Video Games for Archaeological Heritage - University of Pretoria

Interactive Media in Archaeology: Video Games for Archaeological Heritage

Conservation

By

Timon Dawid du Toit

A Dissertation Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree

Dissertation: Archaeology

in the

in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology

at the

UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

SUPERVISOR: DR NDUKUYAKHE NDLOVU

December 2020

©© UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff PPrreettoorriiaa

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I, Timon Dawid du Toit (u14361958),

declare that

1. I realise what plagiarism is and that I am aware of the University of Pretoria’s policy

in this regard;

2. That this dissertation is my own, original work;

3. Where someone else’s work has been used (whether a written source, printed

source, internet source or any other form of information) that it is cited and that the form

of the citation complies with the requirements of the Department of Anthropology and

Archaeology;

4. I did not use any person’s previous work as my own; and

5. I did not and will not allow anyone to copy or use my work with the purpose of

them handing it in as their own work.

Signature Date 06 December 2020


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Acknowledgments

Thank you to the University of Pretoria for access to the library catalogues and internet

resources that enabled me in completing my academic research.

I would like to further thank my supervisor, Dr Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu, for all of the guidance

and support which he has given me throughout my tertiary years. He has been of invaluable

service to me.

In addition, I wish to thank the following: (i) my family for their financial and editorial

services, as well as their supporting roles. Without their support, I would never have been

able to complete this dissertation; (ii) Jonathan McMurtry and Annie Fleischack for their

editorial and advisory services, which were of great benefit to me; (iii) Felix Mühlenberend

for his critical aid with the practical and technical work on this research project. I truly

value the experience of working with him and the lessons he taught me; (iv) all of the

helpful individuals who took part in the survey I conducted during my research.


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Ethics Statement

The author, whose name appears on the title page of this dissertation, has obtained, for the

research described in this work, the applicable research ethics approval.

The author declares that he has observed the ethical standards required in terms of the

University of Pretoria’s Code of ethics for researchers and the Policy guidelines for

responsible research.


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Abstract

This research was premised on the use of video games as a sustainable tool for preserving

existing archaeological data in an entertaining and interactive manner. The outcomes of

such projects are for archaeological/heritage education, outreach, and representing data in

a manner that is interactive and encourages critical thinking through gameplay and game

mechanics. I used rock art site from Game Pass Shelter, located at Kamberg in the

uKhahlamba Drakensberg, as the key thematic material in creating a virtual environment

in a video game that accurately represents traditional Bushmen rock art and folklore. Two

phases of research contributed to the development of the video game: (i) performing

research on the market for and interest in a video game based on traditional South African

heritage, and (ii) using the recommendations to design the 2D video game using Unity

Game Engine (a free video game development piece of software). The results of the

research led to the development of a 2D video game, defined by authenticity to the

represented folklore, which features rock art motifs from Game Pass Shelter used against

the backdrop of the Spoiling of the Eland traditional Bushman story. This video game

begins with the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art and contextualises it using

select traditional folklore. Through this process, the video game aims to show why hunting

was so important to the traditional Bushmen way of life. It further shows why eland were

so valued and some unique beliefs that the Bushmen had concerning them. One of the key

outcomes of this research is to inform future efforts in creating video game that specifically

focuses on representing traditional heritage, by ways of my experiences during the

development process of SES.


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Keywords: Video games, video game development, Spoiling of the Eland, Game Pass

Shelter, uKhahlamba Drakensberg Bushmen, Unity, rock art, folklore, archaeogaming


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Table of Contents

Contents

Ethics Statement................................................................................................................. iii

Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi

List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xi

List of Tables ................................................................................................................... xiv

List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... xvi

Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Beginning this Research ....................................................................................... 3

1.2 The Context ............................................................................................................... 5

1.3 The Research ............................................................................................................. 8

1.4 Research Questions ................................................................................................... 9

1.5 Aims ........................................................................................................................ 10

1.6 Significance of the Study ........................................................................................ 11

1.7 The Development of SE .......................................................................................... 12

1.8 Dissertation Overview ............................................................................................ 14

Chapter 2: Literature Review ............................................................................................ 17

2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 17

2.2 Storytelling in the Technological World................................................................. 19


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2.3 Alternative Digital Media ....................................................................................... 23

2.4 Trends in the Technological Industry ..................................................................... 25

2.5 Past Archaeological Work with Video Games ....................................................... 28

2.6 Affinities between Archaeology and Video Games ................................................ 33

2.7 Telling Stories with Video Games .......................................................................... 35

2.8 The Potential of Video Games for Archaeology..................................................... 38

2.9 How the Past is Represented in Video Games ........................................................ 42

2.10 Traditional Bushman Folklore and the Medium of Video Games ........................ 44

2.11 The Narrative of SE .............................................................................................. 45

2.12 The Values Represented in the Spoiling of the Eland Story ................................. 46

2.13 Trance Dancing, Therianthropes, and Sorcerers ................................................... 47

2.14 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 49

Chapter 3: Methodology ................................................................................................... 51

3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 51

3.2 First Steps................................................................................................................ 52

3.3 Subjectivity ............................................................................................................. 55

3.4 Research Design...................................................................................................... 58

3.5 The Survey Questionnaire....................................................................................... 59

3.6 The Design of the Spoiling of the Eland Video Game ........................................... 62

3.7 Challenges Associated with Developing Archaeological Video Games ................ 68


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3.8 The Represented Heritage in SE ............................................................................. 71

3.9 Communicating Traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Beliefs .................... 73

3.10 Developing the 2D Video Game ........................................................................... 79

Chapter 4: A Survey of Video Gamers on Heritage in Video Games .............................. 84

4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 84

4.2 Results and Analysis ............................................................................................... 86

4.2.1 Question 1 ........................................................................................................ 87

4.2.2 Question 2 ........................................................................................................ 89

4.2.4 Question 4 ........................................................................................................ 88

4.2.5 Question 5 ........................................................................................................ 91

4.2.6 Question 6 ........................................................................................................ 94

4.2.7 Question 7 ........................................................................................................ 98

4.2.8 Question 8 ...................................................................................................... 100

4.2.9 Question 9 ...................................................................................................... 103

4.2.10 Question 10 .................................................................................................. 106

4.2.11 Question 11 .................................................................................................. 107

4.2.12 Question 12 .................................................................................................. 110

4.2.13 Question 13 .................................................................................................. 113

4.3 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 116

4.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 123

Chapter 5: Post-Mortem and Asset Creation .................................................................. 125

5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 125

5.2 Designing SE ........................................................................................................ 125

5.3 The Narrative of SE .............................................................................................. 127

5.4 The Narrative Timeline ......................................................................................... 130


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5.5 Structure and Content ........................................................................................... 135

5.5.1 Act One: ......................................................................................................... 135

5.5.2 Act Two: ......................................................................................................... 136

5.5.3 Act Three:....................................................................................................... 137

5.6 Description of the Mechanics ............................................................................... 138

5.6.1 The System’s Mechanics ................................................................................ 138

5.6.2 The Player Mechanics.................................................................................... 140

5.6.3 Character Artificial Intelligence .................................................................... 142

5.7 Asset Creation ....................................................................................................... 143

5.8 Lessons on and Implications of the Asset Development Process ......................... 161

5.9 Post-Mortem ......................................................................................................... 165

5.9.2 What Went Wrong .......................................................................................... 168

5.9.3 What I Could Have Done Differently............................................................. 171

5.9.4 Recommendations for Other Archaeologists Developing Heritage Video

Games ..................................................................................................................... 177

5.10 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 179

Chapter 6: Conclusion..................................................................................................... 181

6.1 Research Results ................................................................................................... 182

6.2 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 184

6.3 Limitations to the Research .................................................................................. 187

6.4 Final Remarks ....................................................................................................... 188

References ....................................................................................................................... 190

Ludography ..................................................................................................................... 203

Appendix A: Survey Questionnaire ................................................................................ 205


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Appendix B: A Summary of the Spoiling of the Eland Traditional Story ...................... 212

Appendix C: Examples of Scripts made for SE .............................................................. 215


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List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Photo of an Eland. Taken from www.depositphotos.com

Figure 1.2: Screenshot of a hunting scene in the video game developed alongside this

research (SE). It shows hunters on the left and an eland that has been hit by a spear.

Figure 3.1: Photograph of the dominant eland on the Rosetta Stone at Game Pass Shelter,

Kamberg, in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg. Taken by Timon du Toit.

Figure 4.1: Bar graph of the responses to Question 1. It shows the video game title and the

number of participants who voted for it.

Figure 4.2: Bar graph of the responses to Question 3. It shows the topic of South African

heritage and how many times it was voted for.

Figure 4.3: Pie Chart of the position of participants in responses to Question 7 (Question 2

under 3D Tours of heritage sites in Appendix A). This pie chart shows the

percentage of participants that chose one of the three represented positions (yes, no

and other) in brief.

Figure 4.4: Pie Chart of the responses to Question 10 (Question 5 under 3D Tours of

heritage sites in Appendix A). This pie chart shows the percentage of participants

who chose one of the represented positions.


http://www.depositphotos.com/

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Figure 4.5: Pie Chart of the responses to Question 13 (Question 3 under 2D level Appendix

A). This pie chart shows the percentage of participants that chose one of the

represented visual/presentations styles.

Figure 5.1: Photograph taken of rock art at Game Pass Shelter, Kamberg, in the

uKhahlamba Drakensberg. Taken by Timon du Toit.

Figure 5.2: Autodesk Sketchbook layout. An isolated Bushmen Hunter, as he is positioned

in the rock art at Game Pass shelter.

Figure 5.3: Unity layout. A hunter character is shown with some of the most common

windows and tabs in Unity.

Figure 5.4: SpriteMesh Editor window. The HB spritemesh is shown with edges and

vertices already placed.

Figure 5.5: Spread of vertices in the SpriteMesh Editor.

Figure 5.6: Bones attached to the HB spritemesh. The ‘PlayerHunter’ gameobject is

highlighted, as well as the HB spritemesh (edged in orange).

Figure 5.7: Rotated ‘Torso Bone’ (relative to Figure 5). The torso bone rotated to the right

(anti-clockwise.


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Figure 5.8: Full visualisation of adjusting the weights of bones on vertices in the

SpriteMesh Editor.

Figure 5.9: Animation Window. The Hunter1Idle (Idle) animation is shown with timeline

data.

Figure 5.10: Animation with the Onion Skin feature enabled. Different colours show past

(red) and future (green) positions, rotations and scale of gameobjects.

Figure 5.11: Animator Window. The animator for the player gameobject is shown with

states (the blocks) and transitions (arrows).

Figure 5.12: Simplified example of different ways of painting hartebeest legs. The

traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg stylistic representation is shown on the left

and the way I painted them is illustrated on the right.

Figure 6.1: Screenshot of the Rosetta Ritual scene in SE. Then shame with the walking

stick in the centre has successfully tranced danced into a hallucination state. The

vignette effect and entoptic shapes indicate this to the player.


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List of Tables

Table 4.1: A representation of the responses to Question 1 in table form. Identified video

and the number of participants who chose them (Set in descending order of votes).

Table 4.2: A representation of the responses to Question 3 in table form. Topics mentioned

in participant responses and the number of votes that they received (Set in

descending order of votes).

Table 4.3: A representation of the responses to Question 4 in table form. The Manner in

which video games can benefit heritage preservation and the number of votes they

received (set in descending order of votes).

Table 4.4: A representation of the responses to Question 5 in table form. It shows the

position of the respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number

of respondents that had that motivation. (Set in descending order of votes).

Table 4.5: A representation of the responses to Question 6 in a table form. It shows the

position of the respondents, the explanation behind their position, and the number

of respondents that had that motivation (Set in descending order of votes).

Table 4.6 A representation of the responses to Question 8 in table form. It shows what roles

the respondents recommended the player should take, as well as the number of

respondents that had that (or similar) answer(s)(Set in descending order of votes).


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Table 4.7: Responses (which took a definite stance) to Question 9. It shows the position of

the respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of

respondents that had that motivation. (Set in descending order of votes).

Table 4.8: A representation of the responses to Question 11. It shows the position of the

respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of respondents

that had that motivation (Set in descending order of votes).


respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of respondents

that had that motivation. (Set in descending order of votes).

Table 4.10: A representation of responses to Question 13. It shows the visual style the

respondents chose and the number of respondents that chose that visual style (Set

in descending order of votes).

Table 5.1: A representation of the Narrative Structure of SE

Table 5.2: A representation of SE’s Narrative Structure as the Rhyme Scheme of a poem.


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List of Abbreviations

3D- Three-dimensional

2D- two dimensional

AI- artificial intelligence

HB spritemesh- hunter body image

IK- inverse kinematics

NPC- non-playable characters

SE- Spoiling of the Eland (my video game)

VRH- Virtual Reality Headsets

ZAGA- South African Gaming Alliance


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Chapter 1: Introduction

Fascination with the past is the bedrock underlying its study, whether at a casual or

professional level. For most people, learning about the past takes place by interacting with

various forms of entertainment and experiential media, whether in books, film or video

games. I would argue that this is due to the fact that the aforementioned media are forms

of artistic expression and human being inherently find value in experiencing art (see Caroll

2004).

Therefore, some individuals have used contemporary media and performance to

communicate knowledge about the past to others. A common goal was and continues to be

the communication of important or nuanced information in enjoyable and engaging

experiences. This could or can be done either implicitly or overtly. For example, the Movie

Troy retells he story of Homer’s The Illiad by focusing on Achilles and Zeus: Master of

Olympus implicitly informs players of terms and roles in ancient Greek society through

gameplay.

Furthermore, the biographical film genre is all but dedicated to accurately portraying

historical events and representing historical figures and many video games are situated in

explicitly historical contexts and some now attempt to portray the context without the

addition of ‘unrealistic’ abilities and actions. This is the case with Assassin’s Creed:

Origins (see Chapter 2 below).


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For a long period, the primary means of communicating knowledge about the past was

through oral tradition and storytelling, visual art, music, and performative experiences. In

prehistory, rock art on cave walls or rock shelters and storytelling events were the primary

means of entertainment and informative media. This is especially the case in non-literate

hunter-gatherer societies (van Vuuren 1994: 62).

Today, we have the written word, photographs, films, full orchestras, and sophisticated

technology to do this. This research focuses on the use of one of the most recent mediums

for storytelling that began in the latter half of the twentieth century, video games.

Recognising that video gaming is a cultural phenomenon that has gained much attention

and which has arguably grown to the point of surpassing all other modern media in market

value and market potential, I have chosen this medium for preserving a selected South

African heritage (see THESSA 2017 and Newzoo 2017).

The main outcome and goal of this research project is to communicate this heritage to an

audience that would otherwise not be exposed to it, to potentially engage those who might

be aware of it, and to create a tangible example of heritage preservation through video

game content in a South African context. Throughout this paper, I use ‘preservation’ in

reference to ongoing and sustainable ways of management and upkeep of that which is

being preserved and represented. Specifically, I mostly use ‘preservation’ in reference to

representing and preserving heritage through the medium of video games.


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In the following paragraphs, I give a brief description of how I made use of a video game

to tell a story about one rock art site in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park, KwaZulu-Natal,

South Africa. In sequential order, I give (i) an introduction of myself and how I decided on

this research, (ii) a brief description of the research undertaken (research questions, aims,

significance of the study, development of the video game), and (iii) a brief overview of the

various chapters in this dissertation.

1.1 Beginning this Research

I chose to investigate the potential of video games as a medium for preserving heritage. I

did this by developing a video game to represent the chosen heritage resource. To provide

some background as to why I focused on this medium to preserve heritage, it is necessary

to describe myself as it pertains to archaeology and video games. From about as early as I

can recall, I have always been fascinated with the ancient world and/or ‘really old things’.

It could be argued that this fascination has shaped much of who I am as a person and the

direction that I have taken in life. Equally, I have always been very engaged with artistic

pursuits, from visual art to various musical disciplines. I had even delved a little into three-

dimensional (hereafter 3D) modelling but only have limited experience in this field.

