Sessions

Video Games, Memory and how we think of the Ancient World

Presented by: Sav Sood

This presentation outlines ideas of collective and cultural memory and how they are shaped by popular culture. Pop cultural depictions of the ancient world may be ‘the first and fullest impression of the ancient world many people get’ (Draycott & Cook (2022) p1), and this presentation also analyses the major ways in which the ancient world is depicted and what this says about how games can shape our ideas of the past.  

Players & Pyramids: a short history

Presented by: Kate Minniti

Pyramids in games have been for a long time limited to being elements that immediately signal to players that they have travelled to Egypt in time or space (or both), but the last few years have seen more nuance in their representation.When we look at how they appear in games and how players can interact with them, we might start redefining what ‘pastness’ players expect when they engage in ‘time travel’ to game-Egypt.

Why We Need to Make Games About History and Culture

Presented by: Ahmed Alameen

Games are one of the most influential medium for sharing culture and history, and it is often used to misrepresent people and their culture. In my presentation I plan to address that and how to overcome it through making games that matter. 

Designing Hercules: Narrative, Mechanics, and Visual Authenticity in Myth-Based Strategy Games

Presented by: Joel Gordon

This paper examines the integration of classical mythology into late-1990s and early-2000s PC strategy games, a period in which the genre’s commercial peak encouraged developers to look beyond the strictly historical frameworks that had long defined it. As real-time and turn-based strategy titles increasingly incorporated mythological materia into their world-building, gameplay systems, and narrative framing, figures from antiquity became key mediators of how players interacted with and understood the ancient past. Chief among these was Hercules, who, between 1999 and 2002, appeared almost exclusively in a collection of strategy titles: Ancient Conquest: Quest for the Golden Fleece (1999), Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus (2000), Zeus: Master of Olympus (2000) and its expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis (2001), and Age of Mythology (2002). 

Using Hercules as a case study, this paper analyses how developer intent and player agency intersect to shape his reception within these titles. There are three dimensions to this analysis: (1) the embedding of Hercules’ narrative role within campaign structures; (2) Hercules’ ludic and mechanical function as a heroic unit; and, (3) Hercules’ visual depiction amid the rapidly advancing PC graphics and isometric design of this period. Taken together, these aspects demonstrate how strategy games of this era negotiated continuity with classical tradition (i.e., authenticity) while simultaneously advancing new modes of digital mythmaking and experiences.

"Usually too much titty:" Player Perceptions of Gender in Assassin's Creed

Presented by: Roselyn A Campbell

The Assassin’s Creed franchise of open-world adventure video games allows players to explore lush environments, solve complex puzzles, and experience vividly recreated real locations and historical time periods around the world.  With the introduction of the Discovery Tours, a franchise that already touted itself as grounded in history added an explicitly educational aspect to its recent games. This presentation will assess the results of an online survey that asked players to consider aspects of gender in the ancient world as represented in the Assassin's Creed video games, as well as comments from online chat rooms about women and gender in these games. Specifically, this presentation will explore how women, both playable and non-playable, are portrayed in these games set in the Near East, and how these depictions influence the ways that gamers understand and interpret gender dynamics in the ancient world.

Go Kill Time: Mythological Chrononormativity and Critique

Presented by: Alexander Vandewalle

Video games are frequently fast, hyperkinetic, and violent, which scholars have connected to the high pace of contemporary life and dubbed “chrononormativity”. This also holds for mythological games, where quick heroic violence is a staple gameplay feature. Yet, recent titles have started to renegotiate such chrononormativity, frequently by offering alternatives, critiques, or metatextual reflection. Through detailed readings of The Next Penelope, God of War (2018 and Ragnarök), Hades II, and more, I explore how mythological games reframe traditional temporalities and, in doing so, offer increasingly different types of mythologies.

Repeating Rome: Multiple Truths of The Forgotten City

Presented by: Julie Levy

The Forgotten City is a time loop game set in a remarkably realistic Roman city perched on the brink of mythic disaster.  There are several endings, and each reveals a layer of the truth designed by the developer, until the true ending - the last layer - which takes an unexpected turn.  How does the agency of the player, the choice of when to end the cycle, interact with the narrative of the story and the reality of the history of Rome?

