Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Abstract

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-ofthe-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented.

Design and Implementation of the Jomini Engine: Towards a Historical Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

“…This is supported by a broadening range of simulations in domains such as management or cultural heritage. Anderson et al [21] investigated the use of serious games in the field of cultural heritage and drew attention to the increasing provision of modding tools as an intrinsic part of many commercial games, allowing for them to be adapted for educational purposes. From a design perspective, accuracy is a key feature for any wargame or historical simulation.…”

An Interactive Immersive Serious Game Application for Kunyu Quantu World Map

“…For example, a health serious game teaches the skills involved in training future intervention radiologists (Chan, 2012), and a military relevant simulation framework for adapting scenarios in a game engine based upon the user's neurocognitive and psychophysiological state is also proposed (Parsons and James, 2012). The use of games to support cultural heritage purposes is well documented in Anderson, Liarokapis and Peters's investigation, including three types of computer-game-like applications: prototypes and demonstrators; virtual museums; and commercial historical games (Anderson et al, 2010). Chen (2010) implemented Jing-Hang Grand Canal Serious Heritage Game.…”

Stories from the History of Czechoslovakia, A Serious Game for Teaching History of the Czech Lands in the 20th Century – Notes on Design Concepts and Design Process

“…2); 3) "Would you accept the following graphical style for such a game?" 1 In addition, we asked them 4) whether "Stories of the in-game characters should..." a) "exactly correspond to real stories", b) "be based on real stories", c) "be specifically fabricated for the educational purposes", d) "does not matter". The results are depicted in Tab.…”

“…Majority of students is mildly skeptical towards usage of games in formal schooling system and detailed analysis of their statements supports the idea that games should be used as a supplement only and that the teachers role and consecutive contextualization of the game play and discussions are vital, cf. [1,10,13]. Representative sample of citations of high-schools students 18 or 19 years old: "Simulations [in education] are fine, but it depends on teachers how they will use them."…”