Building upon this earlier artistic interest, I chose rock art as the best heritage resource to

communicate and preserve heritage. I had been sitting on this idea for a while, one that I

think many people have but few act on for academic research. My idea was to make a video

game to preserve South African heritage. I wanted to build from my previous research for


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my Honours degree which, to keep it relevant to this research, largely focused on the rock

art of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park, South Africa. I thus thought it would be very

interesting if this rock art were to be the focus of a video game.

Such a video game would ideally also focus on the culture and beliefs of the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Bushmen and, simultaneously, help preserve this site while opening it up to

a new audience via the video gaming medium. In my opinion, video games are the highest

form of art that exists today. They are a unique combination of visual art, music, design,

performance, technology and co-creation between developers and players.

I additionally felt, and still do, that there ought to be one central motivation behind higher

education: to learn something new. I therefore decided to broaden my skillset to include

developing video games to preserve heritage. Although there is much validity to

specialisation, I take the view that being able to understand and practise as broad a skillset

as possible is much more ideal. Each skill augments the quality of one’s future work,

regardless of degree to which it does so.

Over time, the wheels started turning and things began to fall into place. Although I initially

thought that my idea was relatively new, there was in fact a sub-discipline dedicated to the

intersection of archaeology and video games - archaeogaming. What my research required

was a clear plan in order to realise the success of my research goals. Before I describe this

research, I provide the context thereof in the following section. I will also briefly describe

how it relates to the video game I developed in conjunction to it.


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1.2 The Context

Before I did anything else, I needed a single piece of South African heritage to be the focus

of my research. I chose Game Pass Shelter at Kamberg, in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg

Park for this purpose. This is one of the most important sites in southern African rock art,

due to its significance in understanding Bushmen beliefs.

I chose the key rock art panel at Game Pass Shelter, the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African

rock art, as the focus starting point of my research. This decision was once again due to the

crucial role that the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art played in understanding

Bushmen beliefs. I further elaborate below.

‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art shows a ‘dying eland’ that is surrounded by

Bushmen shamans. An eland is one of the largest species of antelope in the world (see

Figure 1.1 below). One of the shamans is performing a ritual, in which he transfers the

spiritual power of the eland to himself (see Lewis-Williams 1981). The ideas associated

with this ritual are too complex to cover in this chapter, but are described in Chapter 2. Of

note is that all of the other traditions of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg that I included in my

video game served to contextualise and support the content of the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of

southern African rock art, including the rock art motifs and interpretations thereof.


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Figure 1.1: Photo of an Eland. Taken from www.depositphotos.com

After analysing the literature and visiting Game Pass Shelter, I selected the Spoiling of the

Eland story as the most relevant traditional folklore that contextualises the ‘Rosetta Stone’

of southern African rock art (see Chapter 2). As the title of my video game is also The

Spoiling of the Eland, I will distinguish between the two by abbreviating the title of my

video game with ‘SE’. Initially, I decided that the best way in which to link the Spoiling

of the Eland story and the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art was for the former

to act as the beginning of a narrative and the latter to be the end. The intention of this would

be to contextualise the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art with the Spoiling of the

Eland story.


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I later decided that the best way to create a video game narrative for this link was to start

it with the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art, contextualise it with the Spoiling

of the Eland story and repeat the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art. This is

modelled on storytelling and poetic techniques.

Structuring SE in this way serves the same purposes as in oral traditions and poetry,

namely: (i) encapsulating a specific piece of narrative content in an identifiable group, (ii)

serving mnemonic purposes, and (iii) providing a premise, and context thereof and/or

content. In oral traditions and poetry, the beginning of individual parts of a narrative or

poem are started by one idea or line, which is repeated at the end. The repeated line may

have slight alterations in order to complete an idea or pose a question. All of the content in

between provides a context to the encapsulating lines or expounding on them. A simple

example of this is nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice, which starts with the line ‘Three blind

mice, three blind mice’ and end with ‘As three blind mice’ (Ivimey 2018).

In SE, the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art is the first Act of the narrative and

is contextualised to the player using the Spoiling of the Eland story before returning to the

‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art with an understanding thereof. I structured the

narrative of SE in this way in order to keep the content as authentic to uKhahlamba

Drakensberg traditions as possible. I fully explain this narrative structure and the purposes

thereof in Chapter 5.


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In addition to the Spoiling of the Eland story, I also include further pieces of uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Bushmen belief in order to provide more contextualisation to the ‘Rosetta

Stone’ of southern African rock art which are not part of the Spoiling of the Eland story. I

based my decisions on what should be included primarily on whether they were important

to understanding the relationship between Bushmen and eland, or general Bushmen beliefs

about eland and the practice of hunting eland.

1.3 The Research

From the outset, I knew that I needed to acquire the necessary software for developing

video games. Many free software solutions exist for people interested in developing video

games. I first needed to choose a game engine to use as a central development tool. A game

engine is a software package that greatly streamlines and facilitates the development of

video games. Notable among these are free game engines such as Unity, Unreal Engine 4,

and Godot. Game engines allow for the smooth integration of the varied disciplines

involved with video game development, offering varied products and services associated

to it (Bottino & Martina 2010: 437; Majewski 2017: 197).

Among the options of free game engines, I selected Unity as the preferred game engine for

my research project. Other options could have been Unreal Engine 4 and Godot, but the

leading factor behind my decision was the user-friendly design of Unity and relative ease

with which one can learn to use it. These advantages were commonly mentioned in reviews

of Unity in comparison with other game engines. I felt that these aspects of Unity were key


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to my research, as I needed to learn and be acquainted with a lot of new practices and

disciplines.

At the start of my research project, I thought I would need, amongst others, to learn the

following: (i) how to use Unity, (ii) how to use 3D model, (iii) how to animate 3D models,

(iv) how to use image editing software, and (v) how to program/code. I later decided to

focus on those aspects of video game development and Unity that are associated with

developing two-dimensional (hereafter 2D) video games. This decision was influenced by

two factors, the first of which can be related to the research questions, and the second to

the results of the survey that I conducted.

1.4 Research Questions

1. How can the process of thinking about the past in archaeological and traditional

ways be represented in a video game? How will it represent the current state of the

site, and the traditional beliefs and values of the associated culture? How will the

video game encourage reflexivity and reflection in players, concerning thinking

about the past?

2. What demand is there for a video game representing South African heritage? With

regards to the South African and global video gaming communities, what is the

hypothesised response to such a video game?


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In my approach to the first research question, it was important relate it to the context of the

site (Game Pass Shelter, particularly the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art), and

the Spoiling of the Eland story. This research question was informed by three aspects of

my research project: (i) the literature review, (ii) the survey, and (iii) the experience of

developing SE. The second research question was primarily informed by the survey, but

the review of the literature also contributed to it.

1.5 Aims

The overarching aim of the research was to create a video game that focused on the ‘Rosetta

Stone’ of southern African rock art, the Spoiling of the Eland story, and traditional

uKhahlamba Drakensberg Bushmen folklore and beliefs associated with eland and hunting.

SE resulted from this aim and was created using Unity, Microsoft Visual Studio and

Autodesk Sketchbook. Under this overarching aim, I had three sub-aims:

1. Assessing the interest in the proposed video game and participant recommendations

for doing so prior to the development process using a digital feedback survey,

2. Developing a video game that was suited to the traditional uKhahlamba

Drakensberg heritage in conjunction with the survey results, and

3. Designing the video game for the purpose of making the mechanics, visuals, and

narrative adhere to the archaeological data, traditional rock art and folklore.


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For the first sub-aim, the purposes of the survey included: (i) to measure the appeal of

heritage- and archaeology-related video games to a sample population of video gamers, (ii)

measure the appeal of the video game the I originally proposed to develop in conjunction

with this research, (iii) identify which aspects of the proposed video game the participants

were most interested in, and (iv) adapt my video game proposal to inform the design of the

proposed video game. As to the second sub-aim, the most important principle which guided

the design of SE was to make the system and content within in as authentic to the traditions

of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Bushmen as possible. Lastly, the purpose behind the third

sub-aim were to preserve the traditions of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Bushmen by

actually developing a video game.

Participation in this survey was voluntary and the majority of participants were South

African, although international participants were also included. The most important criteria

for inclusion in the survey was that the participants be video gamers, as they would

otherwise not be able to inform this research project. Two groups were initially invited to

participate in the survey, the South African Gaming Alliance (hereafter ZAGA) and a

Discord server. ZAGA is a Facebook group with a South African member base and the

Discord server constituted an international member base.

1.6 Significance of the Study

This research contributes to the field of archaeogaming in four distinct ways. First, it

contributes to the body of video games that have been developed for the specific purpose


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of preserving heritage. Second, it provides an example of how rock art and traditional

folklore associated therewith can be preserved using the video game format. Third, it

contributes towards the preservation of intangible heritage (i.e. folklore) in South Africa.

Fourth, this is the first study of its kind in South Africa, and Africa at large, whereby the

management of heritage and the use of video games have been intertwined. Rather than

video games, music has been used by other scholars to popularise the understanding of

heritage. As an example, Bongo Flava’s music was used to make people aware of the value

of Kilwa Kisiwani World Heritage Site in Tanzania (Ichumbaki & Lubao 2020). See the

video game developed alongside this research.

1.7 The Development of SE

The development of my video game took place at various intervals, as it was sometimes

necessary for me to focus on other aspects of my research, such as conducting the survey

and writing different aspects of my research dissertation. Before I could even begin the

development of my video game, I needed to familiarise myself with Unity and the systems

within it. This involved a significant amount of time and labour, and I only focused on

those systems which were vital to developing SE. The other systems in Unity would have

not have contributed much towards the final product. Those systems I did focus on,

included 2D animation, creating the art assets, and coding in C#. To avoid confusion, an

asset refers to any data included in the development of video games, from pictures, 3D

models, textures, audio clips, and code. I further familiarised myself with Autodesk

Sketchbook for the creation of visual art assets derived from the relevant rock art.


13

Figure 1.2: Screenshot of a hunting scene in the video game developed alongside this

research (SE). It shows hunters on the left and an eland that has been hit by a spear.

Development periods occurred before and after the survey, and throughout the writing of

this dissertation. It involved much trial-and-error in order to produce the final product, as

it involved an extensive process of experimentation to achieve the intended and end results.

I initially thought that I would develop the video game entirely by myself, but soon

discovered that I would need help from someone with more experience in coding in c#.

This was especially the case with the development of the artificial intelligence in the video

game, which was used to define the behaviour of animals and hunters within the video

game. See Appendix B for a brief example of the artificial intelligence script of the eland

in my video game and the animation script associated with it.


14

1.8 Dissertation Overview

This chapter has provided a brief background to (i) the potential of video games as an

important medium in preserving rock art, (ii) my interest in video games, (iii) research

questions and aims that guided the study, (iv) the development of SE, and (v) a discussion

on the significance of the study.

Chapter 2 will review the most important literature on video games, as defined by the scope

of the proposed research. In particular, I review literature that focused on four topics: (i)

the benefits of video games, (ii) the use of video games in archaeology and heritage-related

disciplines, (iii) archaeogaming, and the (iv) uKhahlamba Drakensberg folklore. The first

topic included those aspects of video games that either encouraged or facilitated better

learning and/or novel educational approaches, and primarily drew from psychological

research. The second topic included research that explored the new ways of interacting

with the past that are afforded by video games. For example, how certain video games can

help in understanding the complex relationships between various societal factors to the

youth (Squire 2008). The third topic included various sub-disciplines and fields within

archaeogaming, but focused on the use of video games as a form of heritage preservation

and the development of heritage-driven video games. The last topic included an analysis

of traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park oral tradition and beliefs, including the

practice thereof and associated stories. Specifically, I focused on stories and folklore about

eland and hunting.


15

Chapter 3 is a description of the methodology that I utilised throughout this research. I

draw a distinction between the methodology that I used in conducting the archaeological

and heritage research, and that which I followed for designing and developing my video

game. Concerning the first methodology, I describe: (i) how I conducted the literature

review, and (ii) how I conducted and analysed the survey. In the second methodology, I

explain how I designed SE and how I developed it. Additionally, I also give an impression

of the sequential order in which the various parts of my research occurred, as well as how

they related to each other.

In Chapter 4, I present the results and analyses of the survey by detailing the participant

responses to the questionnaire. Where possible, I attempt to describe various factors that

might have influenced the responses of participants, such as trends in the video gaming

culture. I conclude Chapter 4 with a discussion of the survey results and give an insight

onto how they influenced the development of SE.

Chapter 5 covers important information on those aspects of my research that are less

associated with academia. It primarily functions as a report on the development of SE, what

is commonly referred to as a ‘post-mortem’ in video game development. My post-mortem,

however, also describes the workflow I followed for adapting the primary source material

of the rock art at Game Pass Shelter into the visual art assets that I included in SE. This

description of the workflow I followed functions as a tutorial for how rock art can be

adapted for video games in Unity. Within the standard framework of a video game ‘post-

mortem’, I describe: (i) the process of developing my video game, (ii) what went right


16

during development, (ii) what went wrong during development, (iv) what I could have done

differently, (v) what I learned from the experience, and (vi) what I recommend for similar

projects in the future.

I have included three appendices with regards to the development of the game: (i) a

verbatim copy of the survey questionnaire that formed part of this research, (ii) a summary

of the traditional story that became the focus of the video game developed in association

with this research, and (iii) two relatively short excerpts of code from the same video game.

These are Appendix A, Appendix B, and Appendix C respectively.


17

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

In this review of the literature, several topics were explored. These include: (i) leading

research that has been conducted in the field of archaeogaming (for more see Reinhard

2018b, (ii) the identification and description of the advantages video games can offer the

archaeological discipline (iii) the limitations of using video games in archaeology, (iv) an

identification of the some gaps in the literature and a description of where future research

will likely lead, and (iv) how my research fits into this picture.

It can be difficult to explain to non-video gamers what it is about video games that makes

them so engaging to players (Naskali et al. 2013: 232). Video games are incredibly

effective educational tools that encourage exploration, engagement, independent learning,

communication, collaboration, discovery, and critical engagement with data (Anguilera &

Mendiz 2003: 9-11; Belotti et al. 2012: 1-2; Bontchev 2015a: 44-53b; Champion 2017a:

24; González-Tennant 2016: 23; Griffiths 2002: 47-48; Majewski 2017: 185; McGraw et

al. 2017: 170-171; Mortara et al. 2014: 318; Rubio-Campillo et al. 2017: 154; cf. Gee

2003). For example, due to the large amount of interconnected data, visual cues, and

conditions, players frequently need to observe, interpret, and respond to various

circumstances in order to achieve a goal within the rules of the video game (Anguilera &

Mendiz 2003: 9-11). This is especially prevalent in real-time strategy games, where players

need to manage armies, cities and resources. In short, video games offer “affective and


18

adaptive gameplay” (Bontchev 2015a: 55). Video games are unique in that they offer

interactivity and openness when compared to other media. Interactivity and openness refer

to how often players can interact with a virtual world and openness refers to the scope of

interactions that are available (Bostan 2005: 1).

It is therefore of no surprise that, with technology and the media that they utilise being

completely embedded in the lives of people today, digital media have become a vital

component behind how members of the public learn, process and understand information,

interact with each other, and perceive their environments (Bontchev 2015a: González-

Tennant 2016: 23-25; Haddad 2016: 705, cf. Naskali et al. 2013: 231-235; Squire 2008:

180-185). The increasing spread of video gaming culture, and their utility to the objectives

of archaeology have been quite succinctly explained by various archaeologists, including

the statement that video games are a powerful and compact multimedia form for expressing

stored knowledge (Bontchev 2015a: 44; Champion 2017a: 24; Copplestone 2017a: 33).

Video games are a “socio-cultural phenomenon that cannot and should not be ignored”

(Glas et al. 2017: 135; see also Graham 2016: 18; Haddad 2016: 705).

The potential for concisely representing data in this form has led to researchers calling for

more attention to the creation of artistic and creative narratives within the broader field of

archaeological narration through popular media (Watterson 2015: 128). This is because

they immerse the receiver of archaeological narratives in a virtual environment that

encourages the suspension of disbelief and promotes player agency through the choices

they facilitate. McGraw et al. (2017: 173) noted how video games can promote and


19

celebrate local heritage and create collaborative relationships, as was also the case with

The Cook Inlet Tribal Council (2017).

