Games, History and Heritage

Researchers at the Manchester Game Centre engage with games and gaming in different ways to explore life in the ancient world and how it is represented in modern contexts. We have three key areas of research: the reception of the ancient world in analogue and digital games; the use of digital technology to engage audiences with heritage; and the adoption of games as a creative method to explore historical questions. Our thematic lead is Dr Jennifer Cromwell.

Keywords

Games and History; Games and Heritage; Archaeology; the Ancient World in Video Games; Digital Heritage; Reception Studies.

Staff and PGR students working in Games, History and Heritage

Gabriele Aroni has a background in architecture and digital media, and works at the intersection of architecture, game studies, cultural heritage, and semiotics.

Jennifer Cromwell is an Egyptologist who explores how games (re)present and contribute to public understandings of ancient Egypt in games. She is also interested in games as a creative method to examine questions about historical topics.

Ben Edwards is an archaeologist with an interest in heritage-themed gaming and the representation of heritage assets in digital space. His ongoing work includes the reproduction of archaeological landscapes in Minecraft.

Paul Wake’s research interests include historiography, historical fictions and historical games. He is currently designing a game that explores memory and archives in response to conflict.

Digital Heritage & Digital Games

This project, developed in collaboration with the Manchester Museum and the National Etruscan Museum in Rome, aims to digitize artefacts of the museums to create high-detailed “digital twins” for scholarly study, but also game ready assets. The research will investigate which artefacts are most appropriate to be utilized in digital games and develop policy guidance papers useful to cultural institutions and the entertainment industries on how to implement cultural heritage in digital games, respect local and international regulations, as well as appropriately portray cultural heritage.

Playing Ancient Egypt

This project explores how ancient Egypt is presented in analogue and digital games, examining how these games construct a popular understanding of Egyptian culture and history.

For the study of analogue games, undergraduate students from history joined Jennifer Cromwell in playing Egypt-themed games, as an activity through MMU’s RISE programme, and, in October 2023, three students co-presented a paper with Jennifer Cromwell on their research on these games for the Manchester Egyptology Seminar Series. Cromwell’s work in this area appears in exhibition catalogues (Leiden, Echo’s van oud Egypte; ISAW, The Playful Past: Ancient Games, Modern Lives) and edited volumes on Cleopatra and Ancient History in Board Games.

In terms of digital games, Jennifer has published studies on diverse video game genres, including Persona 5 (JRPG), Skullgirls (2D fighting game), The Talos Principle (3D puzzle game), and others. She is also the editor of Ancient Egypt in Video Games (DeGruyter 2026).

DEATH OCCURS ABROAD

Paul Wake is currently designing a war game (or peace game) Death Occurs Abroad. Set during the second world war, the game takes its name from a note, found on the back of Army Form B104-83B (the form sent to the families of soldiers killed in action) advising of potential delays in obtaining death certificates and the return of personal effects to the late soldier’s estate. Inspired by this note, the game takes death as its theme, and delay as its core mechanic. Death occurs abroad combines two games. The first is Peter Bogdasarian’s Tank on Tank (Lock ‘n Load 2015), a hex-and-counter wargame that represents tank combat on the Western Front in 1944-45. The second is a journaling roleplaying game designed to represent the work (administrative and emotional) of responding to wartime casualties. Death Occurs Abroad is not intended to be fun. Nor it is intended to be historically accurate. Rather, it is intended to provoke thinking about what it means to simulate war, about what it means to play at war, and about what and who might be remembered, by whom, and in what way.

The game, play tested with staff and students at Manchester Metropolitan University, has led to invitations to run demonstration games/seminars at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University (Sweden) and the University of Oslo (Denmark). The research behind the game forms the basis for a forthcoming article in a special ‘Fun and Games’ issue of the journal New Formations.

 

DICE ON THE NILE
This project, which brings together historians from Manchester, Leiden, and Warsaw, and Aix-en-Proveance uses the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons5e to explore the history of the early Islamic world (ca. 8th century AD). Through roleplaying, this group is interested in several questions, including: What challenges are posed by the use of historical settings in roleplaying games? What kind of ethical issues are involved in roleplaying characters from diverse cultural and historical locations? How can roleplaying games be used to explore untold stories within the ancient world (e.g., women, poor, children)? 

You can hear more about the project here: