Archaeogaming

The archaeogaming blog has served its time to connect and present the archaeology in and of games to everyone online. The blog approaches archaeology and gaming in the most accessible way to the largest number of people we can. This means we appreciate open source and open access methods and platforms for engaging with not just the idea of archaeogaming through blog posts but also on social media.

Admittedly, I am pretty bad with social media. I have personally put down all social media accounts for my own mental health and, unfortunately, that means that I miss a lot of news and conversations mediated by social media platforms. That being said, I acknowledge a need for social media to make archaeology accessible and relatable to everyone. The pandemic has shown how every institution, physical or digital, need a social media presence. Thankfully, Andrew and the rest of the archaeogaming community is relatively active on these platforms where I am not.

The news of Twitter’s change of ownership and the increase in costs related to account verification, not to mention the increases in trolls, bots, and hate groups since the acquisition has taken place, shows that the accessibility for the everyone, regardless of background, is in danger. We want everyone to equally be able to engage with and discuss the ideas of gaming and archaeology without having to face paywalls. Watching communities move toward other platforms, Mastodon has caught our eye. The open source software looks more promising to ensure continued accessibility to digital conversations and seems to be the platform where people are moving.

That being said, we have decided to create a Mastodon account for archaeogaming. We can be found under the account name: @archaeogaming@archaeo.social. This will become for now our primary method for communication and interaction with all of you via social media. The feed will be thoughts and ideas, news about new blog posts, interesting archaeogaming updates and upcoming or new publications (journal articles, books, presentations, and so on). We hope that this will serve as an accessible option for our social media presence.

This being said, the @archaeogaming Twitter account will remain up for the foreseeable future. We won’t really be posting on it, but the account itself can serve as a sort of digital archive. You may see new blog post alerts on the Twitter account as well, but we won’t be actively checking the replies or replying to people there. We will still be posting on the blog as per usual. I have a few exciting posts to come. 

See you over on Mastodon! @archaeogaming@archaeo.social

—Kaitlyn Kingsland, archaeogaming.com
10 November 2022