2.2 Storytelling in the Technological World

Video games are intertwined with the highly technological Zeitgeist of modern times which

are part of the range of products distributed by major technological producers, such as

Microsoft, Sony Playstation, Nintendo, Android and Apple (Haddad 2016: 705). The

ubiquity of these companies illustrates how their goods are appreciated by various groups

within contemporary culture (Naskali et al. 2013: 231). This has been enhanced by the

increased availability of the internet and the relatively low cost of computer technology

(THESSA 2017; Newzoo 2017; Ryan et al, 2006: 347). The market for video games is

expanding with the adoption of more personal home computers, dedicated gaming

consoles, and smartphones. Such an increase is likely to lead to increasing affordability of

virtual and augmented-reality compatible devices, thus spreading the video gaming

pastime in a new, interesting and engaging ways (Mol et al. 2017; Haddad 2016).

According to Newzoo (2017: 9) these developments in smartphone technology are now

primed to make huge innovations for the video gaming market (Newzoo 2017: 9). This is

perhaps the strongest indicator of how video games are becoming embedded into most of

the entertainment and communication technologies that people use. Just a decade ago,

smartphones were a new development and mobile gaming on cell phones resembled arcade

gaming more than dedicated console gaming. The diversity of video gaming platforms


20

offers exponential dissemination of interactive archaeological information and concerns to

the public, and increases the likelihood that archaeologists of the future will appreciate and

be gamers themselves (Belotti et al. 2012: 2; Champion 2017a; Copplestone 2017a: 33;

Haddad 2016: 705-709; Morgan 2009: 483; Newzoo 2017: 32; THESSA 2017: 4).

This broadcast potential indicates that learning how to best use this medium can be of high

utility to archaeologists as well (Bottino & Martina 2010: 436-440). Our modern

technological society has situated video gaming as its media of choice. While traditional

media are doing their best to include more interactive strategies to increase their services

and products, video gaming is spreading its influence to non-interactive media. For

example, watching others play video games and watching eSports (Newzoo 2017: 9). There

are even prospects of eSports being included in the Olympics. The Paris 2024 bid team has

shown an interest therein (Fernandez 2018).

According to the Milken Institute (2018: 16), the eSports market revenue for 2017 was

approximately $660 million (US). It has been forecast to exceed $1 billion (US) in 2019.

The eSports phenomenon indicates how much appeal video gaming has to the public today.

This is due to the unique dialogue video games offer for experiencing the real, artistic,

created and cultural domains, as well as how effective they are for learning (Mol et al.

2017).


21

Video games are uniquely situated to allow recipients of archaeological information to do

so in a way that engages them more intensively than other media (Majewski 2017: 198;

Mol et al. 2017: 9; Mortara et al. 2014: 318). They allow engagement with virtual

archaeological experiences in an interactive manner that does not require their physical

presence (Majewski 2017: 198; Mol et al. 2017: 9; Mortara et al. 2014: 318). This would

be opposed to film and photographic media - which only allow viewers to see and hear

created content.

Similarly to film and photographic media, many archaeological exhibitions prohibit

physical interaction. Traditional entertainment media present the public with created

experiences, but seldom allow them to create their experiences. What sets video games

apart from these media is the capability they allow for the public to manipulate an avatar

in the virtual world, thereby enabling them to immerse themselves in a virtual world. This

lets them co-create their experiences. In turn, this provides a uniquely interactive and

engaging experience through the provision of goal-driven problem solving and exploration

(Bontchev 2015a: 44; Champion 2017a: 24; Ganström 2013: 12).

Video games have diverse purposes as directed by the achievement of goals and objectives

within the constraints or rules of the video game (Bontchev 2015a: 44; Champion 2017a:

24-25; Ganström 2013: 14; Rubio-Campillo et al. 2017: 154). The placement of players

within a system that is constrained by rules demands that players firstly learn the rules and

what is possible within the video game (the ‘possibility spaces’). They therefore critically

engage with these systems in order to drive the state of entities (e.g. their avatar) within the


22

games (or the game itself) towards a desired or possible outcome (Bontchev 2015a: 44;

Champion 2017a: 24-25b: 115-116; Copplestone 2017b: 87-95; Ganström 2013: 14; cf.

Squire 180-185; Amory et al. 1999: 312). For more information about the affordances of

video games see Bontchev 2015a.

Rubio-Campillo et al. (2017: 154) have convincingly identified that typical video game

fact or rule-constrained problem solving closely resembles the scientific methods and

approaches that are applied in archaeology. Video games (i) foster learning as choices

made in-game, (ii) do not affect the physical reality of the player during the learning

process, and (iii) remove the need to be in a specific location for engaging with the virtual

data, which is a substantial limitation to some individuals (Champion 2017a: 24-25; The

Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017: 24-25; Squire 2008: 185). The real-world safety that video

games entail, coupled with providing a space for testing new strategies, encourages the

exploration of alternative thinking and framing the achievement of goals (Bontchev 2015a:

44; Champion 2017a: 24-25; The Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017: 24-25).

This kind of experience brings interaction and goal completion within the realm of

cognition and coordination - achieved through interfacing with technology to affect or

control the video game experience (Bontchev 2015a: 44; Champion 2017a: 24-25; The

Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017: 24-25). Archaeological engagement with these

phenomena is therefore increasingly important to address, a point which is fast becoming

increasingly recognised by professionals within the discipline (see Bontchev 2015a: 44;

Champion 2017a; Mol et al. 2016, 2017). This is due to engagement, interactivity,


23

enjoyment and critical thought being crucial challenges to knowledge creation and

education (see Amory et al. 1999; Bontchev 2015a: 44, 2015b; Champion 2017a; Mol et

al. 2017; Squire 2008: 185; www.archaeogaming.com).

2.3 Alternative Digital Media

Internet-based virtual exhibits, although a useful tool for storing archaeological material

and cultural contexts, are frequently regarded as a lacklustre presentational format by

consumers and do not offer the same level of engagement as video games (Bottino &

Martina 2010: 427; Haddad 2016; Mortara et al. 2014: 318). Bottino and Martina (2010:

427) argue that users can gain a more engaging experience with the content if they could

be immersed in a 3D environment which enables them to investigate 360⁰ environments.

They go on to emphasise the potential for video games as a Virtual Reality medium for

synthesising video, audio, physics, user-technology interfaces, and programming in

entertaining and educational experiences. I second this position and use it as one of the

premises behind my research, a point which is often noted in the literature (cf. Mortara et

al. 2014: 318).

Virtual Reality Headsets (VRH) can arguably enable a higher degree of immersion than

the standard display screen, by mounting a display onto the player’s head and presenting

them with visual, audio and sometimes haptic (touch) information (Bottino & Martina

2010: 430). VRH are no doubt the best means of achieving the highest degree of immersion

short of full body haptic feedback and input interfaces (Bottino & Martina 2010: 430).


http://www.archaeogaming.com/

24

That noted, the drawback is that VRH can get quite expensive if quality experiences are

the aim of purchase, especially for the South African market, and full body interfaces are

a long way off. Even further on the horizon, a fully realised or even a partial haptic

feedback system will revolutionise interactive experiences. This is especially the case

within the context of digitally experiencing heritage, as it could allow people to interact

with and handle heritage objects in a way that does not endanger said heritage. Some VRH

products can be bought within a R200 price range, but such products generally facilitate

the mounting of smartphones to the player’s head, which in my opinion is comparable to

simply sitting very close to any display.

I argue that VRHs do not offer a higher degree of immersion since the continued frequency

of simulation sickness remains a prevalent issue with entry-level products (Singla et al.

2017: 1). Simulation sickness is a frequent side-effect of VRH experiences which results

in users becoming disoriented from conflicting sensory stimuli. Furthermore, quality VRH

products still have not reached an affordable price. They range from R4 800 (Dorry HA554

VRH) to R12999 (HTC Vive VRH).

Although high-end VRH products offer a much higher degree of high definition immersion

than low-end ones, they unfortunately still cause simulation sickness in users (Singla et al.

2017). New software has recently been developed to address simulation sickness (Fadelli

2018; Samit 2018), but as the far greater consumer base for video games remains with

personal computers and dedicated gaming consoles, it remains more suitable to focus on

the latter as platforms.


25

Any casual inspection of the VR category on Steam, an online digital video game

marketplace, will show that video games are one of the primary software types that are

being developed for high-immersion Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and Augmented

Reality experiences. However, the VR medium is relatively new and I think that it will

only truly be an option for use by future archaeologists once it has become cheaper to

purchase VR devices and to develop for it.

2.4 Trends in the Technological Industry

Several factors have made it easier for individuals interested in video game development

to become a part of the industry (Lowthorpe et al. 2013: 277). Instances of video games

developed by individuals becoming anecdotes of ‘hitting it big’ and acquiring millions of

players illustrate that even a few or individual developers can achieve serious success when

a novel idea is realised, despite difficulties such as market saturation (Lowthorpe et al.

2013: 281; Heller & Roberts 2017). The high degree of usability and the relatively easy-

to-learn programming scripts of game engines can reduce the labour and costs of video

game development by as much as half (Bottino & Martina 2010:437; Majewski 2017: 197).

Furthermore, a familiarity with video games and experience playing them can greatly

facilitate the learning process, as identification, function and application of video game

terms and mechanics will already be internalised (Bottino & Martina 2010:437). This is

especially so in the case of players who change the video game through the source code

(‘modders’) and modified versions and features of video games (‘mods’) (Arakji & Lang

2007: 8-9; Majewski 2017: 195).


26

Alternatively, the comparison that Majewski (2017: 193-197) made between a mod, and a

video game that was made from the ground up, showed that although video games that are

developed from scratch are liable to changes in funding and interest, mods that are created

from video games that have already achieved mass appeal have a larger user base and

lifespan. One caveat is required for ‘modding’, however, as a recent survey has shown that

familiarity with video games might facilitate the likelihood of individuals adopting a

player’s mind-set when interacting with video games and therefore inhibiting critical

thinking (Champion 2017b: 107-108). Such individual would therefore just experience a

video game, instead of engaging with it critically.

Video games are now played across a variety of gaming platforms, including personal

computers (this includes internet browser-based, downloaded, and boxed games),

dedicated video gaming consoles (home consoles and portable handhelds), and

smartphones (for more information see Newzoo 2017 and THESSA 2017). Thus, the

technological platform that is selected as the primary form of distribution is also an

important challenge that researchers need to consider (e.g. Windows, Apple, Android).

This is due to the affordances that each media platform allows, and the consumers who use

them.

But differing platforms no longer limit how video games can be distributed, as physical

media re no longer strictly required. Digital downloads have become the primary manner

through which video games are acquired in recent years, as opposed to physical sources,

and amounted to 74 percent of the market in 2016 (THESSA 2017: 14). The ubiquity of


27

digital distribution indicates that it will likely be a better vehicle for disseminating the

results of archaeological work than physical products when using the video gaming

medium. Making video games available through the internet is a great help to independent

developers, who were not always financially capable of acquiring retail space for physical

copies in the past (Martin & Deuze 2009: 280).

The global video gaming market had a global revenue of $108.9 billion (US) in 2017 and

is forecast to increase to $128.5 billion (US) in 2020 (Newzoo 2017: 13). This is far greater

than the eSports market revenue: $660 million (US) for 2017 and estimated to be over $1

billion for 2019. The fact that video games have diversified to so many different

technological devices, coupled with the growth of 56 per cent of the global video games

industry’s revenues from 2012 to 2017, indicates that more and more people will continue

to actively participate in this pastime (Lowthorpe 2013: 277; Newzoo 2017: 6).

Two of the most significant influencing factors behind this growth are the mobile gaming

market and the transition of browser-based gamers from personal computer internet

browser gaming to mobile gaming (Lowthorpe et al. 2013: 277-278; Newzoo 2017: 13).

The mobile gaming market caters primarily to smartphones and tablets which comprise 42

per cent of the global video gaming market, estimated at $46.18 billion in the US

(Lowthorpe et al. 2013: 277; Newzoo 2017: 13). It is expected to increase to 50 per cent

of the global video gaming revenue ($64.25 billion US) by 2020 (Newzoo 2017: 13).

Researchers within the archaeological profession have previously recognised that the


28

mobile video game market is a primary candidate for disseminating their work and this is

likely to remain so for some time to come (see Rubio-Campillo et al. 2017).

2.5 Past Archaeological Work with Video Games

Archaeological engagement with video gaming has been done in several different ways.

Amongst these have been the following: using existing popular video games in order to

construct, represent, or recreate known archaeological data and sites within them

(Majewski 2017; McGraw et al. 2017; Morgan 2009, 2017), creating video games to

communicate archaeological method and theory (Copplestone 2017a; Graham 2017;

Rubio-Campillo et al. 2017; van der Schilden & Heijltjes 2017), disseminating traditional

knowledge (The Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017), applying archaeological methods to

fictional cultural entities found in video games (Graham 2016: 18), and preserving video

games and video gaming culture as intangible heritage (Glas et al. 2017; see Mortara et al.

2014: 319-322).

It is perhaps necessary to elaborate on the work that has been done at the intersection of

archaeology and video games in order to illustrate exactly how the former is benefitted by

the latter. One particular field in which archaeology has been and can further be benefitted

in is the field of serious games (non-entertainment driven video games, i.e. education),

especially in the heritage sector (Bontchev 2015a: 49-53; Majewski 2012: 185). Most

digital efforts in the heritage industry (for example virtual tours) draw from elements of

video gaming for their mechanics, and presentation/interface (Barbier 2014: 2; Majewski


29

2017: 185). That noted, more input on the part of archaeological and heritage professionals

has been called for by various researchers (Champion 2017a; Haddad 2016: 709; Mol et

al. 2016, 2017). This is due to several factors, including the reach of video games as a form

of popular media that can draw individuals who would otherwise be disinterested (Haddad

2016: 709; Amory et al. 1999: 311). Such people may be limited by real-world constraints

to move beyond passive engagement with archaeological data (e.g. travel costs) (Haddad

2016: 709; Amory et al. 1999: 311). For more on how video games interest people see

Ryan et al. 2006.

Video games such as Minecraft, a game that also has an affinity with archaeological

practice, have been adopted for educational purposes as serious gaming initiatives. For

example, heritage sites have been reconstructed in Minecraft, encouraging players to

dictate their interaction with virtual archaeology, as well as empowering both educators

and learners (McGraw et al. 2017: 170-181; Morgan 2017). These projects also align

archaeological objectives with the interests of the public, and allow players to engage with

archaeology interpretively and empathically (McGraw et al. 2017: 170-181; Morgan

2017). For example, reconstructing an archaeological site in Minecraft could cause players

to think about how sites were built, as well as why they were built in specific locations.

Scientific thinking, archaeological models and approaches, multivocality and traditional

narratives can be communicated to players and otherwise disinterested people through the

creation of video games specifically created for archaeological purposes (Bontchev 2015a;

Copplestone 2017a; Graham 2016: 16-18; Haddad 2016: 709; Rubio-Campillo et al. 2017;


30

The Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017; van der Schilden & Heijltjes 2017). Video games are

a form of culture and subsequently some museums have adopted them into their strategies

Glas et al. 2017). (Glas et al. 2017). For more information on preserving obsolete video

games as heritage (see Bontchev 2015a: 53-54).

A valuable contribution made by Majewski (2017: 188-189) is the system of classification

that he uses for video games that are made for heritage purposes. In this system, existing

commercial video games that only feature historical or archaeological data comprise the

category of commercial games at one end of a spectrum. At the other end are video games

that are created for purposes other than commercial success, comprise the category of

‘serious’ games (Majewski: 188-189). Located in between these polar extremes can be

found the categories of ‘culture-centric’ video games and video ‘game mods’, which are

primarily focused on historical or archaeological accuracy or the addition of new data,

respectively (Majewski: 188-189).

