistance and alternative readings managed to provide a “reading” that not only left its mark to Pokémon fandom, but even made it to mainstream popular culture.
In this presentation, I am also examining the stream’s effect on hacking cultures and the streaming industry in total, while also reflecting on its current status of declined popularity and the tools used by the remaining members to keep the community alive, often through references to the past, archived material.
Session 2: 12:00 – 13:30 CET (06:00 – 07:30 EST)
- Swords Sandals and Selfies in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, A Tour You’d Kill For – Erik Champion
Abstract
This paper explores Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey as a way to explore idyllic historic landscapes and heritage sites with some degree of questing and simulated danger. It applies Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey in two ways, as discovery tour option mode and as a metaphor to explore in more general and speculative terms how questing and historical dilemmas and conflicts could be incorporated into both fan tourism and cultural/historical tourism (Politopoulos, Mol, Boom, & Ariese, 2019).
Keza MacDonald views Assassin’s Creed as a virtual museum, Ubisoft regards it as the recovery of lost worlds: “ “We give access to a world that was lost” said Jean Guesdon (MacDonald, 2018). “Discovery Tour will allow a lot of our players to revisit this world with their kids, or even their parents.”
Origins’ Discovery Tour mode “promises” educational enlightenment (Thier, 2018; Walker, 2018); Odyssey’s additional Story Creator Mode (Zagalo, 2020) adds personalized quests. Beyond the polaroid fun of sharing landscape selfies with other players and ancient history voyeurs across the Internet, there is also the prospect of “Video game–induced tourism: a new frontier for destination marketers” (Dubois & Gibbs, 2018). Plus physical location VR games. Game company Ubisoft created escape game VR and virtual tours inside physical exhibitions such as Assassin’s Creed VR – Temple of Anubis (Gamasutra Staff, 2019). Is there a market for historical playgrounds as virtual tourism?
- Involving experts in tourist visits: City Heritage Treasure Hunt Game – Pelin Bolca, Rosa Tamborrino, Naylor Vilas Boas
Abstract
Cultural heritage should be inherited from generation to generation. The need to involve the students, and to offer them the opportunity to learn beyond the usual historical urban narratives are crucial. In this regard, although gamification represents an effective way, it usually frames the young generation or non-specialized people. For this purpose, a treasure hunt game has been conceived and experienced in Turin. It was organized to explore the multi-layered urban heritage within the city by linking its different elements, forming a playable system based on the city´s tangible and intangible values. Moreover, the system allows to explore urban space. It also links to historical information organized in the portal ‘’MuseoTorino’’ as well as other digital collections. It helps to create insights in the history of Turin towards a heritage hunt as well as achieving advanced learning. Even though this prototype aimed to interact with students, it can be extended to other experts on the matter who are skeptical about guided tours and games. In this way, this system can respond to the needs of both foreign and local experts to reach a more advanced knowledge of the city. Accordingly, this paper presents the game mechanism, the integrated historical aspects, and the way of the system diagram. In addition, the experiment will be explained and pros-con results will be discussed. Finally, it represents the way of the involvement of experts in tourist visits by using gamification as an effective way.
- Video Games: An Interpretive Tool for Museums – Amy Hondsmerk
Abstract
As museums and heritage sites consider the ways in which they can engage visitors in the digital age the sector has progressively looked to the video games industry. Tapping into the ‘experience economy’ (Park and Gilmore 1999), this intersection has allowed museums to explore the role of play in understanding the past. This has taken various forms including collaborations with game companies, utilising existing games to reach gaming communities and broaden audiences, and developing new museum-based games. Yet, whilst many of these game-related initiatives have been successful, thus far the museum sector has mainly employed video games in a manner that has been limited, with museum games remaining primarily focused on educational or entertainment goals. In the context of changing understanding about interpretation in museums and, specifically, of the recognition of the role of visitors in the interpretative process (Hooper-Greenhill 2000, Staiff 2014), this paper will argue that the sector is yet to realise the full potential of museum video games.
Using the example of two museum-related games, the Chain Bridge Forge VR Blacksmith and the ‘Word by Word’ experimental mobile app from the IT University of Copenhagen and the National Gallery of Denmark, this paper will examine how recent video game projects in the cultural sector have utilised the affordances of the medium in order to explore the potential for video games in facilitating museum interpretation and visitor participation. Thereby diversifying the ways in which visitors can interact with, understand, and challenge dialogue around objects, intangible heritage, and history.
Session 3: 14:00 – 15:30 CET (08:00 – 09:30 EST)
- The Authenticity Battlefield – Angus Mol
- Return to Return to Pirate’s Isle – John Aycock
Abstract
Return to Pirate’s Isle (1983) was a cartridge-based graphical adventure — a text adventure with illustrations — released for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer. Back in 2013, I found an interview fragment with the game’s programmer (and storied early game entrepreneur)
Scott Adams that hinted at the use of some interesting implementation techniques in the game. I contacted Adams, who recalled only a few of the details, so I reverse-engineered the game’s images and wrote a program to reconstruct them. That should have been the end of the story.
