SAA

VIDEO GAMES AND ARCHAEOLOGY
field as the tools for its exploration become widely available.
This availability is driving a new age of experimentation,
increasingly undertaken by students whose status as digital
natives allows them to intuitively merge interests in archaeology
and virtual technologies. My own interest in this
regard continues to focus on the technology’s potential for
applied archaeology, and particularly the ways it can support
social justice education (González-Tennant 2013). The rise of
walking simulators in recent years demonstrates that a growing
segment of the public are starved for nontraditional
video games. This group seeks new experiences where selfexploration
and novel forms of storytelling are central to the
gaming experience. Archaeologists are in a powerful position
to take advantage of this growth and to communicate
the past to the public in immersive and interactive ways.
Walking Simulators and Racial Violence
Utilizing video games for applied archaeology, especially as
it relates to difficult heritage, is not without its risks. Many
still consider video games to be a childish form of entertainment.
Not only is this false—the average age of most video
gamers is over 30—a growing body of research demonstrates
that video games are capable of eliciting strong emotional
responses while simultaneously supporting the development
of critical reasoning skills (Bogost 2011). Utilizing
entertainment technologies to commemorate racial violence
can run the risk of essentializing complex histories of disenfranchisement.
This includes the creation of one-dimensional
characters or reliance on worn-out tropes drawn from major
motion pictures. These pitfalls are avoidable through the
flexibility and power of video games, which supports wholly
new ways of communicating difficult histories to a new generation
in sensitive and thought-provoking ways. A successful
example of this potential is illustrated with ongoing work
in Rosewood, Florida.
My exploration of archaeological walking simulators began
in 2005 when I started researching Rosewood, Florida, home
to a prosperous African American community that was
destroyed in 1923 during a week-long episode of violence
commonly referred to as the Rosewood race riot. In addition
to documentary, ethnohistorical, and archaeological
research, my ongoing work in Rosewood explores the use of
virtual technologies to translate academic research into public
knowledge. This includes the use of digital storytelling
and the creation of a virtual world that reconstructs the vanished
landscape of Rosewood. This virtual world remains
one of the largest ever created by historical researchers and
is available online at www.virtualrosewood.com. The current
version of this virtual world recreates two square miles of
Figure 3. View of original and updated structure from the Rosewood virtual
world.
landscape and includes nearly fifty structures representing
homes, businesses, and public buildings (e.g., train depot,
schoolhouse). While I was unaware of the term walking simulator
when I began this project, my original virtual world is
similarly focused on allowing users to freely explore the
landscape. There are no non-player characters to interact
with, nor any linear narratives to follow. Instead, users are
able to learn about the town through the placement of historical
signs at various points throughout the virtual world.
I am presently updating the Rosewood virtual world, and
many of my design choices are motivated by a serious
engagement with walking simulators. At the center of this
process is a desire to create a believable world. In support of
this goal, I am literally (re)building the virtual world from
the ground up. This begins with the incorporation of LiDAR
data to create a physically accurate ground surface. It is a
November 2016 • The SAA Archaeological Record
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