Majewski’s typology is a considerable heuristic that benefits the future digital/virtual -

heritage and archaeology work, as it facilitates the classification of the resultant research

and could help identify the objectives and valuable research questions or aims that might

be taken for granted by researchers. Conversely, Majewski (2017: 200) notes that making

the results of heritage-focused video games available for modification by modders would

likely serve to grant prospective students within the archaeological and heritage disciplines

agency in interacting with heritage content and facilitate the learning process.


31

The potential of video games as a medium which the archaeological discipline can use for

effective communication in our current digital and virtual era has received increasing

recognition since the early 2010s (see Champion 2017a; Copplestone 2017a,b; Ganström

2013; Graham 2016; Hughes 2017; Majewski 2017:185 & 199; Mol et al. 2016; Mol et al.

2017; Morgan 2009, 2017; The Cook Island Tribal Council 2017; van der Schilden &

Heijltjes 2017; www.Archaeogaming.com). This growth, as mentioned earlier, has been

aided by the increased availability of access to the internet, as well as computer and smart

technology.

The perception of working with video games being a niche field is one of the factors that

limits more archaeological engagement therewith (Mol et al. 2016: 13). This indicates that

all that is holding archaeology back from leveraging video games is education outreach,

which efforts to include archaeology in video games can directly address (Belotti et al.

2012: 2; Mol et al. 2016: 14). A few examples of methods that could be used to include

archaeologists in utilising video games as a communicative medium include educational

instruction and courses, individual inquiry, workshops on video game design and how

video games communicate data, and discreet periods for collaboratively designing video

games (Hughes 2017: 44-45).

The above methods can be considered more formal in nature, but Ibrahim et al. (2011: 277)

suggest that the best approach to cultural learning should be informal, as the definition of

what constitutes cultural heritage is dependent on the culture in which it is broadly situated.

Such informal learning can easily be adapted to narrative progression in video games,


32

where a certain piece of information is necessary for a new area to be accessible. For

example, embedding imported information in an object in a virtual environment for the

player to find before they can pass through a door.

I agree with this view and would go on to say that video games are the most popular

medium facilitating informal learning. I opine that this is due to the interactive, explorative

and challenging nature of video games that frequently encourages learning within the game

environment in order to achieve the desired outcomes (Belotti 2012: 2). Such occurs

despite the fact that the cultural data that is embedded and represented within the virtual

world can be completely fictional in nature. By using a kind of ‘bait and hook’ method of

revealing narrative data to players, video games make use of the players’ own investigative

motivation to ensure that more meaningful and longer lasting interaction and reflection are

ensured (Belotti et al. 2012: 2).

In my video game, the player is told through text prompts on the screen that this text

narrates the story of the video game from the perspective of a Bushmen who is telling a

story. The goal of the player is act out the events that are being narrated and only the

performance of those events will progress the narrative. The intention of this form of goal

provision to make the player think about what they need to do to progress the story and to

provide a mild challenge for them to do so.


33

2.6 Affinities between Archaeology and Video Games

Video games can be viewed as a modern cultural phenomenon and as virtually constructed

archaeological sites. The last has been justified by virtue of several key features (Reinhard

2017). The first feature is of individual video games being separate and distinct entities, as

well as having both a digital and physical presence (Reinhard 2017: 101). The second is

that of the game media being both artefacts and sites, which have physical limitations

(storage or boundaries) that are the emergent features of individual parts (consisting of

files, directories) which were created by human beings and environment in which people

can act, respectively (Reinhard 2017: 101-102). The last feature is that they have temporal

iterations or instantiations that can be accessed through the digital media, which

communicate encoded meanings or messages (Reinhard 2017: 102). These messages are

represented through play-throughs, digital storage media and physical storage media from

or to either the developers, other players, or characters within the game.

It is important to note that a record of these interactions is created during the process of

interaction, although an ‘artefact’ may not necessarily be created (this would require for

the progress within the game to be saved and therefore stored) and experience decay

(Reinhard 2017: 101). They are also always in use, although a lack of having the game

installed means that it is a static identity awaiting its next occupants (Reinhard 2017: 101).

The above therefore implies that video games store data that can be used in order to

research how players interact with and possibly how they think about the past.


34

There are more important affinities between video games and archaeology for this research,

however. The affinity between the practice of archaeology and the act of playing video

games can be seen in three areas. These include: (i) understanding the rules governing

events in a closed system or environment, (ii) working within the rules to learn non-explicit

knowledge within the system or environment, and (iii) applying some method to

interactions within the environment to meet certain goals (Naskali et al. 2013: 235; Squire

2008: 180-185). This is especially the case with historical and archaeological video games,

where thinking about the past significantly resembles that which is found in professional

approaches (Graham 2016: 17; Squire 180-185).

Graham (2016: 17) identifies that the emergent features of the video gaming experience

arising from playing video games representing the past are in fact more important than the

content of the video game. This is due to the reflection about how rules, forces and agents

in the past worked in relation to each other (Graham 2016: 17). In this way, Graham

(2016:17) shows how “games rules are historiography” in all but name. I agree, and would

argue further that video games implicitly teach players about how different approaches in

narrating the past leads to certain types of information being prioritised or disregarded. The

Civilization series, for example, shows how different factors in society and history impact

on the course of history (Squire 2008). Such video games implicitly communicate how

history is narrated and having historical narration as the focus of video games can do so

more effectively. The same video games would show how empiricism, traditional oral

records, or omitted/overlooked information can affect historical narration.


35

Graham (2016: 17) conversely illustrates that video games which focus on exploration

depart from the reflective quality mentioned above, but share another affinity with

archaeology. Both archaeological practice and this kind of ‘walking simulator’ focus on

performance and practice. Graham (2016: 17) calls this “a kind of performed landscape

archaeology”, wherein exploration and studying culture are central to uncovering a

narrative and completing certain goals. As I explain in Chapter 5 (see below), performing

the narrative of SE is the explicit purpose of my video game

2.7 Telling Stories with Video Games

The above manner of communicating information to the player also seems to be aligned

with the communicative methods used in walking simulators (González-Tennant 2016: 23-

26). According to González-Tennant (2016: 25), walking simulators differ from typical

video games in that they do not feature agents that convey information, but rather

environmental cues. The omission of agents within video games, while interesting with

regards to narrative, would hinder communication greatly as virtual cultural agents are one

of the most effective means for communicating contextual information and creating more

affective experiences for players (Champion 2015: 185).

Coupled with the embedding of contextual data within a virtual environment are the

interactions with points of interest that help players learn the embedded data. Belotti et al.

(2012) focused on the use of mini-games in order to facilitate player learning, but as with

walking-simulators, did not use virtual cultural agents to communicate information. Belotti


36

et al. (2012) also utilised a pedagogical approach to communicating data to the players,

with the mini-games focusing on testing the performance of the players. I find this approach

to video games to be problematic, inasmuch as the adherence of gameplay elements to a

strongly pedagogical approach would reduce the entertaining quality of video games,

which is one of the key aspects that promote engagement with data that players would

normally not engage with. The use of mini-games in order to reinforce the retention of

embedded information would, however, be useful, since it encourages comprehension of

the embedded data in a contextual manner (Belotti et al. 2012: 9). For more information

on mini-game typologies and what they promote see Belotti et al. 2012.

I suggest that the technique that is used by most commercial video games for challenging

a player’s skills and progressing the narrative, that of ‘quest’ or goal provision, would be

more effective in retaining the attention of players. This is because it reduces the

interpretation of performance-based tasks as formal evaluation on the player’s part. Instead,

such goal provision strategies promote player motivation by having them associate with,

or otherwise internalise the goal, in order to achieve a desired outcome (namely progressing

the narrative). I would argue that a game narrative is also missing from the video game

made by Belotti et al. (2012).

Goins et al. (2013: 7-8) showed that it is best for video games to be made to suit narratives

that are already engaging and that evoke the desired response in the player. This is opposed

to making a narrative to suit an already-made video game. Goins et al. (2013) also found

that what imparts a sense of player agency is more aligned with what kinds of choices a


37

player makes and how often such choices are presented, instead of having an actual effect

on the outcome. This indicates that having choices impact on more than strictly plot-

centred events would increase the immersion that players experience. A few areas of player

choice that are common to video games focus on the aesthetic appearance of in-game

characters, the status of in-game characters to other characters and different moral choices.

All of these can have associated affordances within the video game.

It is important to incorporate both an over-arching video game narrative and virtual agents

within the video game, as they are useful for communicating cultural information, rules

and values in an explicit way to players, as well as thematic, motivating, or nuanced

information (Champion 2015:184). The inclusion of a video game narrative promotes the

investment and adoption of contextual values that the player learns from the data

communicated in a video game. This is also the case with cultural agents, which

“recognise..., add to or transmit...physically embedded and embodied aspects of culture”

(Champion 2015: 186). Using virtual cultural agents in this way leads to both player

engagement and education (Champion 2015: 186).

I therefore would propose that researchers involved with developing video games for

cultural heritage can learn from the broader video games industry in how to effectively

communicate contextual information to players. That is, by including a greater narrative

which uses a combination of virtual agents, environmental cues and frequent choices for

players (see Mortara et al. 2014). Following the findings of Goins et al. (2013), a diversity

in the aspects that player choice can affect (i.e. aesthetics, in-game relationships, etc.) is


38

also to be desired. In my video game, the traditional story of the Spoiling of the Eland only

engenders a third of the overall narrative. The overall narrative links the imagery and rock

art motifs found at Game Pass Shelter with the scene representing the Spoiling of the Eland.

This is explored further in Chapter 3, the Methodology chapter.

2.8 The Potential of Video Games for Archaeology

Emphasis on archaeological accuracy needs to be implemented within the popular media

in order to increase awareness of archaeological method and theory. Although this would

be contrasted to those media which are fictional in nature (though inspired by or including

archaeological data), it should, in my opinion, not aim to eliminate inaccurate or fictional

portrayals of archaeology altogether. Fictional archaeology, such as that which can be

found in the Tomb Raider series, function as compelling catalysts of public interest in

archaeology, but I argue that there should be more products available to ‘hard-core’ video

gamers. Such video gamers often engage with complex systems in video games, micro-

manage virtual entities and data (Graham 2016; cf. Squire 180-185), and would benefit

from being able to critically engage with video games that accurately portray

archaeological data.

The potential of video games for archaeology is further emphasised by the ability of this

medium to immerse the player in an interactive manner, allowing them to act within

virtually-built environments within predefined parameters (Champion 2017a: 24-25,b:

110-115; Copplestone 2017a: 33, 2017b; González-Tennant 2016: 25-26; Graham 2016:


39

17-18; Morgan 2017: 32). Such an interaction results in unique experiential dialogues with

the material as well as creative problem solving (The Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017: 25;

McGraw et al. 2017: 170). Notable projects have been made which were done for

archaeological purposes, including Adventure in the Gutter, Never Alone (Kisima

Inɲitchuɲa), Herald: An Interactive Period Drama (see The Cook Inlet Tribal Council

2017; Copplestone 2017a; Mol et al. 2017; van der Schilden & Heijltjes 2017;

www.archaeogaming.com). The archaeological profession has much to gain from, and to

contribute to, increased attention to this form of multimedia (Champion 2017a: 24-25;

Copplestone 2017a: 33, 2017b: 88-89, 96; Glas et al. 2017: 135; Morgan 2017: 32). I

advocate for more exposure to this representational medium amongst professionals and

students.

At present, there are not many mainstream video games within that feature archaeology in

them. A survey conducted by Mol et al. (2016) showed that archaeologists that frequently

play video games identified video games that had more to do with history than archaeology.

This refers to the type of source materials used for making the video games, as well as what

content the video games focus on. It indicates that there is either a paucity of video games

that portray accurate archaeological information, or that archaeological information is

neither being portrayed correctly, nor interpreted successfully (Gardner 2008; Mol et al.

2017: 230). The survey also found that most representations of archaeology within video

games are associated with archaeological methodology and the profession (Mol et al. 2016:

12).


http://archaeogaming.com/

40

Most video games that actually feature archaeology are either more aligned with treasure

hunting (e.g. the Tomb raider series) or have the discipline function as additional game

mechanics (e.g. World of Warcraft and Civilization V) (Mol et al. 2016: 12). In World of

Warcraft , the archaeological profession is included as a character profession. Civilization

V and Civilization VI include an archaeologist unit that is able to research archaeological

sites on the map for additional bonuses (Mol et al. 2016: 14; www.civilization-tr.com

2013). This indicates to me that there are at present not enough video games that are

primarily focused on archaeology, even though there are video games that feature

archaeology.

The above trend might be one of the greatest indicators of the need for academic

archaeological and professional heritage researchers to engage with the video gaming

medium. My video game aims to do so. Expressed differently, representations of the past

within video games often function as a convenient backdrop to the story of such video

games. This is done at the expense of what some virtual heritage researchers and

professionals call cultural presence (Champion 2015: 179-186; Ganström 2013: 19-31).

Champion (2015: 181) defines cultural presence as experiencing a “similar or distinctly

different cultural belief system.”. The rituals and everyday speech of cultural agents need

to reflect their associated culture in order to create cultural presence. An example of

cultural presence being achieved, in my opinion, is in Zeus: Master of Olympus, made by

Impressions Games and published by Sierra Entertainment in 2000.


41

In Zeus: Master of Olympus, players are not afforded control over individual characters,

which are controlled by artificial intelligence, but build cities and manage environments to

encourage the characters to do what the player desires. Building a wheat farm will for

example cause a character to become a farmer. What creates the cultural presence in Zeus:

Master of Olympus is that the characters the actions and thoughts of character being intra-

diegetic, that is having to do with characters’ thoughts and actions within the video game

context. Characters in Zeus: Master of Olympus remark on their professions, events and

video game conditions (like food shortages), or their desires.

The resultant danger that a lack of engagement with this medium on the part of

archaeological and heritage professionals is that it leads to the general public undervaluing

or perceiving the past in misinformed manners, or perhaps simply viewing the past as

convenient settings in which events occur or where there are vaults ripe for plunder (Mol

et al. 2017: 230). Although video games might succeed in stimulating reflection of the past

in players, the input of archaeological and historical professionals is necessary in order to

curtail some common ideas of the past in popular media, such as the primacy attributed to

warfare (Gardner 2008: 75-76; Haddad 2016: 707). Engagement on the part of

archaeologists and heritage professionals with video games is necessary and can be done

with the contribution of archaeologists towards more impactful and insightful experiences

with the past in the video games or, as Morgan (2017: 234) states, reinvigorate the

narratives that archaeology communicates by using video games as a tool.


42

2.9 How the Past is Represented in Video Games

There are a variety of genres in which realistic, historical video games could be presented

to the public. These range from isometric (‘bird’s eye view’) strategy and resource

management video games to first-person shooters which allow the player to see through

their character’s eyes. Other video games draw on folklore, such as Age of Mythology,

Zeus, and God of War, offering the ability to explore the folklore that is associated with

archaeological and historical contexts. Indeed, such folklore-driven video games offer the

exploration of cultural knowledge that would otherwise not be practically recreated in real-

life or museum exhibitions due to associated costs.

Video games offer not only the freedom to create or virtualise different models and thereby

instantiate them, but also enable easier assessment and validation opportunities through

virtualisation and distancing researchers from harmful physical consequences. Some video

games such as the Assassin’s Creed series are notable for their high-quality virtual

reconstructions of architectural monuments. Examples of such reconstructions originate

from the medieval Middle-East, Renaissance Europe, and Ancient Egypt.

Notably Assassin’s Creed: Origins, set in ancient Egypt, has a new mode called ‘Discovery

Mode’. This was designed by the developers of the game (Ubisoft Entertainment) as both

an expansion (additional software) for the original game and as a standalone product (see

Reparaz 2018a, 2018b, https://assassinscreed.ubisoft.com). Some even believe that this is

what lies in store for the future of museum exhibitions (https://futurism.com 2018, cf. Glas

et al. 2017; Naskali et al. 2013). I certainly believe that as such, museum exhibitions will


43

enjoy far more attention and that video game exhibits will become the standard in the

future, although without excluding physical exhibits. This is due to museum audiences

desiring interactivity and participation during museum visits (Naskali et al. 2013: 232).