However, the game’s code itself was somewhat inscrutable. My reverse engineering of the game images, in the end, was done without recourse to the code. Furthermore, I noticed using a wall-sized visualization I created that the game caused a distinctive pattern of activity in the computer’s graphics memory, but time constraints prevented further exploration. In 2016, I stumbled across a tantalizing hint in an interview that could potentially explain the code’s oddities, and 2019 brought enough time to return to the game’s analysis and test that hypothesis, along with the creation of a number of new analysis tools for archaeogaming that are generally useful beyond this one artifact. These methods are not limited to digital artifacts; I also used X-ray imaging to view inside the game cartridge without opening and potentially damaging it.
In this return to Return to Pirate’s Isle, I explain the implementation techniques Adams used, show off the analysis methods, and solve the mystery of the code.
- Counterfactual history from below: Hearts of Iron IV Kaiserreich Mod – Jakub Šindelář
Abstract
First released in 2005 for Hearts of Iron II and later for its sequels, the Kaiserreich mod, one of the most popular mods for HOI IV, expands on the counterfactual history possibility of the original games. While the HOI series offers the possibility to change the outcome of the Second World War, the Kaiserreich mod takes alternative history where Germany won the First World War as a starting point. Interestingly the mod’s counterfactual history lore is based on real historical figures and conditions. The developers claim to write the scenarios of different parts of the world based on historical research. The alternative timeline diverges in 1917, which allows the authors of the mod to tell the stories of people and movements of historical significance that failed and have disappeared to oblivion. Here, Rosa Luxemburg, Emiliano Zapata are raised from obscurity as possible heads of state. Besides this, the mod also broadens the focus of history beyond military history, presenting events about social and cultural topics, like the football world cup, Nobel prizes, or corruption. Well balanced and with numerous possible scenarios, the mod also works as a simulation of the historical process, highlighting the contingency and serendipity that applies to real history. Based on the analysis of in-game events, developer diaries, and forums, the paper will briefly introduce the Kaiserreich mod and on selected cases present how user modifications can balance gameplay demands with presenting more diverse if contrafactual history.
Keynote: 16:00 – 17:00 CET (10:00 – 11:00 EST)
Jon Ingold of inkle Studios. Jon is the Narrative Director of inkle Studios. inkle are know for their wonderful narrative games such as Heaven’s Vault, 80 Days and recently released Pendragon!
After-conference fun: 21:00 CET (15:00 EST)
To round up day one of TIPCO2, we will be playing some Among Us! You can join us, but you do need to sign up to be in our Discord! Sign up information here.
Re-run of day 1: 00:00 CET (18:00 EST)
We will re-run the entire day on our Twitch Channel from 00:00 CET (18:00 CET) onwards. Be aware that there will be no moderation in chat, so you can’t ask any questions live!
Friday November 6
Session 1: 10:00 – 11:30 CET (04:00 – 05:30 EST)
- Premiere of TimesnewRoman’s video series on Imperator Rome – Corine Gerritsen
Abstract
Our lovely intern Corine Gerritsen, TimesnewRoman, has created a video series on Paradox Interactive’s Imperator Rome. While a lot of focus has been on the historical accuracy of games, these videos will focus on the representation of cultures in Imperator Rome. The main aim is to figure out why certain elements were incorporated in this game. The choice for the form of representation allows us to understand what the position is of a specific culture in a collective memory of a smaller or bigger group of people, or what the developers wanted to show to their public. In these videos, Corine will demonstrate this perspective by looking at the Etruscans. By studying some main features, government, decisions, religion and diplomacy, we can see how the game wants to show the Etruscans and what this would mean for the broader conception of the culture. The first two video’s of the series will premiere at TIPCO2!
- Ahistorical Games: Abstraction and Fabrication for Research through Play – Robert Houghton
Abstract
The surface similarities between historical academic outputs and approaches and historical games and game design are increasingly acknowledged. Development teams conduct historical research, they create arguments and explanations on the basis of this research, and they present these arguments through their games’ mechanics and data. Games can ‘do history’, even if they do it in a different way from traditional historians. For example, Crusader Kings II is built around a massive database of historical characters from across Africa, Europe and Asia between c.700 and c.1450. This database shares surprising similarities with many academic database projects including The Making of Charlemagne’s Europe which collate historical characters and their relationships. The key difference is that academic databases strive to present wholly accurate information on the basis of their sources while game databases must focus instead on the production of complete and holistic datasets. In this paper I will use the example of Crusader Kings II to go beyond existing work and argue that the abstract and inaccurate nature of games is advantageous for the study of history in several ways. I will highlight the abstractions and fabrications within the game’s database of historical characters noting the alteration of personal details and the creation of fictional figures. I will consider the causes of these abstractions addressing limitations of the medium alongside research and design considerations. Finally, I will argue that while these fabrications would disqualify the game’s character database as a traditional academic output, the resulting product retains several advantages as research tools.
