Beyond Fun and Games? Rethinking Archaeogaming, Play, and DigitalHeritage
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be co-organizing a session together with Aris Politopoulos at the upcoming Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) 2026 in Vienna. Our session is titled “Beyond Fun and Games? Rethinking Archaeogaming, Play, and DigitalHeritage”. It builds on the lively discussions of previous years. But it takes a sharper look at some of the more critical questions surrounding play, games, and digital heritage.
Archaeogaming has evolved from a niche interest into a vibrant interdisciplinary field. Games are no longer just teaching tools or outreach gimmicks. They’ve become sites of knowledge production, platforms for critical reflection, and sometimes even objects of archaeological inquiry themselves. But with this growth comes the need to pause and reflect: Who gets to play? And what happens when play isn’t fun for everyone?
Beyond Fun: Inclusion, Access, and the Ethics of Play
This year’s session dives deeper into the boundaries and blind spots of play. While we celebrate games often for their creativity, interactivity, and emotional power, they can also exclude. Barriers may be physical (disability), technological (hardware or internet access), cultural (language or unfamiliar references), or structural (who designs and who is represented). We ask how archaeogaming can move beyond the default and embrace accessibility and inclusivity as core design values.
We’re especially interested in contributions that explore how playful media—be it video games, board games, VR environments—can be both joyful and exclusionary. Whose stories are told? Whose bodies are represented? And how might play serve not just to entertain but to challenge dominant narratives and amplify marginalized voices?
Critical Play: The Limits and Possibilities of Archaeogaming
Scholarship challenges the idea of “play” as something inherently liberating. Games are never neutral: they encode assumptions, reproduce ideologies, and can even become instruments of surveillance or exploitation. In the context of archaeology, we ask how playful tools shape not just public engagement but also research agendas and pedagogies.
But archaeogaming also remains a space of possibility. By hacking engines, embracing open-world messiness, or designing collaborative player experiences, we can imagine new ways of thinking and being in the past. Whether through XR reconstructions, AI-generated environments, or analog prototypes, the field evolvs. It’s time to ask harder questions about what that evolution should look like.
Join Us at CAA 2025 – Submit Your Paper!
If any of this resonates with your research, practice, or creative work — we’d love to hear from you! Whether you’re building a game, critiquing one, teaching with playful tools, or exploring the ethics of digital heritage. This session is for you. We explicitly welcome early-career researchers, and cross-disciplinary voices. This includes those working in museum contexts, game design, education, community heritage, or critical theory.
The Call for Papers for CAA 2026 is open now. We’re looking forward to assembling a diverse and provocative lineup. Let’s think together about what archaeogaming can (and should) become. Submit your proposal and join us in Vienna for what promises to be a seriously playful conversation.
Session 52: Call for Papers as PDF