In the Assassin’s Creed series of video games, the video game developers work with

historians, archaeologists and other heritage professionals in order to create games that are

authentic in their representations of the past, even if they are not entirely accurate (Nielson

2017). For example, Zeus: Master of Olympus centres the setting of scenarios on

mythological events instead of historical ones, but retain cultural presence through

character actions and words. These kinds of virtual exhibitions will serve as the bridge

between the younger members of the population, who take interactivity with virtual

environments as granted, and perceive more traditional modes of communicating

archaeological knowledge (museums and open sites) as tedious or challenging (formal

education) (see Ganström 2013; Naskali et al. 2013; Squire 2008: 184).

Video games also offer randomised procedural generation and realistic physics for

powerful simulation (Champion 2017a: 24). Procedural generation allows players to create

their own unique experiences, perhaps even unintended emergent feature- derived ones,

from video games. Such procedural knowledge enables a wider spectrum of acceptable

learning outcomes that may result from failure and might illustrate causality and

interconnectedness more understandably for players, as well as reinforcing the

appropriateness of successful strategies (Champion 2017: 24).


44

I suggest that learning what not to do through failure, may result from the ease with which

object lessons are remembered, as opposed to theoretical or otherwise distanced ones. For

example, if the objective of an archaeological video games were to be preserving material

in a virtual museum’s storage, then unsuccessful strategies could result in faster

decomposition of in-game virtual heritage. Having the consequences of one’s action being

realised in a virtual space is more engaging than simply thinking about them.

2.10 Traditional Bushman Folklore and the Medium of Video Games

It seems to me as if there is a large degree of similarity between the performativity of

traditional Bushmen folklore and the video gaming medium. This is primarily due to the

collaborative performance between the storyteller and the audience that are necessary and

result in unique storytelling experiences (i.e. the interactivity and engagement). This I say

despite the fact that there are considerable differences between traditional Bushmen

folklore and video games, namely that one requires the input of other people in one’s

presence and the other requires technology for communication.

In my opinion, the video gaming medium is best suited to communicating an authentic

feeling of what the Bushmen storytelling experience could have been, granted that

transmission of the story is the goal of the endeavour. Perhaps the video game that uses the

traditional rock art of the Bushmen as its visual style and traditional Bushmen folklore as

the narrative would be the closest approximation of what would have been experienced in

the minds of Bushmen audiences before other societies came into southern Africa.


45

I believe that such would be the most authentic experience that can be created from the

limited primary source material that concern the Bushmen of the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg, that is their rock art and oral traditions. I use the term ‘authentic’ throughout

the rest of this dissertation to refer to adhering to the surviving Bushmen heritage used for

this research.

2.11 The Narrative of SE

As the narrative of the proposed video game would have to correspond with the rock art at

Game Pass Shelter, only the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg story, about the Spoiling of the

Eland, was identified as appropriate for the proposed video game (see Howard 1999).

According to Parkington (2003:138-140), one of the most important aspects of Bushmen

society was that of hunting, and how men came to hunt and eat game (cf. Orpen & Bleek

1874: 145; Klingender 1954). This is communicated in the story of the Spoiling of the

Eland, as well as how it is that eland became wild (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 145). I describe

this story fully in Appendix B.

There are several differing versions of eland creation stories (Howard 1999). One comes

from a Maluti source (Orpen and Bleek 1874) and two come from /Xam sources (Howard

1999: 52-66). I use the first version for SE as it is from the region in which Game Pass

Shelter is situated. In my view, it is therefore more relevant. These versions of the eland

creation story have been extensively discussed in the relevant literature, and a detailed

analysis is not within the scope of this research (see Orpen and Bleek 1874; see Howard


46

1999). The original publication on the narrative was used for the purposes of this research,

given by Orpen (Orpen and Bleek 1874). In this version of the story, men are made to eat

game, due to the actions of the youngest son of Cagn, Gcwi (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 143-

145). For the whole narrative see Orpen and Bleek (1874) or Appendix B.

2.12 The Values Represented in the Spoiling of the Eland Story

One of the purposes behind the creation of a video game, in order to represent and preserve

Bushmen heritage, is to show some of the values and beliefs that they had. In the story

about the creation of the eland and how eland became the meat of men, there are seen

several things that Bushmen valued. These are:

1. That the Bushmen viewed most animals, but especially the eland, as being both

persons and animals in the primordial state of being, in the time before the

institution of hunting and eating meat (Howard 1999: 104-105).

2. The eland was tame and obedient while it was still unknown to Bushmen, because

it still had not completed the process of becoming ‘fit for the use of men’ (Howard

1999: 102-109). After the first eland had been killed and cut up, its body was

declared meat by man and the subsequent eland were wild and aggressive (Howard

1999: 101-104). This shows the conceptual link that the Bushmen had of unknown

things being tame and known things being wild (Howard 1999: 111-113).


47

3. The wild eland that are hunted by men are protected by Cagn, as they are his

favourite animal and “he is in their bones” (Howard 1999: 103-107). Cagn’s

presence within the eland seem to indicate that the eland were forewarned of the

intent and presence of hunters when Bushmen were hunting them. In order to curtail

this, ritual practices such as the proper treatment of previously hunted eland bones

and sympathetic or mimetic enactments of eland behaviour needed to be carried out

by Bushmen (Howard 1999: 108,155). The hunter therefore needs to act out the

behaviour they want game animals to elicit in a kind of sympathetic magic or

mimesis (see Frazer 1990:22-24, 29).

4. Eland had a spiritual potency that arises from Cagn’s favour.

All of the above values are associated in an intricate web of man and animal (Howard 1999:

139-150).

2.13 Trance Dancing, Therianthropes, and Sorcerers

Eland only form half of the picture of the rock art panels that are found in Game Pass

Shelter, while the other half focuses on trance dancing, therianthropes and shamans. In

order to represent these therianthropes and trance dancing in an appropriate manner in a

video game, I believe that Bushmen beliefs about spiritual potency (/num) and its

association with eland should be used (Howard 1999). To achieve this, I included a ritual

scene in my video game, which was directly inspired by the rock art found on the Rosetta


48

Stone of southern African rock art (see Figure 6.2 in the concluding chapter of this

dissertation).

Although !gi is the term that is believed to have been the southern word for the spiritual

potency that can be permeated Bushmen reality and belief, /num was used in this

dissertation. This was because /num has more references in the literature (Howard 1999:

192).

The word /num can be translated as magical power, supernatural/spiritual potency, sorcery

or the accumulation of the prior in relation to ritual practices in relation to medicinal and

curative actions (Howard 1999: 192). This was used to influence the natural and

experiential worlds (Howard 1999: 192). Notable owners of /num are medicine

men/sorcerers (which heal people and influence the weather) and young women

experiencing their first menses (Howard 1999: 194-195; Lewis-Williams 1987: 170-173).

The first race of men (from the primordial time following creation) had especially potent

/num. A powerful expression (and perhaps accumulative process) related to /num is songs

which are associated with certain animals, medicine and honey (Howard 1999: 195).

It seems to me that /num would be appropriate for use in the creation of a video game about

the complex of beliefs associated with rock art representing eland, sorcerers drawing power

from them and therianthropes (Lewis-Williams 1987). Due to these beliefs, therianthropes

(as seen in the rock art) are believed to represent sorcerers who had drawn spiritual power

from eland (Lewis Williams 1987: 167-169). Harnessing spiritual power in this way is


49

associated with Bushmen beliefs about sorcerers taking the form of animals in trance-states

and out-of-body experiences (Lewis Williams 1987: 167-169). Certain animals were

believed to possess lots of /num (Lewis Williams 1987: 167-169).

/Num, the spiritual potency that Bushmen believed was exhibited by certain animate beings

and inanimate objects, would have been pivotal in the trance experiences and daily

rituals/observances of the Bushmen (Howard 1999: 191-205; Lewis-Williams 1987: 170-

173). The Bushmen attempted to harness or control /num through ritual observances and

practices (Howard 1999: 192).

2.14 Conclusion

In this review of the literature, I went over several topics from a broad set of disciplines

that are directly relevant to archaeological work as it pertains to video games. In no specific

order these include (i) a broad description of some technological trends in modern media,

(ii) past and future use of video games by the archaeological discipline, (iii) limitations the

this research, (iv) the narrative that was chosen for and represented in SE, and (v)

traditional Bushmen storytelling and how it is related to video gaming media.

In a more detailed description of the above topics, I described why video games are an

important modern medium primed for archaeological input and how stories are told in the

twenty-first century and in video games. I then explained (i) why video games are better

suited to archaeological input than other modern media phenomena, (ii) past archaeological

work with video games, (iii) the theoretical relationship between archaeology and video


50

games and how video games tell stories, and (iv) the potential video games offer

archaeological work. This was followed by (i) a brief overview of the limitations to this

research, (ii) a short look at how the past is represented in video games, traditional

Bushmen folklore, and the narrative of SE, and (iii) a description of the values

communicated through the SE’s narrative, supernatural aspects associated with the SE’s

narrative, and the association of spiritual potency (/num) with the rock art at Game Pass

Shelter.


51

Chapter 3: Methodology

3.1 Introduction

This methodology chapter approaches two distinct methodologies that I followed in this

research: (i) the methodology of the archaeological and heritage research, and (ii) the

methodology of developing SE. This chapter, therefore, is a summary of the two broader

methodologies, but does not go into much detail on the process of developing smaller

aspects of SE. The technical aspects of actually developing SE are described in Chapter 5.

I cover several key topics in this methodology chapter. These range from (i) common

practices and challenges associated with video game development, (ii) the research

methodology I followed, (iii) the design and development of SE, (iv) the content of SE,

and (v) how my research project changed throughout the research periods.

In the first section of this chapter, I discuss how I began the development of SE,

highlighting the significance of my research to the field of archaeogaming. I further explain

my reasoning behind my choice to focus on the heritage represented in my video game,

and why such heritage was suitable to the type of video game that I chose. In addition, I

focus on a number of other issues: (i) providing guiding principles that informed the design

and development of my video game and describing how these principles affected the design

and development of my video game; (ii) describing the type of research that I conducted

and why I chose that framework for my research; (iii) providing a description of the

methodology applied in gathering my research data; and (iv) explaining how I applied my

research to design SE and the challenges in undertaking that task.


52

3.2 First Steps

At the start of my research, I decided that the first thing I needed to do was to learn some

of the basics of using Unity. This was so that I could develop SE. It can be quite daunting

to start learning about video game development when one has no prior experience with it.

To give myself some kind of structure about the learning process, I bought a course online

hosted on Udemy, named Become a Game Designer the Complete Series Coding to Design.

Udemy is an online ‘marketplace for learning and instruction’ (see

https://about.udemy.com/?locale=en-us). I chose Udemy because of their distribution

model which allows a customer to buy an online course and keeps it forever.

Unfortunately, I did not complete the course, as much of the content is centred around 3D

video game development. This was my original intention for my video game but I later

changed my idea and focused my efforts on a 2D video game instead. I did this for two

important reasons.

First, one of the main ways in which I would be preserving uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

Bushmen heritage would be by using a visual art style that is directly inspired by the rock

art tradition that Game Pass Shelter forms a part of. Second, and as I shall indicate in

Chapter 4, my survey population indicated that the idea I had for the 2D video game would

have a warmer reception from players.


https://about.udemy.com/?locale=en-us

53

Consequently, there was much content in the Udemy course that I could not make much

use of. Any further instruction that I needed beyond the introduction to Unity provided by

the course I received either from the ‘Learn’ section on the Unity website (see

https://unity.com/learn), videos on YouTube, or from specific tutorial videos on other sites.

The Udemy course was useful in introducing me to key concepts and tools in Unity. These

range from what a ‘transform’ (values that define the position, rotation and scale of an

object in a virtual space) is, to how to work with features like the asset store (a marketplace

where one can acquire assets made by other developers). In this course, I further learned

about Unity’s layout, how to navigate in Unity, how to manipulate objects in a scene, and

how ‘particles systems’ (the system used to make effects) work, to name just a few. I

crucially gained some experience in making individual moments and settings or scenes

typical to video games.

Once I had learned some of the basics of making video games with Unity, I needed to go

back to the academic side of my research in order to validate the applicability of my

research and video game project as it applies to my studies and the archaeological

discipline. I did this mainly through an extensive review of the literature. In this literature

review, presented in Chapter 2, I sought to achieve two objectives: (i) validate the potential

that video games and video gaming offer(s) in general and drew upon research from a

variety of disciplines, and (ii) to identify the value of video games to archaeology

specifically.


https://unity.com/learn

54

I noted that most of the initiatives that shared similarities with my research project within

Archaeogaming, Virtual Archaeology, and Digital Archaeology, were largely focused on

three areas: (i) communicating key concepts in archaeology and heritage management, (ii)

how existing video games that have archaeological elements employ said elements, and

(iii) applying the methods and practices of archaeology to objects in a virtual/video games

space(see Reinhard 2018b). I further noted that there was a lack of research that assessed

the reception of the video gaming public to archaeology, as well as heritage-oriented video

games. Where archaeology-oriented video games were made, there was only one example

of a video game that I would consider as being similar in intent to my own, Never Alone

(Kisima Inɲitchuɲa) (see The Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017).

My research was consequently guided in three ways: (i) towards assessing public interest

in the intersection of video games, archaeology, and heritage, (ii) assessing public interest

in a video game that aims to communicate and preserve uKhahlamba Drakensberg

Bushmen heritage specifically, and (iii) actually creating a video game that aims to

communicate and preserve uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen heritage. This review

of literature confirmed much of what I believed about the intersection of video games and

archaeology and also revealed much that I had not previously considered.

For example, I fully expected there to be some research on actually making video games

in order to represent archaeological data, such as with Never Alone (Kisima Inɲitchuɲa),

which directly preserves and represents the heritage of the Iñupiaq indigenous people of

Alaska (The Cook Inlet Tribal Council 2017). However, I did not expect a frequent


55

approach to archaeogaming, where archaeologists use archaeological field and research

techniques to study the fictional cultures that are often found in video games (see Reinhard

2018b). Such an application of archaeological knowledge is often used with No Man’s Sky,

a video game which procedurally generates planets, life on those planets, and alien societies

(see nomanssky.fandom.com; Reinhard 2018a). The content of No Man’s Sky is created

algorithmically, as opposed to manually, and is random and unique.

3.3 Subjectivity

Archaeologists direct the parameters of the visuals that they produce through the

subconscious and contextual standpoints that they bring to the archaeological record

(Watterson 2015: 120). The visuals they create are therefore subjectively laden (Watterson

2015: 120). Furthermore, archaeologists create unique interpretations through the process

of selecting archaeological facts (Watterson 2015: 120-122). The production of visual

experiences is similarly defined. Therefore, both archaeologists and visual artists engender

a degree of subjectivity.

As such, this research acknowledges that all visual and artistic representations of tradition

and culture (source material) have a degree of subjectivity. This is also the case when such

representations have gone at great length to ensure that there is authenticity in how a

tradition/culture is represented. This is also the case with my video game, which uses the

narrative and communicative devices used in video gaming and used a few in my video

game. For example, I include a health bar to show the current health of the player.


56

I took several steps to ensure that this research had the highest degree of authenticity as far

as the presentation of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg rock art in the video game. My view

is that authenticity of the rock art tradition is much enhanced by presenting it in two-

dimensional format. By using the artistic tradition of the of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg

Bushmen, the video game serves to preserve it in fluid and restored manner (see Figures

1.2 and 6.1 for examples taken from gameplay of my video game).

First off, most of the visuals and art assets all came from an existing rock art site (Game

Pass Shelter) located at Kamberg Nature Reserve at the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park.

How the source images were edited for the video game is detailed in Chapter 5. The final

images that the editing process resulted in, and which were used in the video game, formed

part of the video games art assets. Video game assets are a catchall from the anything and

everything that can be included in a video game, from snippets of code, visual art, effects,

sounds, 3D models, etc. (Bouanani 2015). All of the instances where I had to create new

art assets were due to the images not being present at the site, but being present or

mentioned in the narrative of the video (i.e. The story about the Spoiling of the Eland). In

such instances, I used images from the broader tradition of Bushmen rock art from the

uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park as source material. In this manner, I ensured that the

authenticity of the rock art was of the highest degree while allowing for optimal

‘translation’ from the representational mode of the rock art (rock paintings on rock

surfaces) to that of video games (pixels on digital screens). This process is further explained

in Chapter 5.


