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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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
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author Champion, Erik
author2 Fuchs, Matt
author_facet Fuchs, Matt
Champion, Erik
author_sort Champion, Erik
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description 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.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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publishDate 2015
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-334212017-01-30T13:36:59Z Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games Champion, Erik Fuchs, Matt Games and intersections with other cultural forms applications of game studies in other domains games as representation heritage hybrid games and non-digital 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 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. 2015 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33421 http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/roleplaying-and-rituals-for-cultural-heritage-orientated-games/ Digital Games Research Association DiGRA fulltext
spellingShingle Games and intersections with other cultural forms
applications of game studies in other domains
games as representation
heritage
hybrid games and non-digital games
Champion, Erik
Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games
title Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games
title_full Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games
title_fullStr Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games
title_full_unstemmed Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games
title_short Roleplaying and Rituals For Cultural Heritage-Orientated Games
title_sort roleplaying and rituals for cultural heritage-orientated games
topic Games and intersections with other cultural forms
applications of game studies in other domains
games as representation
heritage
hybrid games and non-digital games
url http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/roleplaying-and-rituals-for-cultural-heritage-orientated-games/
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33421