Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support
\ncultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less
\nwell considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances
\nin computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the
\nother hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented.
\nCategories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACMCCS): H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]:Multimedia
\nInformation Systems—Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities I.2.1 [Artificial Intelligence]: Applications
\nand Expert Systems—Games K.3.1 [Computers and Education]: Computer Uses in Education—Computerassisted
\ninstruction K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General—Games
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