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This is where this research attempted to leverage the inherent attributes of video games, to

provide an interactive experience that with the rock art tradition. This is primarily done

through the mediation of virtual entities (characters) and gameplay mechanics within it.

The player and non-player characters (NPCs) are virtual entities in my video game. In the

video gaming medium, NPCs serve various different functions. Primary among these are

informative, social, and representative roles (Champion 2015: 179-180). The NPCs in my

video game take on the role of either a hunter, butcher, eland, shaman or the wife of the

creator god, Coti. The hunters, eland, butchers and a single shaman are controlled by

artificial intelligence to behave according to their roles.

Game mechanics are also an important method for communication in a video game. I

follow the definition of game mechanics offered by Sicart (2008, as quoted by Champion

2017b: 111-112). According to Sicart (2008), game mechanics are actions enacted in the

video game world, by virtual agents. These said actions are governed within the rules of

the video game. This definition is, however, not fully adequate because it does not include

the full scope of what exactly game mechanics are (Champion 2017b: 111-112). This is

because of the co-creative quality of video gaming experiences, which are in my opinion

essentially dialogical. An in-depth explanation of this belief is beyond the scope of this

research, but I will briefly summarise it.

Video game developers do not merely create a ‘guided experience’ in the same way that

other media do, for example films. Although most video games do have some kind of overt

or covert narrative or sequence of events, they are essentially possibility spaces (Champion


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2017a: 24-25, 2017b: 115-116; Copplestone 2017b: 87-95). Developers dictate the rule of

the game and provide goals, but players then act within the created ‘possibility spaces’ and

contribute to the experiences video games afford. As a result, there can be a difference

between what the player’s views of a video game’s mechanics, and the developer’s. I

suggest, therefore, that the definition of game mechanics must additionally include the

views of video game developers, players, and any other identifiable ways in which video

games and video game developers communicate data to players.

3.4 Research Design

I followed an approach informed by a mixed methodology, with a greater emphasis being

placed on qualitative data which focused on participant opinions and experiences. The main

data collection method was an online survey administered through the use of a

questionnaire. I wrote a questionnaire and distributed it online using Google Forms. Google

forms allowed me to conduct the questionnaire and gave me extensive control over the

features I wanted to include in it.

The questionnaire was made open to participants from 11 February 2019, and remained

open till 17 June 2019. Once the required number of participants (50 individuals) was

reached, the survey was closed to new participants as having the survey open to new

participants could have affected the analysis of the survey by causing statistical changes. I

used these questionnaires to gauge what was desired by sample players of the video game

and adjusted my plan and design of my video game according to the results.


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This approach gave a meaningful voice to the participants by allowing them to influence

the development of the video game to some degree. The decision on which features I were

to include in the final video game was defined by comments received through the

administering of questionnaires. Only the features that were mentioned the most were

included in the video game, with most having been part of the original plan and design of

my video game. New features and mechanics had significant implication for the requisite

of time and labour associated with learning about implementing them and then actually

implementing them. This is why only the most mentioned features or mechanics were

included in the video game.

The questionnaire, which had a brief description of the research and the motives behind it

as well as a description of the proposed video game, was characterised by a combination

of both closed and open-ended questions (see Appendix A). Identified participants had to

have familiarity with the video gaming medium, allowing them to have greater contribution

to make towards the study.

3.5 The Survey Questionnaire

I have reasoned that the most important qualifying factor for participation in the survey

was familiarity with video games. My idea was that if participants had no knowledge of

the medium, they could not meaningfully contribute to the research in any way and their

input would be superfluous. All of the participants were video gamers, with either

international or South African backgrounds. I introduced the international group to the


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represented heritage and recontextualised this same heritage to the South Africans by

adapting it to a new medium.

I contacted two groups of video gamers online for participation in the survey. I made

contact with them via posts on the relevant platforms, asking members to follow a link to

the surveys. My decision to select these groups for participation in the survey was based

on their familiarity with video games. I contacted the first group through a communication

application called Discord.

My idea of approaching the Discord group was to benefit from the international feedback

to the video game I was creating. The second group of participants are part of the South

African Gaming Alliance, which is a Facebook group about video gaming in South Africa.

This group provided me with a good foundation to gather South African views on the video

game.

I did not expect everyone answer to the surveys. Thus, I contacted a greater number of

survey participants. As I expected, not everyone answered the surveys and far fewer

participants had contributed at the initial stages than I had hoped. The amount of time that

it took to reach the desired number of participants in the survey significantly exceeded my

expectations and as a result, I had to begin the development process before the survey was

complete.


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The desired number of participant responses was limited to 50, in order to reduce the

responses to a representative sample of the survey population. This made the analysis of

the questionnaire more manageable and provided a starting point for the research. It also

served as a pre-emptive measure to forestall having too much data to analyse, which would

result in research delays.

Some individuals additionally tried to encourage more respondents to participate in the

survey to it, but the response rate was still low. I then realised after the initial planned

period for having the survey open to new participants was exceeded that I would need to

change my dissemination strategy. I therefore decided to allow previous participants to

refer friends to the survey, and included a request to refer video gamer friends to the survey

in all subsequent invitation posts. I finally included a new option on the survey

questionnaire, allowing new participants to indicate that a friend had referred them to the

survey.

I segmented this research, as well as the development of the video game, into two phases.

During the first phase, I disseminated questionnaires to voluntary participants. The

questionnaire measured:

1. The appeal in the intended video game,

2. What participants think about video games being made for heritage purposes,


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3. What features (game mechanics) the participants thought should be included in the

proposed video game, and

4. The appeal traditional Bushmen heritage as source material for a video game.

Following the questionnaire, I then analysed the results with an aim of these informing

development of my video game (second phase). Research conducted at the site and the

traditional folklore of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen informed the

development of the video game and what features I included in it (within a heritage

context).

The results of the survey had a bearing on what content was included in the video game,

and indicated what a sample population of the video gaming public thought of the

intersection of archaeology and video games (see Chapter 4).

3.6 The Design of the Spoiling of the Eland Video Game

Designing the structural elements of the video game was crucial for making the narrative

of my video game adhere to the archaeological and traditional data of the site. It was

important for me to capture as much data as possible while visiting the site in order to avoid

two complicating factors noted in video game post-mortems (development reports): (i)

schedule delays and (ii) scope alterations (Petrilllo et al. 2008: 709-711).


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I visited the site, Game Pass Shelter at Kamberg Nature Reserve in the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park, in order to photographically record the rock art. My view was that while

I could use source imagery from the site through other means, i.e. SARADA Database, I

needed to have very recent photographs of the rock art. However, I later decided change

representation of the rock art from one that shows the current state of the rock art to a

digitally repainted one. I explain this decision in the Post-Mortem chapter.

Figure 3.1: Photograph of the dominant eland on the Rosetta Stone at Game Pass Shelter,

Kamberg, in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg.


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I further needed to ensure that any motifs that I thought could be reasonably associated

with my video game’s narrative were photographed as well. I made use of a Samsung

WB150F camera. I provide a detailed description of the photographing process when

discussing the building process behind the 3D part of the video game.

The attention to artistry and creativity, suggested by Watterson (2015), played a large role

in my development of my video game within Unity (i.e. artistic adaptation from source

material). Small artistic projects are normal for the Indie video game scene, where

developers are limited to one developer or a small team (Martin & Deuze 2009: 279). Indie

video game developers normally need to develop all of the components of video games

themselves, whereas larger corporations or firms are able to outsource the development of

specific game features, mechanics or assets to specialists due to greater investment budgets

and expected returns (Martin & Deuze 2009; Petrilllo et al. 2008: 709-711). Apart from a

simple framework for the artificial intelligence that a more experienced colleague helped

me with and upon which I expanded, all of the assets and implementations in my video

game were created by me.

Although my own presuppositions no doubt influenced the video game, I minimised this

by making as realistic and objective a virtualisation rock art of the site as possible. The

research questions and aims guided the four stages of virtualisation. The first stage was the

documentation of the rock art at the site. It correlates with the first research question and

mainly involved taking images of the rock art at Game Pass Shelter. The second stage

focused on investigating the narratives that are associated with the rock art found at the site


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and explaining the rationale behind the story selected for the narrative of my video game.

The third stage was based on how the video game represented the selected uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park Bushmen tradition. The last stage focused on assessing public interest

in the video game through a sample audience, as well as reviewing the recommendations

made by video gamers in the survey results. I give more details on these four stages below.

The first stage required the collection of visual data from the site. I visited the site and

photographed the rock art found there to achieve this. This stage aimed to create a

collection of photographs of the rock art from the site consisting of primary visual material.

As such, this phase had the least amount of subjective framing, selection and exclusion.

This collection of photographs then functioned as the source material for creating art assets

for my video game

The second stage was the design stage of this project. In it, the video game narrative and

mechanics were planned and designed to reflect traditional ideas associated with a rock art

from the site. Through my video game’s design, I aimed to communicate traditional

uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen storytelling and represent the rock art. The

subject matter of rock art and the possible traditional stories related to the images limited

my subjective selection of traditional stories I could choose to be represented. For example,

a story with eland as a primary feature would be appropriate if eland were the primary

image found in the rock art. Ultimately, I selected the story about the Spoiling of the Eland

as the narrative of SE, as it is one of the most prominent traditional stories associated with

the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen.


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Most importantly, due to the significance of the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock

art, I needed to explain what it was interpreted as representing. It shows the ritual of

transferring spiritual energy (/num) from an eland to a sorcerer, and I therefore needed to

explain why eland have potent /num. This is connected to eland being Cagn’s favoured

animal (see Chapter 2). As the Spoiling of the Eland is a creation story (i.e. the beginning),

I used the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art as the end of the narrative.

The Spoiling of the Eland story contextualises the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock

art. It also served as a broader framework in which I could embed further information about

eland that I identified in the literature. For example, the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

Bushmen believed that Cagn as with eland and contributed towards the difficulties they

experienced in hunting eland (see Chapter 2). This is however not mentioned in the

Spoiling of the Eland story, but as the story shows why eland are important to Cagn, this

information can appear fully contextualized in subsequent events in SE’s narrative.

The results from the survey that I conducted defined the third stage of design (see Chapter

4). Whereas the second stage was critical to selecting an appropriate narrative content for

my video game, the third stage was concerned about how the selected content would be

represented, and consequently how the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen oral and

artistic traditions would be preserved.


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Although I had an idea of how I would like the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park traditions

to be represented, it was important to gauge what a sample of the video gaming public

thought about the video game that I originally proposed to develop. Among the aspects of

my video game that needed to be confirmed through the use of the survey were: (i) the

perspective of the player, (ii) the video game genre/style, and (iii) what role the player was

to assume.

I selected online questionnaires as the primary means of researching the initial interest on

the video game idea. This approach was informed by the view that questionnaires could

potentially produce the greatest amount of information concerning specific questions. This

certainly proved to be the case, as I was able to gather much information from participants

without much effort on their part. Questionnaires needed to be short in order to generate as

much research data as possible without losing the interest of participants, and focused on

the key questions for this research. I invited participants to complete questionnaires through

voluntary participation during survey periods

Stage four concerned the final design of the video game. After analysing the results of the

survey, it was apparent that I needed to omit the part in my original design that included

the 3D tour from the design of my video game. This was primarily due to a considerable

percentage of the participants not being sure as to how this would be done in an entertaining

way. Although I attribute this the constraints of my survey, namely that it needed to be

short in order to maintain participant interest (see stage three above), this nevertheless


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strongly indicated to me the including the 3D tour in my video game would be very difficult

to pull off convincingly.

I am still new to video game development, and am largely self-taught and am only familiar

the fundamental systems and features that are used by Unity. Notable among these systems

is C# code, which is the scripting language that Unity uses to build functionality into video

games. Examples of the code I used in my video game can be seen in Appendix C.

The wariness that the participants had towards the proposed 3D tour, the complexity of

implementing it and the time constraints of the research led me to forego any development

in 3D. I therefore focused the design and development of my video game on the 2D level

of SE, as the survey indicated that it would best be received by video gamers (see Chapter

4).

3.7 Challenges Associated with Developing Archaeological Video Games

Various researchers recognise that there are several significant challenges hindering active

archaeological engagement with video games, including: training, work with video games

into limited schedules and budgets, and the acquisition of capable development software

and hardware (Bottino & Martina 2010: 436; Williams 2002). Although the cost of capable

software or hardware will continue to decrease, many aspects of video game creation need

to be given attention to in order to make video games fully immersive, entertaining and

functional. These include programming, creating virtual environments, script writing,


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editing audio (environmental sounds and music), editing images and scenes (art, texture

mapping and presentation), 3D physics/post-processing, and play-testing for errors in the

programming code (Bottino & Martina 2010; Copplestone 2017a: 33; Johns 2007: 159;

Naskali et al. 2013: 231).

Depending on the desired level of detail for the completed video game product, high

performance technology might also be required for development professionals. This is,

however, not as pronounced as it was in the past due to the affordability of technology and

decreased software paywalls. Furthermore, the training or video game developers takes a

lot of time and effort. As a result, it is common practice for industry leaders to have large

teams of specialised professionals (as per their experience).

However, there is a relatively large base of independent (Indie) developers who either work

individually or in small teams (Martin & Deuze 2009: 277). Indie developers tend to have

goals that are more artistic and work with smaller budget constraints. Their profit and

success returns correspond to their relatively small investments (Martin & Deuze 2009:

279-285).

Indie developers tend to distance themselves from the industrial ‘Ford factory assembly

line’ of the greater video gaming market, opting instead to suit a specific market trend or

seeking artistic freedom (a ‘Toyota model’) (Lowthorpe et al. 2013: Martin & Deuze 2009:

288). Indie development seems to be the most applicable development framework for a

small-scale video game development when conducted by academic researchers and


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archaeologists. This is also the case for students who may wish to refine their skills or

expand their domain of competence to popular public media forms. Indie development is

ideal for researchers in video games and archaeology.

Virtual agents are commonly used to communicate the narrative and other messages within

video games. They are the likely best way to communicate important information, but

cultural information can also be communicated through video game mechanic, rules,

visuals and audio (Champion 2015: 179). Champion (2015: 179-180) illustrated how

agents in video games evoke the feeling that video games are inhabited, can simulate crowd

behaviour, and have social, communicative, or representational (i.e. representing

individuals in the past) roles. These agents typically act as guides or crowds within video

games and can interact with the player according to predefined ways (Champion 2015:

180). They are generally limited in how much or what they are able to communicate and

typically perform social rather than cultural roles (Champion 2015: 180).

Champion (2015: 183) identified the need for virtual heritage projects to communicate the

import of the heritage they contain, communicating the contextual understanding and the

contextual experience of the original inhabitants (cf. Naskali et al. 2013: 235). He goes on

to note that the feeling of cultural presence arises from interacting with similar or different

cultural belief systems (Champion 2015: 183).


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Learning about archaeological cultures requires observation and communicating ritual, but

this can be difficult to express through virtual heritage (Champion 2015: 183). This might

be because it is difficult to represent cultural heritage, especially intangible cultural

heritage, without following a pedagogical approach (Ibrahim et al. 2011: 277). I argue that

using the subject culture’s own material and oral culture as source material cultural heritage

can suitably communicate and represent their intangible cultural heritage. Attempts to

represent the intangible cultural heritage of a culture should, in my opinion, be represented

through embedding data within the virtual environment (‘hiding’ them), through gameplay

mechanics (see below), and the behaviour of socio-cultural agents in video games

(Champion 2015: 184-186).

3.8 The Represented Heritage in SE

In my proposed video game, I did this by using uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park rock art as

an expressive form that represents the specific beliefs and values that interpretations of the

site’s rock art communicate. I further structured the narrative of the game in a manner that

reflect the oral storytelling techniques, i.e. repetition of key points and analepsis

(flashbacks). I briefly describe the structure of the video game narrative below. A detailed

description is provided in Chapter 5.

