This book explains how designing, playing and modifying computer games, and understanding the theory behind them, can strengthen the area of digital humanities. This book aims to help digital humanities scholars understand both the issues and also advantages of game design, as well as encouraging them to extend the field of computer game studies, particularly in their teaching and research in the field of virtual heritage. By looking at re-occurring issues in the design, playtesting and interface of serious games and game-based learning for cultural heritage and interactive history, this book highlights the importance of visualisation and self-learning in game studies and how this can intersect with digital humanities. It also asks whether such theoretical concepts can be applied to practical learning situations. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to investigate how games and virtual environments can be used in teaching and research to critique issues and topics in the humanities, particularly in virtual heritage and interactive history.

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments.

What are the leading tools and archives in digital cultural heritage? How can they be integrated into research infrastructures to better serve their intended audiences? In this book, authors from a wide range of countries, representing some of the best research projects in digital humanities related to cultural heritage, discuss their latest findings, both in terms of new tools and archives, and how they are used (or not used) by both specialists and by the general public.

"This book presents a framework for understanding games for educational purposes while providing a broader sense of current related research. This creative and advanced title is a must-have for those interested in expanding their knowledge of this exciting field of electronic gaming"--Provided by publisher.

An examination of subversive games like The Sims—games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique. For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry—and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of “playing house” include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists’ alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns—including worldwide poverty and AIDS—can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice—which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium—can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.

Theoretical and practical perspectives from a range of disciplines on the challenges of using digital media in interpretation and representation of cultural heritage. In Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, experts offer a critical and theoretical appraisal of the uses of digital media by cultural heritage institutions. Previous discussions of cultural heritage and digital technology have left the subject largely unmapped in terms of critical theory; the essays in this volume offer this long-missing perspective on the challenges of using digital media in the research, preservation, management, interpretation, and representation of cultural heritage. The contributors--scholars and practitioners from a range of relevant disciplines--ground theory in practice, considering how digital technology might be used to transform institutional cultures, methods, and relationships with audiences. The contributors examine the relationship between material and digital objects in collections of art and indigenous artifacts; the implications of digital technology for knowledge creation, documentation, and the concept of authority; and the possibilities for "virtual cultural heritage"--the preservation and interpretation of cultural and natural heritage through real-time, immersive, and interactive techniques. The essays in Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage will serve as a resource for professionals, academics, and students in all fields of cultural heritage, including museums, libraries, galleries, archives, and archaeology, as well as those in education and information technology. The range of issues considered and the diverse disciplines and viewpoints represented point to new directions for an emerging field. Contributors Nadia Arbach, Juan Antonio Barceló, Deidre Brown, Fiona Cameron, Erik Champion, Sarah Cook, Jim Cooley, Bharat Dave, Suhas Deshpande, Bernadette Flynn, Maurizio Forte, Kati Geber, Beryl Graham, Susan Hazan, Sarah Kenderdine, José Ripper Kós, Harald Kraemer, Ingrid Mason, Gavan McCarthy, Slavko Milekic, Rodrigo Paraizo, Ross Parry, Scot T. Refsland, Helena Robinson, Angelina Russo, Corey Timpson, Marc Tuters, Peter Walsh, Jerry Watkins, Andrea Witcomb

This volume on virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) and gamification for cultural heritage offers an insightful introduction to the theories, development, recent applications and trends of the enabling technologies for mixed reality and gamified interaction in cultural heritage and creative industries in general. It has two main goals: serving as an introductory textbook to train beginning and experienced researchers in the field of interactive digital cultural heritage, and offering a novel platform for researchers in and across the culturally-related disciplines. To this end, it is divided into two sections following a pedagogical model developed by the focus group of the first EU Marie S. Curie Fellowship Initial Training Network on Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH): Section I describes recent advances in mixed reality enabling technologies, while section II presents the latest findings on interaction with 3D tangible and intangible digital cultural heritage. The sections include selected contributions from some of the most respected scholars, researchers and professionals in the fields of VR/AR, gamification, and digital heritage. This book is intended for all heritage professionals, researchers, lecturers and students who wish to explore the latest mixed reality and gamification technologies in the context of cultural heritage and creative industries. It pursues a pedagogic approach based on trainings, conferences, workshops and summer schools that the ITN-DCH fellows have been following in order to learn how to design next-generation virtual heritage applications, systems and services.