 not be the best-suited for the task. To mod or not to mod recalls the decision to dig or not to dig, to use an invasive approach on the landscape in order to retrieve information about it.
Throughout this post, you have likely been thinking about landscapes in games such as the ones featured in Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, World of Warcraft synthetic worlds or similar, landscapes that are fantastical yet feel real containing mountains, trees, lakes, things anyone would consider to be part of the landscape. I propose, though, that in order to have a landscape archaeology of digital games and other synthetic worlds, that the archaeologist must apply definitions and methods to any game or world, not just those that are facsimiles of recognizable natural environments.
Every game is a landscape. There is an architecture of space on the plateau of the screen, which can be measured and engaged with, that utilizes time and location in order to function. Every definition, every principle of landscape archaeology applies to games specifically, and more generally to software—anything with a graphical user interface (GUI). We are working on a micro-scale, but it is easy to tell when an application’s GUI nudges users down a path of activity, reacts to user-agency, offers up artifacts (glitches/bugs), and is the subject of communities and cultures (e.g., Apple v. Microsoft). Most of us belong to at least one digital tribe, and we interact with that software as an indigenous population, as developers, or as users who made their pilgrimage late.
One final thought: all of the above about conducting landscape archaeology (or archaeology of any kind) within a synthetic world might sound daft, especially when we know that these are all designed environments. Think of these, however, as a proving ground for ideas on method and theory, testing on software we know that is well documented. I predict that by 2020 we will finally see video games set in completely procedurally generated worlds where the cultures that players encounter have never been considered by the game’s designer(s), instead created from a complex set of rules that, when mixed together, create emergent cultures distinct from one another. We’re already getting glimpses of these “machine-created cultures” (MCCs) in games such as Mark Johnson’s Ultima Ratio Regum, and more are coming. One day we’ll have a Turing test for cultures to determine what is real. How will we determine that level of reality, and if a new, born-digital culture thrives, what obligations do we have to interacting with it, and ultimately to preserving it?
—Andrew Reinhard, Archaeogaming