The rules of the 2D rock art level (hereafter 2D level) implicitly represent some of the

cultural rules and values of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen. For example,

hunting was incredibly important to the Bushmen way of life, and it can be meaningfully


72

argued that their culture was greatly focused on hunting (see Pager 1971; Vinnicombe

1976; Lewis-Williams 1981). This served to fulfil the requirement that Champion (2015:

184) identified of providing both an experience of having agency within the video game

and embedding meaning in narrative themes. He noted that having information hidden

within virtual environments, or being linked to certain objects and actions; causes more

thoughtful and purposeful exploration, reflection by players and incorporating information

than having explicitly communicating information (Champion 2015: 185). This can help

communicate some archaeological values such as the vulnerability of sites and artefacts,

contextual significance and the cultural mores of the represented culture (Champion 2015:

185).

Exactly what were featured in the video game was informed by the selected styles of

representation typical to video gaming that I had chosen, as well as those which the survey

participants indicated were most desired. This concerned a 2D rock art inspired

representation of a traditional Bushmen story, using uKhahlamba Drakensberg rock art as

a visual style. This style of representation comprised the video game, because it is suited

to the rock art in a heritage context and served as a starting point for this research.

I selected the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art because of its impact on

understanding the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Bushmen culture. This case study further

engenders a complex of related concepts about eland and how they related to Bushmen.


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3.9 Communicating Traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Beliefs

This research used stories documented by nineteenth century researchers, as told by

Bushmen informants as the narrative framework. It also used the rock art of a specific site

in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park (Game Pass Shelter) as the foundation for the visual

data of a 2D video game.

According to van Vuuren (1994: 62), the stories that were found in the oral tradition or

folklore of the Bushmen were selected and used based on their efficiency at communication

and preserving desired knowledge into posterity, especially those having to do with

surviving. Based on the recorded folklore written by Bleek and Lloyd in Specimens of

Bushman Folklore, Bushman oral traditions seem to have been heavily performative in

nature, with actual spoken words comprising an important part of the experience, but also

gestures and perhaps some acting (2001: 63-64).

This seems to be common with most acts of inter-personal storytelling, that there are

spoken and behavioural components that add to the storytelling experience. But what sets

the Bushmen oral tradition apart from most modern storytelling traditions, however, is that

there does not seem to have been the distinction between fiction and non-fiction (mere

stories as opposed to truth) (vanVuuren 1994: 64).


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The performance of oral tradition in Bushmen society was viewed as a collaborative effort,

with storytellers and their audiences both contributing to the resulting knowledge creation

(van Vuuren 1994: 64; Bleek & Lloyd 2001: 113). Storytellers would communicate

information that informed the audience of events and knowledge of which the audience

were not a part, but intuitively (though not explicitly) already knew (van Vuuren 1994: 65;

Bleek and Lloyd 2001: 113).

This indicates that communicating Bushmen folklore solely for the purpose of

entertainment would not be true to the spirit of the Bushmen oral tradition and their

perception of folklore and storytelling (van Vuuren 1994: 64-65; Bleek & Lloyd 2001: 113,

123-125). In order to remain true to the Bushmen approach to oral tradition and

storytelling, it seems that a suspension of disbelief, a view of story as truth (or at least of

imparting vital messages), and a degree of co-creation are necessary. Additionally, in order

to create authentic stories and narratives in accordance with Bushman tradition, a

traditional expressive form is necessary.

It is unfortunately problematic to include the spoken language of the uKhahlamba-

Drakensberg Park Bushmen in any modern media. Most extant Bushmen languages have

changed from that which was spoken when the rock art was created, especially with the

influx of other cultural groups into the region. They are therefore different than those that

were spoken during the earliest written records thereof, let alone when the rock art was

made.


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Considering the time and labour that would be necessary in recreating the language

associated with the site in order to narrate a traditional story, the authenticity of the

recreated language would still be debatable. I therefore argue that translations of the stories

as they were recorded in the nineteenth century should be used in order to communicate

the story. Using translations would foster increased ease of understanding in players. It is

also impossible to include other performative and behavioural cues in modern portrayals

of Bushman folklore. This is because the Bushmen are now almost extinct and admixture

with other ethnic populations have likely altered the storytelling experience greatly.

According to van Vuuren (1994: 67-68), it would seem that the spoken Bushmen oral

tradition and the traditional Bushmen rock art complemented, but did not exactly mirror,

one another (Parkington 2003: 146; cf. Howard 1999: 111). They formed part of a greater

whole (Howard 1999: 147). This research will therefore focus on accurately and

authentically representing the rock art found at the site, its associated interpretations and

the site itself.

From the above, it seemed clear to me that the video gaming medium is ideal for

representing the traditional storytelling media of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

Bushmen in a digital format. It would use the rock art style as the visual style and traditional

folklore as the narrative. It would further allow a degree of co-creation between the player

and the video game through the inherent interactivity of video games.


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This 2D level represents the events of a traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park story

that can be associated with the rock art of the site. After the initial moments of this 2D

level, the broader tradition of uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park rock art comprises the source

material. This is due to the focus of the narrative shifting to visual material that can be

associated with the selected story, and not necessarily the selected site. I further elaborate

below.

As the video game requires a high degree of fluidity in order for the player to move in the

visual scene and navigate through the story, the 2D level cannot exactly reflect the rock art

found at the site, nor any other site necessarily. This is because the hallmark of video games

as a medium is the degree of interactivity and agency that they grant to the player. I used

images (namely of people, animals and objects) and symbols (such as ‘hoof’ images,

‘finger smears’ and ‘traps) found within the rock art tradition as the visual style in the video

game (see Vinnicombe 1976: 139-141). I also used slight alterations in the images (in

relation to the source material).

Most alterations to the images found at the site was done in order to represent images from

the site in a ‘fresh’ state, as if they had been recently painted. This is because the rock art

from the site has undergone significant deterioration since it was painted and the

deterioration made it aesthetically difficult to animate the rock art images. This was

especially the case with moments of transition between two images (as found in the source

material) and the compositions of images and symbols found in the source material (i.e. a

different composition than found in actual rock art panels).


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With the photographs of the rock art at my disposal, I did any editing of those images with

Autodesk Sketchbook. This free software is used for digital art and was perfectly suited to

producing the visuals for my video game. Autodesk Sketchbook was also perfectly suited

to making any new images from scratch, as well as making visual effects.

I constructed the narrative of the 2D level with a few premises in mind in order to make a

logical narrative. These were as follows: the scenes that are depicted in the rock art at Game

Pass Shelter (in their current state) depict the present in the 2D level narrative (that is, the

time of painting). The scenes that follow (excluding the repeated scenes from Game Pass

Shelter) are the past in the 2D level. The last scene is once again the present of the 2D

level.

In structuring the narrative of the 2D level in this way, the opening Act introduces the

player to the story and some of the traditional beliefs of the Bushmen.

This 2D level represented a traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg story associated with the

‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art and associated beliefs about eland in a 2D

level. The actual images that are found in the rock art from Game Pass shelter that were

used for this act only informed the start of the video game’s narrative however.

To achieve the above, I used images from contextually similar rock art (i.e. from the same

tradition, but found at other sites) or wholly new images (should the wider corpus of rock

art not have images of the desired figures or features in the selected story). The fluidity of


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the video game necessitated the inclusion of rock art from outside the site. In this way, the

2D visuals were inspired by the associated tradition’s rock art, but was not limited to the

rock art actually found at the site.

The 2D visuals also feature certain images not related to the rock art, but which are

common in the video gaming medium (for example a heads-up display and in-game visual

effects). However, to the greatest extent possible, I did this by using the patterns, images,

and features from the relevant rock art tradition. These are not representative of actual

physical objects (for example red strokes, which can be interpreted as various different

things), but are commonly associated with other phenomena (i.e. entoptics) (Vinnicombe

1976: 139-141). Such images will be fit for use in the development of the video game.

The characters that are included in the Spoiling of the Eland story predominantly defined

the characters used inside the video game. Additionally, creating characters for the video

game included writing dialogue of. What was included in the dialogue was either explicitly

‘said’ in the Spoiling of the Eland story, or served functional purposes in the video game.

For example, a character giving instructions or hints indicating what the player should do

next. Character dialogue functioned as one of the methods for communicating information

about the Spoiling of the Eland story or communicated important aspects of uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park Bushmen lifeways.


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I attempted to embed information on the beliefs of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

Bushmen in the mechanics of my video game. I use the definition of video game mechanics

provided by Miguel Sicart (2008). He defined them as methods that agents use in order to

affect, or interact with, the game state(s). For an example of communicating the

aforementioned beliefs, the Spoiling of the Eland story took place during the time in which

the creator god of the Bushmen, Cagn was creating (in)animate things. I communicate this

by having one of the ‘abilities’ of the player (as Cagn) to create objects and animals

mentioned in the story.

3.10 Developing the 2D Video Game

With all of the above complete, the focus of developing this video game shifted from

presenting the physical state of the site to focusing on the complexity behind Bushmen

beliefs about a specific rock art panel. I selected the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African

rock art as the main panel to centre the narrative of my video game.

This level communicated the complexity of beliefs associated with the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of

southern African rock art panel. Most of these beliefs are communicated either in the

Spoiling of the Eland story, or is related characters and themes in the story. For example,

although it is not explicitly stated in the Spoiling of the Eland story, the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park Bushmen believed that Cagn helped eland to better evade hunters

(Howard 1999: 103-107). The beliefs and topics that were explored included:


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1. The scenery represented by the rock art,

2. Why eland have powerful /num,

3. The traditional beliefs about the creation of eland (region specific),

4. The hunting of eland and why it is difficult to accomplish, and

5. The transferal of /num to sorcerers (i.e. ritual and beliefs).

In order to achieve the above, I used the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art as the

starting point for communicating the intended beliefs and concepts. I used images from the

broader tradition of regional rock art in order to find associated images that serves to

expand on the rock art at Game Pass Shelter.

During my visit to the site, the main purpose of which had been to photograph the rock art

at Game Pass Shelter, I also had an informal conversation with the tour guide. During this

conversation, I asked about the key associated concepts that linked with eland, vis-à-vis

the traditional Bushmen beliefs that I have identified in my review of the literature. The

guide confirmed my interpretation of key associated concepts, and explained how

Bushmen rock art painters used the bodily substances of eland in the painting of Bushmen

rock art. He also explained the rituals and practices associated with eland. Namely, the.

blood, skin, bone, horns and fat were used in various rituals and practices by Bushmen

contemporary to the rock art.


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As the goals of the 2D level at this point of the video game focused on communicating the

key associated concept to players, I identified individual scenes within the level from lines

in the Spoiling of the Eland story, as narrated by Qing (Orpen and Bleek 1874). For

example, the hunting scene in which Cagn’s sons hunt the very first eland (hereafter ‘The

First Hunt’). I then made each of the identified scenes individual pieces of gameplay within

the 2D game.

Segmenting the Spoiling of the Eland story into smaller gameplay pieces effectively

communicates the story to players. However, communicating this story was not the only

aim of the 2D level. All of the key associated concepts need to be communicated, but within

the structure of the Spoiling of the Eland story. Towards this end, I needed to embed the

remaining key associated concepts within the Spoiling of the Eland story, without merely

stating what they were (i.e. as text or narrative). This is due to one of the ‘golden rules’ of

visual storytelling ‘show don’t tell’. Video games take this even further, as they do not

merely show but let players play and explore. This is because of the inherent advantage of

video game that sets them apart from passive forms of media; they let players interact with

the created content. I therefore attempted to minimise the amount of featured text and

dialogue in my video. This I did by presenting the player with the verbatim text of

//Kabbo’s account of the Spoiling of the Eland and text presented from the perspective of

a Bushman. Additionally, there is a help or tip feature in the video game that explicitly ells

the player what to do next if they get confused.


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As an example of how I let player play the 2D level (not merely showing it to them), I will

briefly describe how the Rosetta Hunt scene (so named because it is not the First Hunt)

differs to the First Hunt scene. One of the results of the Spoiling of the Eland story is that

eland are no longer tame, but flee in the presence of hunters (Howard 1999: 74; Orpen &

Bleek 1874: 144). One way in which I show this to players in the Rosetta Hunt scene is by

having the eland in the scene constantly move and attempt to avoid the the player and

hunters. This is due to the traditional Bushmen belief that Cagn was always with eland after

the Spoiling of the Eland story, situated between the horns (on the forehead), and that eland

for this reason flee from humans (Howard 1999: 103-107).

This Rosetta Hunt scene differs from the First Hunt scene because the eland in the first

hunt scene do not flee, but simply idle around without the presence of Cagn. It is far easier

for the player to throw a spear at the first eland than later eland. In this way, players not

only see that it is much harder to hunt eland after their spoiling, but experience it. I opine

that this is a far more engaging method of communicating traditional Bushmen beliefs to

players than the methods of other, passive, visual media.

3.10 Conclusion

In this chapter, I described the methodology I followed in the implementation of the

research project I undertook. I made a distinction between the academic methodology

focusing on the general use of video games in archaeology and the technical methodology

I used in developing the SE. However, I did not group the steps associated with the


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academic and developmental methodologies in their own larger categories, but have

presented them in such a way as to reflect the progression of events my research followed.

I structured this chapter in the above-mentioned manner in order to give an impression of

how the individual stages of my research and the development of SE relate to and inform

each other. My approach additionally provides insight into the sequence in which I

conducted the stages of this research.


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Chapter 4: A Survey of Video Gamers on Heritage in Video Games

4.1 Introduction

As previously indicated in the presentation of methodology applied in this study, I

disseminated a questionnaire in order to gauge views on what video gamers thought about

the intersection of video games and heritage preservation. The questions were designed to

inform the development of this video game, what is to be included in it, and were defined

by a variety of topics. Amongst these were to establish the extent to which informants think

heritage management can benefit from the use of video games, understanding what heritage

video gamers considered interesting for a video game, and allowing video gamers to

provide technical advice on the development process. The foundational purpose of this

study was to make interactive media, a video game, of Game Pass Shelter in Kamberg,

KwaZulu-Natal; a well-known South African Heritage site. This interactive media was

meant to represent some important information on the site and its rock art.

There were 13 questions in the questionnaire, which were divided into three parts. The first

part had to do with video gaming and heritage (questions 1-5). The second dealt with the

3D part of this study’s proposed video game and 3D tours in general (questions 6-10). The

last focused on the 2D part of this study’s proposed video game, encompassing the folklore

and traditional stories as content in video games and visual styles to present such stories

(questions 11-13). These were a combination of open- and close-ended questions. This

questionnaire gathered both quantitative and qualitative data, but with a greater focus on

qualitative data.


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The quantitative aspect of the questionnaire was useful when measuring trends in

participant responses, to advise me in making decisions on which features must be included

in the video game. Such decisions were to be informed based on the greatest number of

participants desiring identified features. This is why identified participants had to be

familiar with the video gaming medium to allow them to have more meaningful

contributions towards the study. If participants had no prior knowledge of the medium,

then they would not have been able to meaningfully contribute to the research in any way

and their input would not be useful.

All of the participants were thus video gamers from South Africa and around the world.

For the quantitative aspect of the research study, questions were analysed on a voting basis,

where the participant’s position on a yes or no question counted as one vote if it was

mentioned. Similarly, participant responses to open-ended questions also worked on a

voting basis, and were sorted either by the terminology used, or by similar reasoning or

ideas (for example, ‘because it is educational’ was grouped with ‘because it helps with

learning’).

This chapter is a presentation of the analyses of data received from the 13 research

questions. For the analysis of the survey results in the following sections, I analysed the

survey on a question-by-question basis. As mentioned above, I approached the responses

to individual questions on a voting basis. For each question, I include an explanatory part,

a descriptive part, and a visual part. In the explanatory part, I give a brief overview of what

the question entailed or aimed to answer. For the descriptive part, I analysed the results of


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the question in words and briefly reflected on the results, which are reflected in the visual

part.

