At the last international CAA in Amsterdam, I was co-organising a session on Archaeogaming. I already wrote about it, but since a couple of weeks, we also have all the presentations online. The VALUE Foundation thankfully recorded everything and put it on their YouTube Channel… What happened at the CAA? So in April 2023, the…
I had my opinions about the Uncharted series in the past. Recently, I grabbed Uncharted 4 in a Steam Sale, because I have never played it. The last couple of days (I have holidays right now!), I was playing through the story of Uncharted 4 and I have to admit, it is a damn good…
Recently, I started to play Age of Empires IV. For me, this game is not what I usually play, but many people told me that this game is actually good and offers serious education. So I had to try it out. It did not take long to realize what everybody meant: I really learned something…
West Asia has long been a cradle of civilisations, and this is no different in Firaxis’ game Civilization VI. The game offers a detailed look at the wonders of the region, and how they compare to their real-world counterparts. In particular, the wonders of West Asia provide many opportunities for players to explore the historical…
So this time I read a volume about Classical Antiquity in Video Games, edited by Christian Rollinger with 15 individual chapters concerned with depicting the past in video games. Rollinger’s volume is packed with interesting chapters about various topics in digital gaming. Although the Classical Antiquity is not my main focus of interest, I was…
I already wrote about creating a course Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and this is my final Part 4. In my interdisciplinary course, different student groups did create an Archaeogame. I taught the course together with my colleague from Digital Humanities. Today, we finally release all the games and you can play them too! Where to find…
Last weekend, I spent my time in a little German town called Weiden in Bavaria. I participated in an interdisciplinary workshop on Virtual Reality and the potential to use it to talk about the past. Little did I know, that I was the only archaeologist there in a room full of people doing Memory Studies,…
Together with Aris Politopoulos and Csilla Arise from the VALUE Foundation, I co-organise a session at the International CAA conference in Amsterdam next year. The session will be about #Archaeogaming and I couldn’t be more excited! If you are into the topic, please consider applying! What is the #Archaeogaming session about? So our session S11…
So I wrote about creating a course Part 1 and Part 2 already and this is Part 3. In my interdisciplinary course different student groups want to create an Archaeogame. I give the course together with my colleague from Digital Humanities. Last Monday, we had an interim meeting. The groups reported on their progress and…
So I teach at the University of Cologne. As I am part of two MA programmes for Archaeology I have a pretty predefined range of courses I give. Basically they are the same every two semesters. Creating a course is not easy. My position there as an assistant will end by the end of next…