Rapid Archaeology in Death Stranding
December 8, 2019, will mark the one-month anniversary of the release of Death Stranding (Kojima Productions), and to commemorate it I wanted to write about the game’s “rapid archaeology” (my […]
Digital Cultural Heritage, Education, and Detroit Become Human
Archaeogaming is the study in and of games. Detroit Become Human serves as a prime example of affective story telling for the purpose of engagement and discussion by a wider public on the issues of civil rights and technology. Archaeologists can use Detroit Become Human as an example for successful public outreach via digital games.
Adding to the Toolbox: Scaling Methods Learned from the Game Theorists
The Game Theorists is a YouTube channel which analyzes digital games. In their videos, there are many tools which archaeogamers can (and should) use for their studies. By adding to the list and making these elements known, the archaeogaming community can think of these methods and new ones as a communal effort to improve archaeological methods in digital games.
Human Archaeology in Persistent Digital Spaces
Presented at TAG Syracuse Session 006, May 4, 2019. Below is the text-as-presented. Click HERE for the MP3 audio, which I pre-recorded (should you want to listen). My sincere thanks go […]
My Archaeological Methodology in No Man’s Sky
Introduction The Legacy Hub (née Galactic Hub) is a landscape of systems and planets in a portion of the Euclid Galaxy of No Man’s Sky, which was settled by hundreds […]
Player Agency and Understanding the Base/No-Base Paradox in No Man’s Sky
UPDATED May 14, 2018, 20:30 Remove the long, dangly bit from the cup of tea and take the tea. Then, take the “no tea” that you dropped when you got […]
The Mystery of the Missing Pearl Farm
Introduction In March 22, 2017, hollyworks became the 12th player to arrive at the newly founded Galactic Hub in No Man’s Sky, putting her roots down on Didiophoek-5 TT736, which she renamed “Holly’s […]
Remote Sensing in Synthetic Landscapes
UPDATED: 4:15, MAY 7, 2017 The abandoned, ruined structure on the planet Horner in the procedurally generated universe of No Man’s Sky was player-made. I know this because the structure is marked with […]
The Cave of Forgotten Comm Stations: Excavating an Abandoned Base in No Man’s Sky
Introduction I wonder what Werner Herzog would have to say about this project, visiting the abandoned site of a human-created base on a synthetic world, recording the locations and […]
Mapping an Abandoned World in No Man’s Sky
Introduction The capital planet of No Man’s Sky’s old Galactic Hub, Drogradur NO425, hosts dozens of communication stations from players who attended the farewell “portal party” of August 20, 2017, […]
A Grand Challenge: Applied Archaeogaming
There are three major braids to archaeogaming: external, applied, and reflexive (hat-tip to Tara Copplestone for this elegant demarcation of the discipline). As she defines them: 1) external archaeogaming examines […]
Excavating a Buried Settlement in No Man’s Sky
On 1 October 2017 I discovered and conducted a preliminary investigation of an abandoned settlement in No Man’s Sky, and discovered another anomaly caused by the NMS v1.3 “Atlas Rises” update, which […]
EAA: Epic Archaeogaming Achievement
The 2017 European Association for Archaeologists was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and the final morning hosted a session (#275) of 15 papers on archaeogaming, organized by L. Meghan Dennis, […]
The No Man’s Sky Archaeological Survey: One Year In
Hello Games launched No Man’s Sky for North American Playstation 4 on August 9, 2016, gradually rolling out the game to the rest of the world and onto PC (via […]
Applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to Games
Archaeology is all about space-time: what happened, when, and where. We assign Cartesian coordinates to sites and artifacts as well as to places of intangible heritage. When we merge spatial […]
No Man’s Sky Archaeological Survey Code of Ethics
No Man’s Sky Archaeological Survey Code of Ethics NOTE (15 August 2016): Version 0.3 of the Code is now available to read here. Version 0.2 with contributions from Catherine Flick […]
Archaeogaming 