- “They Consulted With Experts so they Must be Right”: Why We Should Still Care About a Reconstructionist Approach to History in Videogames – Adam Bierstedt
Abstract
Historians looking at the trailers of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla seem to have been drawn first to the anachronisms of the game. Period-inaccurate arms, armor, and architecture serve as the focal point for historian and player concern. Much of the conception of historical authenticity within a videogame relies on a reconstructionist approach. This paper seeks to interrogate why photorealistic historical videogames view material accuracy as paramount, and whether critiquing failures of that accuracy is worthwhile. I propose that historical videogames serve as a kind of historical tourism, and that sufficiently large factual errors serve to break the illusion of such tourism. Historical tourism imagines the tourist as a participant and witness to the past, overawed by past achievements. It essentially serves as a “good parts version” of living in a context unlike the tourist’s normal reality. While games can be used in and inspire traditional tourism, this proposal views 3D historical games broadly as all instances of tourism. Videogames have long been touted for their immersive qualities, and it is therefore intuitive to interpret historical gameworlds as a form of tourism. A tourism-oriented interpretation of historical games explains and justifies a focus on material accuracy, and the wide range of possible interactions players can have with the history presented in the game. While reconstructionist approaches should not be the be-all and end-all of designer interactions with history, they are a necessary first step that deserves the focus it tends to receive.
Session 2: 12:00 – 13:30 CET (06:00 – 07:30 EST)
- The roles we play in history: Narratives about women in historical digital strategy games – Sophie C. Schmidt and Tine Rassalle
Abstract
In this paper, we will analyze the narratives of and about women in historical 4X strategy video games, focusing on the Age of Empires and Civilizations series. These games center on strategic, tactical, and logistical planning in order to achieve victory. The aims are to eXplore the game world, eXpand the territory, eXploit natural resources, and/or eXterminate the enemy. Some games offer campagnes; linear narratives in which certain objectives are to be reached to unlock a cut scene and a new aim or the next level. In campagnes, the player might be referred to as “the hero”, represented in the game as a unit, even though the play mechanics remain in “god mode”. Our research shows that even though very few women are represented in these kinds of games, some female characters do appear. We ask: what are their stories? Do they take an active role or are they damsels in distress, destined to be rescued? Early studies showed that most digital games rely heavily on stereotypes and archaic role models to portray female characters. In a 2018 survey, however, players observed a trend towards more inclusivity. But, examples are often drawn from RPG’s and First Person Shooters, rarely from strategy games. By analysing two strategy game series, we will give an overview of the chronological development of women in these kind of games. We will focus on the female leaders and their characterisation and back stories, and the women featured in the narratives portrayed in the campagnes.
- Identifying the Historical Gaming Community: Results of the VALUE Survey – Stefan Tibboel and Omar Bugter
Abstract
Over 1600 people filled out the survey put out by VALUE in April and May of 2020. With the survey, VALUE wanted to research not only the community of historical video games, but also how these players think about history in video games. With help of (then intern at VALUE) Omar and BA student Archaeology in Leiden Stefan, VALUE was able to put out a large survey, which was distributed on multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit). With the total number of responses completely shattering every expectation of VALUE, the survey collected many useful data; not only quantitative, but also qualitative data valuable for research. In this talk, Stefan and Omar will talk us through the process of making the survey, and will share some of the first results.
Session 3: 14:30 – 15:30 CET (08:30 – 09:30 EST)
- The Past at Play Lab – Angus Mol, Aris Politopoulos and Sybille Lammes
- Cultural Heritage in Context. Learning by Game creation – Rosa Tamborrino, Willeke Wendrich
Abstract
This presentation addresses on how to scaffold learning through game creation and addresses questions around learning about the past through cultural heritage such as: How to best use existing digital collections through games? How to link intangible to tangible heritage? How to combine challenges of game creation in a teaching/learning environment? These questions have been the starting points of the 2019 International Summer School Cultural Heritage in Context. Learning by Game creation in Turin, at the UNESCO world heritage site of Valentino Castel, organized by the Politecnico di Torino and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. At the basis of our approach is a contextualization of cultural heritage in its cultural/urban/natural landscape, brought to the fore through digital humanities methods and techniques. The 2019 summer school is part of an annual program that is conceived as a Permanent Experiencing Seminar and includes invited international scholars and practitioners for a fully immersive program. The games that were developed focused on both experiencing and imparting knowledge about cultural heritage. We followed two pathways, digital and analogue, to do so. As a case study we worked with the digital collection of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema as part of a joint program. Participants to the workshop were invited to combine different approaches to cultural heritage by constructing links between the digital collection materials and the urban spaces, in the form of context-dependent games. The outcomes demonstrate the value of this approach for learning, sharing knowledge and research.
Keynote: 16:00 – 17:00 CET (10:00 – 11:00 EST)
Leyla Johnson – Mohawk Games. Leyla is the CEO and Lead Writer of Mohawk Games, the company behind Offworld Trading Company and the amazing Old World.
After-conference fun: 21:00 CET (15:00 EST)
We’re not sure what we will be playing, but it’s going to be fun!
Re-run of the conference: 00:00 CET (18:00 EST)
We will re-run the entire day on our Twitch Channel from 00:00 CET (18:00 CET) onwards. Be aware that there will be no moderation in chat, so you can’t ask any questions live!