Games as Modeled Beliefs

Presented by: Colin Snyder

This lecture explores how cultures across history have used games to model fate, ethics, cosmology, and social order—sometimes spiritually, sometimes ideologically, and often in historical vacuums. It traces the evolution of playing cards from 13th-century Mamluk Egypt, through their adaptation in southern Europe, to esoteric frameworks shaped by class divides, religious schisms, and social upheaval. The talk concludes with LOGOS DIVINÆ as a contemporary case study: designed as though it could have existed in antiquity, it functions as a meditative artwork, a cosmologically-mapped mnemonic device, and a versatile tabletop game system. By uniting these facets with historically grounded subjects and cultural iconography, LOGOS DIVINÆ models “non-fiction” games, where meaning and play coexist seamlessly.

History's Greatest Hit: How The Oregon Trail Changed The Classroom Forever

Presented by: Meghan Sullivan

In this short but punchy lecture, Meghan Sullivan discusses how the perfect storm of clever gameplay mechanics and freedom of choice combine to create the most successful edutainment game of all time.

Using TTRPGs to Activate Mythology

Presented by: Michael Anthony DeAnda, Kai Hakamori, Ziyi Wu, Alexej Hrajnoha, Bradley Estacio

Mythologies are important historical artifacts, providing insight into the meaning-making processes of a collective people across time, and used to explain metaphysics, cosmological, social, and psychological phenomena. Put differently, mythologies operate to help make sense of existential concepts. Historicizing mythology helps us consider how people made sense of the functions of their contexts, and in retelling them, we enliven them, bringing new meaning to them to align with the shifts in culture.

This panel, consisting of scholar-practitioners, underscores game design as critical cultural praxis. Each panelist will present their design process of developing a game inspired by a myth. Together, these short presentations highlight critical game design strategies to enliven myths and activate them through play. In this instance, play serves as a way for players to engage with myth, demonstrating how mythologies are ripe with meaning and able to hold different lessons through the contexts in which they are told.

Michael DeAnda will begin the panel by laying the foundation for these projects. DeAnda will discuss the synergies between myth, ritual, and games, locating how together, we can make sense of how they operate as structuring systems. With this understanding, we can use both myth and games to design meaningful play experiences inspired by myth, a strategy that invites us to consider the systemic structures of our own contexts.

Following DeAnda, panelists will discuss games they have created from myths drawn from their cultural heritages. Together, these works present the power of games and myth to work in tandem to: activate mythology as a dynamic technology of culture, reclaim stories that have been erased or obscured by colonization and violence, and explore how performance and storytelling contribute to ritualizing the meaning-making processes of games. 

My Golem by Kai Hakamori is an intimate crafting game that explores the role and meaning of Truth and life in the Golem legend. By inviting the player to build their own Golem and interrogate their own personally held truths, Hakomori seeks to reclaim the Golem's story of using craft, scholarship, and truth to preserve a people against lies for local meaning-making — and also encourages the player to think of their art as a living process. '

Inspired by the Chinese myth "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", To the Stars and Back is a two player TTRPG about two lovers separated by space yet bound by love designed by Ziyi Wu. Playing as the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, players create their own version of the love story, taking risks in their relationship and exploring eternal love that lasts through time and distance.

Unravelling Mokos is a solo divination TTRPG designed by Alexej Hragnoha that explores the complexities and uncertainty surrounding the pagan Slavic deity Mokos. Most of Slavic paganism has been erased by early Christianity, leaving us to try to find meaning in the abstract of these deities. In this TTRPG, Alexej Hrajnoha calls upon the Slavic Deity Mokos, the Goddess of weaving and the earth, to guide in weaving an amulet to uncover our own past, and to see what we may be overlooking in order to grow. 

Will You Wait for Me, My Love? is a duet TTRPG inspired by the myth of the Sleeping Beauty Mountain (Mount Kalinga) in the Philippines developed by Bradley Estacio. Players take on the role as lovers and by answer evocative prompts, will explor their love and relationship, alongside exploring the tension and separation that war brings. Though both the game and the myth end in tragedy, it is through that grief that they can permanently leave a mark on the world as a manfiestion of their love.