Gamifying the past – archaeogaming by archaeologists

This paper is a proof-of-concept that archaeology can now be disseminated to the public easily and cheaply through video games, either online or in a museum or heritage dissemination setting. This paper particularly argues that small, but realistic, interactive, and immersive closed or open-world 3D computer games about cultural heritage with unscripted (but guardrailed) oral conversation can now be created by beginners (such as this author) with free software such as Unreal Engine, Reality Capture, and Convai. This puts the control of dissemination back into the hands of the heritage specialists, making such dissemination feasible in most museum settings at a low cost. These experiments also bridge the communication gap between heritage specialists and professional game developers. Applying heritage 3D photogrammetry models, currently mostly used for documentation, directly in computer games thus unlocks new uses for such data and could potentially draw in many more visitors in heritage museums. Thus, developing tailor-made archaeogames (or games in any context) is now becoming extremely accessible. The case in point is a small game employing 3D-scanned Neolithic longdolmens in a forest clearing, an archaeologist and a reincarnated prehistoric, both conversational AI characters.