Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games

Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional culture...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Champion, Erik
Other Authors: Fuchs, Matt
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Digital Games Research Association DiGRA 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/roleplaying-and-rituals-for-cultural-heritage-orientated-games/
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33421
Description
Summary:Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional cultures are easily ported to computer games. However, I contend that the meaning behind worlds, rituals and roles are not fully explored in these digital games and virtual worlds and that more work needs to be done to create more moving rituals, role enrichment and worldfulness. I will provide examples from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2006, 2011) to reveal some of the difficulties in creating digitally simulated social and cultural worlds, but I will also suggest some design ideas that could improve them in terms of cultural presence and social presence.