Following up on our discussion today, I wanted to share with you one of the historical tours from Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. Here is a video of a tour of the Acropolis in Athens. For those of you who don't interact with this digital format, this video will give you a sense of the historical detail worked into this open world game, and a sense of the kind of tours the game provides. Take a look and a listen. Why do you think Ubisoft puts such detail in the game environments, and tries to capture such accuracy (note the different columns, for example, and how their placement "makes sense" with various episodes of building on the Acropolis). Doing so certainly invites both a more immersive experience, and a sense of authenticity. But can you think of any issues this practice can raise? Also, this is not an educational format, per se, definitely a commercial enterprise... so how is the digital heritage of Athens being leveraged here...and how does it (or does it?) link to digital archaeological and historical practices?
Course Blog for Western University, Anthropology Department. Anthro 9112A/4493F i-ing the Past: Digital Archaeology and Digital Heritage, Winter 2021
2 comments:
My first impression of the game and its details of the historical environment is aesthetic. Details are stunning; the game world really mimics an ideally imagined far past in history. However, is it true? What sorts of data has Ubisoft relied on? How did the team verify the details? To what extent the imagination and the restoration are mixed? (Please see this article How Close is 'Assassin's Creed: Origins' Egypt to the Real Thing? for more discussions on these questions.) These questions immediately put the value of the game world with respect to historical education in uncertainty.
While it is acknowledged that games are conducive in raising and cultivating interest of the player, it is really limited in a sense of meaningful, long-term learning. This is to say, although the game offers spectacular historical scenarios, with which details of construction, cloth, movement, and other quotidian activities are displayed, it is mainly an entertainment tool rather than an educational one. Playing games mostly, learning some knowledge by the way, could be imagined as what players would usually do. After all, games are more interesting than books. If students are used to learning historical knowledge from games, their interest to go to the book and check for details might be decreased.
Another issue is that the history learned from games might often be misleading. The virtual reality of the historical past is constructed based on fragmented ruins, written records and other historical materials. They are not a complete and comprehensive source of data, even if we can put them together. The animator and digital worker will need to bridge the missing parts with their imagination. At the end, though the game world looks perfectly nice and real, it inevitably induces doubt of “too good to be true”.
Nevertheless, with the development of technology, and the degradation of the real environment (looking at the accelerated trend of climate change and the business-as-usual model;), virtual learning is very likely to be the future. When students and educators have to learn history in this way, the educators and the higher administration will need to think about how to spark interest into history. And that would require careful and sophisticated balance in imparting real knowledge, creating affective bonds and maintaining the interest of learning.
There is another article that talks about these issues.
How Assassin's Creed Brings History to Life—and to the Classroom
Xu brings up a point that also crossed my mind while watching this video: because archaeological and historical details may be lacking from the records, the creators must use imagination to fill in the gaps. However, there is no way for a user to identify what aspects or details are based on data vs. imagination of the creators within the game itself. This could spark interest in some users to do some research on their own to decipher between what is accurate and what is speculative or imaginative. Others who are told or see that the game is based largely on historical and archaeological fact (at least in terms of aesthetic) might give more weight to the game being "accurate" than is deserved. To clarify, details that are not based on material or historical evidence might be perceived as accurate because so much of it is. Further, the creators of the game will omit details unhelpful to their desired aesthetic and storyline. The game could be seen as more authentic to many viewers fostering an inaccurate and potentially romanticized view of the Athenian past.
The immense detail added into the game allows the user to feel Immersed in this past world. I think the added details such as coloured statues is important for allowing users to see the past in different way than they would in a museum or site visit setting where most of what is being displayed are objects from the past, not in the same physical state they would have been in at the time they were used. It would be interesting to see a similar immersive experience with an option to remove speculative or imaginative details.
-Ash
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