The Interactive Pasts Conference: Andrew Reinhard
3Presentation at the Interactive Pasts Conference, April 4th 2016, Leiden University.
Andrew Reinhard (archaeogaming.com)
Video Games as Archaeological Sites, and the Artifacts they Contain
"A video game is an archaeological site. In meatspace an archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved, which may be investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and represents part of the archaeological record (the body of physical evidence about the past). This definition applies to video games. A video game is a discrete entity where the place can be defined as the space in which the game in installed (not necessarily its installation media). The past activity is the coding that created the game. Its elements can be directly observed and manipulated, part of the record of the game. This presentation will demonstrate how video games are archaeological sites, and will identify artifacts, typologies, and context using examples from old and new games, moving from human-created culture within games to machine-created material culture in procedurally generated environments."
https://archaeogaming.com/