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There’s an educational box in development in which archaeologists create virtual worlds or work with game developers to recreate ancient sites.
Scientists Alex and Pat have spent many hours researching the main points of From Software’s games, such as the recently released Elden Ring. (BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment)
During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, scientists and lifelong friends Alex and Pat played video games together to pass the time hands-on. It had been years since they played video games, and the ones they chose captivated them so much that they spent many hours outside. of painting doors by reading the worlds they explored hands-on and documenting their discoveries on YouTube for tens of thousands of subscribers.
“It’s not. . . a video game. There are layers and layers of a story that feels very genuine,” Alex said.
We’re not using Alex’s and Pat’s last names because they don’t want their gaming interests to get mixed up with their day jobs as scientists.
They played games from the Japanese studio From Software, known for a series of action games set in medieval-looking fantasy worlds with incredibly complicated fights and breathtaking boss fights. The game’s developer said it deliberately doesn’t explain how globals came to be in their games. be, so that players feel like they’re helping to create the world as they play.
“Almost 95% of the story, those things are removed from the archives, like in a genuine hitale,” Alex said. He grew up in Athens, Greece, so he’s used to seeing ancient ruins lying there without any explanation. He said From Software’s games gave him a similar feeling.
“The ruins are not there for you to interpret and figure something out; you’re just there despite them,” he said. “Not everything is catered to you.”
It takes Alex and Pat a lot of work to come up with a theory that explains the main points of From Software’s worlds. For example, one of the newest games, Elden Ring, has prominent buildings called Divine Towers that tower over just about everything else. Pat said they saw that all of the divine towers had what looked like pieces of rock, but only on one side, and not on the same side.
“We just wanted to explain like — why the hell did the developers make this beautiful tower and then ruin one side of it with like a bunch of crap?”
Explaining this feature has become an intellectual pursuit: is it possible that those towers were carved out of giant vertical rocks?Could it be that a meteorite fell into a pool of lava and some of the lava splashed onto the sides of the towers?
“Just to give you an idea of how far away we are, we made a map and drew the angles on each side. . . This amorphous rock dust was on it and we tried to see: maybe this is compatible with. . . Just one. . . Volcanic eruption or effect sometimes like a meteor?
After a year of studies and discussions, they came to the conclusion that the towers had been built by giants. Then the earth in this global game was bombarded by meteorites that turned the crust into liquid, the lava cooled again, and some of it ended up in those towers.
They detail their process and findings on their YouTube channel, where they are part of a thriving community of From Software fans who puzzle over details of the game lore.
What Alex, Pat, and other wisdom hunters are doing is part of a new educational field called archaeogaming. Archaeologist Andrew Reinhard coined the term, encouraged by questions he asked himself while playing World of Warcraft 10 years ago.
“You were walking through the landscape and suddenly a ruined temple appeared. Well, how did it get there?
Reinhard became so interested in these fantasy worlds that he did his PhD thesis partly on archaeological studies of the Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, a fantasy role playing game, and No Man’s Sky, a space adventure and survival game with entire galaxies to explore. Recently he’s also been studying Fortnite, a competitive online shooting game where the setting and environment change.
“My son will tell them I’m a wonderful Fortnite player to survive,” he said, adding that he’s like other archaeologists in that he needs to perceive and document human culture.
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“Digital spaces have this kind of emotional resonance and connection across generations and also across geographic boundaries,” Reinhard said, emphasizing how many other people still remember their memories of the worlds of the Super Mario or Zelda series. “As an archaeologist, you feel. . . a kind of emotion. . . by seeing how this happens and spreads in real time. “
Using Virtual Worlds to Understand the Past
Studying virtual worlds is still not quite mainstream with his fellow archaeologists but it’s a growing field. Other archeologists use virtual worlds to better understand and recreate the history of the physical world.
For example, archaeologist Kaitlyn Kingsland of the University of South Florida studied an ancient villa in Sicily, where visitors will have to stand on elevated platforms and stare at the intricate mosaics on the ground to protect them. She’s running with a team to create a play with existing three-dimensional knowledge so that other people can practically walk on mosaic floors like the Romans did.
“We’re talking about what things looked like in the ancient world and there’s no genuine way to visualize that point of scale until you’re in the virtual environment where we. . . We’ve rebuilt it. “
Archaeologist Colleen Morgan from the University of York in the U.K. has not only recreated ancient worlds virtually, she also studies whether interacting with virtual avatars of historic figures will change the way people think of them. Her PhD supervisor once commented that we view people from the past as “faceless blobs.”
She worked with researchers and video game creators on an experiment, where they found that after museum visitors in York spent 10 minutes with two historic people from ancient Roman times in virtual reality, they looked at exhibits about those people a little more carefully.
Researchers seek to create accurate ancient representations in virtual contexts. But for From Software game enthusiasts Pat and Alex, the laugh lies in the fact that what they’re looking to discover is fantasy.
“It offers the opportunity to have interpretations that are pretty safe,” Alex said. “To have this. . . The diversity of interpretations for a game is great, having too many sophisticated interpretations to. . . Genuine history is a little bit more problematic, because some are right, some are wrong, and they also have consequences. In this case, it’s like a sandbox for other people who are also interested in the genuine story.
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