Arcade Talks: The Past as a Playground

In this talk we will explore the potential of the past as a (digital) playground! Video games are one of the most popular forms of contemporary entertainment, but they also have a surprising and multifaceted relation with the past. In this lecture we will explore the potential and pitfalls of such past playgrounds. We will do so by taking a deep dive into the Sid Meier’s Civilization and Assassin’s Creed series, focusing on how these games let us play in and with past. We will discuss how the developers of these and other games design the past and how these past playgrounds are then experienced by players. These engagements with interactive entertainment underline that our relation with the past is not a one-way street: do we play with the past or do our pasts also end up playing with us?

This talk will be given by Aris Politopoulos. Aris is an Assistant Professor in Archaeology and Cultural Politics at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. His research focuses on the archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean, the archaeology of play, the study of ancient board games, and the archaeological study of video games. He is a founding member of the VALUE Foundation and has published extensively on the topic of video games and archaeology.