Carthago Prosperanda Est. Representation of Carthaginians in Video Games (original) (raw)
Related papers
Video Games as Mythology Museums? Mythographical Story Collections in Games
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2023
The growing field of historical game studies (which studies the intersection of history and video games) has often described video games with historical settings as virtual museums, based on their potential to allow players to move through a historical game space and/or interact with historical artefacts. The present article investigates how these insights may be applied to mythological video games (i.e. those that represent and simulate a storyworld known from or inspired by mythological traditions). Specifically, this article argues (1) that through the collection, combination, and presentation of different myths, mythological video games often exhibit characteristics similar to ancient and modern mythography, (2) that on the basis of these mythographical qualities, they may be considered as interactive mythology museums, and (3) that the incorporation of these features has potential for applications in education. As case studies, this article considers the popular games Age of Mythology, Smite, Immortals Fenyx Rising, God of War (and its sequel, God of War: Ragnarök), Apotheon, and Hades in light of their mythographical and museal properties. Finally, several future directions to further improve upon the educational potential of these games for both formal and informal learning are suggested.
Playing with antiquity: Videogame receptions of the classical world
This chapter documents a range of video games which portray classical antiquity. Two trends are identified. One is empire-building, which tends to treat classical (especially Roman) history and seek factual accuracy. The other is hero-centred action, which tends to treat classical (especially Greek) myth and seek creative reinvention. The two trends often intersect in surprising ways.
The Trace Of Archaic Myth In Video Games
The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2019
The relevance of studying video games is explained by ongoing transformation processes in modern culture due to the development of information and communication technologies. ICT radically change the image of the world, the whole environment of human existence. Video games are a significant phenomenon of digital culture, constituting new meanings, new forms of interaction and new cultural phenomena. McLuhan noted the mythmaking power of a medium and the return of the modern age people to the tribal state. Video games, in our opinion, fully involve the player in the space of myth building their own mythological worlds basing on certain archaic mythologies elements. The purpose of the article is to analyze video games in terms of archaic mythology elements representation. The comparative method, phenomenological approach, cultural-historical approach, hermeneutical analysis are used. We analyzed how video games use mythologemes. We can reveal various mythologemes in video games: mother goddess, cultural hero, trickster, heaven and hell, path, chaos-space, golden age, doomsday, etc. In this article we focus on the analysis of three mythologies common in video games: the axis of the world, initiation, the mother goddess. The analysis showed that video games in the genre of fantasy and adventure actively appeal to myth using and interpreting archaic images in their own way. These images get a new breath and a new life in the virtual worlds of video games. These images can be not only formally referred to by the player, but they can be more animated and embodied by one.
The Roman Past through Video Games and Memes
Whilst academics understand the importance of the internet in the dissemination of information, there have been two growing areas that academics have not been able to understand and engage with; these are video games and internet memes. This essay will aim to show how people engage with the Roman past through these mediums and attempt to raise awareness to them.
The HGR Framework: A Semiotic Approach to the Representation of History in Digital Games
Many game designers exploit elements, events, characters and narrations retrieved from human history in order to build consistent and intriguing settings for their digital games. The use of historical elements often involves the creation of a complex playground created by a huge quantity of historical tropes. Historical digital games do not limit themselves to represent the past, but they attempt to reproduce the different levels of relationships and correlations between events, causes and consequences. In this article we describe and propose the HGR framework, an analytic tool for scholars and designers alike, capable of taking into account all the layers and processes necessary to transform history in the setting of a game. In particular, the framework focuses on the three processes needed for creating an historical discourse (Lozano 1987) and on the three translations that the past undergo to become a game: perspectival, digital and ludic. The HGR framework is finally tested on a double case study: the representations of Roman Republic and Empire in Total War: Rome II (2013) and Sid Meier's Civilization V (2010).
Engaging with Historical Imaginaries Through Digital Games
Public History Weekly, 2023
In this article, I will attempt at providing a map of different ways in which digital games allow users to imagine and re-imagine history. By relying on the imaginative engagement of digital games, I will discuss games that enhance and favor historical imagination, also beyond the boundaries of 'literal' approaches to the past, including pseudohistorical, fantasy, and sci-fi games as well. I will focus on three kinds of historical imagination leveraged, favoured, and enhanced by digital games: archaeological, counterfactual, and metaphorical imagination.
Video games that feature historical content – what I term ‘historicizing’ video games – often come in series. Civilization (I – V), Age of Empires (I – IV), Anno (5 pts.), Monkey Island (5 pts.), Total War (7 pts.), Assassin’s Creed (I – IV), to name but a few, are heavily serialized in that they all, save for their respective first incarnations, point continuously to the other titles in their series’, be it on a structural level or with regard to content. That they do so has many reasons that are totally unconnected with everything they represent, economic ones foremost, but also the need to meet genre- and audience-imposed expectations as well as technical limitations. This aside, given that players who liked one in a bundle are likely to play the rest also, the mere factuality of the series carries implications for the content worth mentioning. First, semiotically such a set of game titles is aptly described in Deleuze/Guattari-terms as an instance of the paranoid-despotic regime of signs, where signs signify nothing but other signs, bound up in an endless virtual cycle. And second, philosophically this may be taken as a prime instance of the Nietzschean ‘eternal recurrence of all things’. Both readings converge in the implication that as these games’ series seemingly stage ‘history’, they unlink history and temporality, installing a chron-alogical framing. Thus, they effectively replave in themselves any factual history as the concept is traditionally understood in Western discourse since the middle of the 19th century with affective historicity. In this, they may reflect (as other media featuring historical content as literature, film, TV, radio, comics, re-enactment, ‘living history’, LARP etc.) popular demands not satisfied by academia, or foreshadow a conceptual transition as part of the digital revolution. Time will tell – if this will still be possible, then.
The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage & Video Games
Video games, even though they are one of the present's quintessential media and cultural forms, also have a surprising and many-sided relation with the past. From seminal series like Sid Meier's Civilization or Assassin's Creed to innovative indies like Never Alone and Herald, games have integrated heritages and histories as key components of their design, narrative, and play. This has allowed hundreds of millions of people to experience humanity's diverse heritage through the thrill of interactive and playful discovery, exploration, and (recreation n. Just as video games have embraced the past, games themselves are also emerging as an exciting new field of inquiry in disciplines that study the past. Games and other interactive media are not only becoming more and more important as tools for knowledge dissemination and heritage communication, but they also provide a creative space for theoretical and methodological innovations. The Interactive Past brings together a diverse group of thinkers — including archaeologists, heritage scholars, game creators, conservators and more — who explore the interface of video games and the past in a series of unique and engaging writings. They address such topics as how thinking about and creating games can inform on archaeological method and theory, how to leverage games for the communication of powerful and positive narratives, how games can be studied archaeologically and the challenges they present in terms of conservation, and why the deaths of virtual Romans and the treatment of video game chickens matters. The book also includes a crowd-sourced chapter in the form of a question-chain-game, written by the Kickstarter backers whose donations made this book possible. Together, these exciting and enlightening examples provide a convincing case for how interactive play can power the experience of the past and vice versa.