Having the above parts to each question is useful in isolating interesting and/or unexpected

responses, as well as general remarks on the results or how participants might have

interpreted questions. For the visual part, I have presented the results of the research in

either table or chart formats, depending on their appropriateness for the represented data.

The appropriateness of the visual part depended on such factors as the length of the

responses, the variability of the responses and the readability of the questions.

In the following section I (i) summarise the survey results, (ii) discuss the results in the

subsequent section, and (iii) conclude the chapter afterwards. I additionally address several

topics related to the survey content, including: (i) providing more details on how the results

of this research correlate with other similar research projects, (ii) discussing how the results

relate to the field(s) in which my research falls (Digital/Virtual archaeology and heritage

reservation, or Archaeogaming), and (iii) review how video gamers perceive work similar

to this research project and some thoughts on the future of such work.

4.2 Results and Analysis

For this survey, 50 participants responded to posts or referrals to participate in the survey

questionnaire. Of those 50, 23 (46 per cent) were from the ZA Gaming Alliance (the

Facebook Group), 20 (40 per cent) were from referrals from friends, and 7 (14 per cent)

were from the Discord server. Of the participants in the survey, most were South African.


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This is mostly due to the fact that the initial participants were South Africans and referred

their friends to the survey. No other demographic information about the participants was

collected.

I will now present the analyses of the information gathered from each of the 13 questions.

This will entail the discussion of data received for each question. I begin by reflecting on

what each question entailed, before presenting the data received from all participants

against such a question.

4.2.1 Question 1

The aim of this question was to ask participants to identify their favourite example of video

games that featured heritage elements. Figure 4.1 shows the results to Question 1. It

corrects for small differences in spelling and punctuation in responses, and considers

chosen video games in a single series of related titles (for example Assassin’s Creed) as

one category. Although the majority of the identified video games are all very successful,

with a few lesser-known titles, it seems that there could have been some priming that might

have skewed the results, as the three most voted for video games were mentioned as

examples in the actual question. The most popular choices of video game were God of War

(13 votes), Assassin’s Creed (11 votes) and Age of Mythology (8 votes), with the remaining

video games being chosen 3 times or less (Figure 4.1).


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Figure 4.1: Bar graph of the responses to Question 1. It shows the video game title and the number of participants who voted for

it.

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Assassin

’s C

reed (s

erie

s)

God

of W

ar

Age

of M

yth

olo

gy

To

mb

Ra

ider

Age

of E

mp

ires

Th

e W

itche

r (se

ries)

Skyrim

Battle

field

1

Ca

ll of D

uty

Co

loniz

atio

n (S

id M

eie

rs)

He

llBla

de

: Se

nu

as S

acrific

e

Imp

era

tor: R

om

e

Num

ber

of

Vote

s

Video Game or Series

Number of VotesNumber of Votes


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The Assassin’s Creed and God of War series are both Triple A video game franchises,

which have large budgets to work with and have very detailed graphics. Triple A (AAA)

is an informal classification for video games that works in the same way as ‘blockbuster’

in the film industry. As such, Triple A video games are mainly produced and distributed

by a mid-sized or major publisher, with the use of significant budgets. Most of the titles,

with the exception of Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, and Sid Meier’s Colonization, are

very action-oriented. The three outliers represent a segment of the video gaming

community who enjoy strategy video games, wherein economies, armies and resources are

managed to achieve specified goals.

4.2.2 Question 2

This question was defined by two specific aspects. Firstly, participants were asked whether

they would like to see more video games that include elements of heritage. Secondly, they

were asked to explain their answers. Of the participants, ninety per cent (45 participants)

stated that they would like to see more heritage elements in video games. Two responses

were on the opposite end of the spectrum. One of the two negative responses had more to

do with a disinterest in heritage in video games than a clear ‘no’. This participant went on

to state that if there is heritage in video games, they would prefer fictional characters or

stories interwoven with historical events. The other participant was clearly negative and

stated that they play video games as “an escape from...daily struggles”.


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Table 4.1: A representation of the responses to Question 1 in a tabulated format. It shows

identified video and the number of participants who chose them (Set in descending order

of votes).

Video Game Number of Votes

Assassin’s Creed (series) 13

God of War 12

Age of Mythology 8

Tomb Raider 3

Age of Empires 2

The Witcher (series) 2

Skyrim 2

Battlefield 1 1

Call of Duty 1

Colonization (Sid Meiers) 1


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HellBlade: Senuas Sacrifice 1

Imperator: Rome 1

Octopath: Traveler 1

Overwatch 1

Red Dead Redemption 1

Smite 1

Titan Quest 1

Until Dawn 1

The remaining responses were more considered ‘maybes’ and ‘yes and no’(s). The

participants who responded with ‘maybes’ had two general motivations for their answers.

One was that such video games would need to be designed carefully in order to properly

treat the source material and avoid controversy, while the other had to do with the inclusion

of heritage not having an influence on what video game the participant chose to play.


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The motivations behind the positive responses frequently aligned with identified positive

features of video gaming found in the literature. These include:

1. The benefit of problem solving to learning (in order to achieve goals) (Bontchev

2015a: 44; Champion 2017a: 24; Ganström 2013: 12),

2. The benefit of interactive leaning, the appeal or charm of historical or cultural

content (Majewski 2017: 198; Mol et al. 2017: 9; Mortara et al. 2014: 318),

3. Videogames being a primary (sometimes exclusive) source of historical knowledge

for video gamers,

4. How interesting and popular media facilitate learning (see Bontchev 2015a: 44;

Champion 2017a: 24; Copplestone 2017a: 33; Newzoo 2017: 9),

5. The appeal and size of video gaming as a form of media and how much time people

spend engaged with it (which can be used to effectively educate), and

6. Video games catalysing further research into cultures and history and making what

can be considered ‘boring’ information entertaining.


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4.2.3 Question 3

This third question was open-ended and asked participants what aspects of South African

heritage (hereafter called ‘topics’) they would most like to see represented in a video game.

As expected, there were many different topics of South Africa’s heritage noted. These

included specific topic foci, such as ‘Shaka Zulu’, ‘van Riebeek’ and the initial forays of

the Dutch East India Company. Besides these interests, others mentioned broader topics

such as ‘pre-colonial times’ and ‘the South African War’. Additionally, there were 4

participants (8 per cent) who stated that they did not know of any South African heritage,

thus responding with a ‘none’ to the question. One participant (2 per cent) decided to leave

the question blank. The results are seen in Table 4.2, below.

I analysed this question on a ‘voting basis’, with a topic being mentioned counting as a

vote. I did this in order to get some kind of quantifiable value for analysis and to gauge

which topics were mentioned the most. This method meant that it was possible for one

participant to vote for more than one topic, although responses that did include multiple

topics usually did not exceed two topics. As the actual wording of the responses and topics

were variable, I grouped related topics together, notably when specifically mentioned or

foci formed part of a broader topic (e.g. ‘Shaka Zulu’ was counted as a vote for ‘The Zulu’).


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Figure 4.2: Bar graph of the responses to Question 3. It shows the topic of South African heritage and how many times it was

voted for.

10

65 5

4 4 4

2 2 21 1 1 1 1

0

3

5

8

10

13

The Z

ulu

Anglo

-Boer W

ars

Pre-C

olo

nial T

imes

The B

oere

The C

olo

nial P

eriod

The B

ush

men

None

All S

ou

th A

frican H

eritage

Fab

les, Sto

ries, Myth

s

Anglo

-Zu

lu W

ars

Voortrek

ker M

onum

ent

Trad

itional H

ealing

#F

eesMustF

all

The F

oundin

g o

f the R

ainbow

…

Xhosa

Nu

mb

er

of

Vote

s

Topic Chosen

Chart of Question 3Number of Votes


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Figure 4.2 clearly shows that the two most popular topics have to do with warfare, or

periods and groups that linked to conflict of some kind as they pertain to history. Despite

‘The Zulu’ not necessarily having to do with conflict, I interpret this topic in this light as

the majority of Zulu history involved some sort of conflict, particularly with the

participants focusing on King Shaka in their responses. King Shaka Zulu is mainly

associated with warfare and is always profiled as a war hero. Having said this, there are

aspects of the Zulu culture that can be portrayed without any ‘combat’ aspects, but I opine

that such has more to do with Bantu culture than Zulu culture.

This focus on conflict or combat in the first two topics, and any subsequent topics is not

surprising, and reflects common perceptions of what kind of content video games do and

should contain. I interpret this as reflecting what kind of content is most engaging in any

media, but especially with modern visual media (such as film). I also attribute the

frequency of combat being featured in video game content to the fact that it is easier to

gamify (turn into a game or involve in play). It is also easier to use conflicts in order to

create a competitive aspect to video games, an aspect that likely started in the days of

arcade gaming. Competition is especially notable in current multiplayer video games. As

the term ‘multiplayer’ suggests, this is where more than one player play either

cooperatively or competitively.

The subsequent topics are more nebulous concerning what constituent aspects would form

the content of a video game. For example, ‘Pre-Colonial Times’ could refer to the life-

ways of the Bushmen, or to the consolidation of the Zulu Kingdom. Additionally, there

were two outliers that were completely unexpected, that of ‘Traditional Healing’ and


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‘#FeesMustFall’ (see Table 4.2). Unfortunately, the participants who mentioned these

outlier topics did not provide reasoning behind their responses, apart from the participant

who responded with ‘Traditional Healing’ adding ‘where appropriate’ in parentheses (i.e.

Traditional Healing (where appropriate). What exactly the participant meant by this is

unclear, although from the responses of other participants, it seems as if this is meant to

indicate that ‘inappropriate’ use of ideas such as traditional healing could spark

controversy. This is especially relevant in countries such as South Africa that have a

plurality of cultures and an arguably tense political climate.

Table 4.2: A representation of the responses to Question 3 in table form. Topics mentioned

in participant responses and the number of votes that they received (Set in descending order

of votes).

Topic Number of Votes

The Zulu 10

Anglo-Boer Wars 6

Pre-Colonial Times 5

The Boere 5

The Colonial Period 4


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The Bushmen 4

None 4

All South African Heritage 2

Fables, Stories, Myths 2

Anglo-Zulu Wars 2

Voortrekker Monument 1

Traditional Healing 1

#FeesMustFall 1

The Founding of the Rainbow Nation 1

Xhosa 1

4.2.4 Question 4

In this question, participants were asked to provide their views on how video games can

benefit the preservation of heritage. This question was also analysed on a ‘voting basis’,

with wording and specificity accounted for, except when specifics engendered something


89

different. It was also possible for participants to mention more than one topic in their

responses.

Table 4.3: A representation of the responses to Question 4 in table form. The Manner in

which video games can benefit heritage preservation and the number of votes they received

(set in descending order of votes).

Reasoning Number of Votes

Knowledge dissemination, Learning, Education 16

Adapting to modern times, video games as a medium for

accurate heritage preservation

15

Popularity of video games making heritage more entertaining

and accessible

11

Easy way to engage youth with heritage 6

Long life-span of video games 5

Affirmative (yes) 4

Spreading more South African specifically heritage, specifically 4

Causing further independent research 3


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Raising awareness about heritage in general 2

Enriching video game content 1

Video games are art and can benefit the appreciation of heritage 1

Heritage professionals should be consulted for games that are

not works of fiction, as people often believe media portrayals of

history

1

Games-as-a-service can benefit heritage preservation. Fixed

content in video games can quickly lose their appeal

1

Video games do not benefit heritage preservation 1

Table 4.3 shows that knowledge dissemination, learning and education was mentioned the

most (16 votes), followed by the use of video games as a modern medium for preserving

heritage (15 votes. Thereafter, the popularity of video games as a modern medium making

heritage accessible and enjoyable to new people (11 votes) and the ease with which video

games foster the engagement of children through play were provided.

These coincided with the dominant reasons in the literature (see Amory et al. 1999: 311;

Bontchev 2015a: 44; Champion 2017a: 24; Ganström 2013: 12; Haddad 2016: 709;

Newzoo 2017: 9; Squire 2008). In fact, I came across all of the mentioned ways that video

games can benefit heritage preservation seen in my review of the literature, excepting the

last.


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The last ‘manner’, which motivates for the use of games-as-a-service, was unexpected.

This is a monetisation model used in the video gaming industry either to increase the

revenue of purchases in or of video games beyond the initial purchase of a video game, or

to support the development of free games. Games-as-a-service usually implies that future

content will be created and released incrementally and can mean that content can be made

for indefinite periods. Only one participant stated that they do not really think video games

can benefit heritage preservation.

4.2.5 Question 5

For the fifth question, participants were asked whether they thought heritage professionals

should become more involved in the development of video games. The question started

with a yes/no answer as an option, and asked all participants to explain their answers. Of

the responses, 92 per cent (46) of the participants answered in the affirmative, 8 per cent

(4) answered with ‘maybes’, while only one replied in the negative (Table 4.4).

Table 4.4: A representation of the responses to Question 5 in table form. It shows the

position of the respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of

respondents that had that motivation. (Set in descending order of votes).

Position Explanation Number

of Votes


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Yes Heritage professionals can help make the representations

more accurate

12

Yes [No explanation provided] 6

Yes As video games are a primary medium for the youth, such

work can expose them to more heritage

4

Yes Video games have a greater reach and effect on society 3

Yes Heritage professionals know more and can expand content

with their knowledge

3

Yes Heritage professionals work as consultants to video game

developers on heritage video game

2

Yes When those video games focus on heritage 2

Yes Both heritage professionals and video game developers can

benefit from such work

2

Maybe Video game developers and heritage professionals have their

own goals, and the video game developers have the ultimate

say. It’s up to heritage professionals to convince video game

developers of the need for their input

2

Yes Knowledge is best learned through entertainment 1


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Yes Only when the heritage professionals are passionate about

video gaming

1

Yes It can bring lesser-known heritage to the surface 1

Yes Both heritage professionals and video game developers

should put in a mutual amount of effort

1

Yes For video games that really need it 1

Yes A strong element of realism and grounding, as well as solid

research and professional insight is the best way to foster

immersion

1

Yes Input from heritage professionals should not be forced 1

Yes It can help preserve the heritage 1

Yes There is much potential in such work 1

Maybe Heritage professionals should stay away from big IPs and not

push political agendas

1

No I do not see educational games as real video games 1

Table 4.4 shows the majority of the most-voted-for explanations behind a positive answer.

These were that the involvement of heritage professionals can improve the accuracy of the


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heritage aspects represented in video games (12 votes), or simply a positive answer (6

votes). These explanations, as well as most of those that follow, adhere to the advantages

and ‘benefits’ of video gaming that can be found in the literature from multiple disciplines

(Anguilera & Mendiz 2003: 9-11; Belotti et al. 2012: 1-2; Bontchev 2015a: 44-53,b;

Champion 2017a: 24; González-Tennant 2016: 23; Griffiths 2002: 47-48; Majewski 2017:

185; McGraw et al. 2017: 170-171; Mortara et al 2014: 318; Rubio-Campillo et al. 2017:

154; cf. Gee 2003). This is especially the case with digital heritage preservation (see

Bontchev 2015a: 44; Champion 2017a; Haddad 2016: 709; Mol et al. 2016, 2017).

Notable explanations behind participants’ positions in Table 4.4 are: (i) that input from

heritage professionals should not be forced, (ii) that heritage professionals should not push

political agendas, (iii) that the internet is full of inaccuracies, and input from heritage

professionals can mitigate this, and (iv) that such input can make even fictional and fantasy

content more ‘sensible’ and ‘relevant’.

The negative response is a position that can be expected from a portion of the video gaming

community, which sees video gaming exclusively as a form of entertainment, and

‘educational games’ as lesser products.

4.2.6 Question 6

In this question, participants were asked whether they thought a 3D virtual tour is

appropriate for presenting a heritage site to the public and asked them to explain their

answer. This was a yes or no question, followed by a request for an explanation. Ninety-


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four per cent (47) of participants answered in the affirmative, four per cent (2) answered

with maybe (yes and no), and one answered with no. This is shown in Table 4.5.

Table 4.5 shows that the most voted for explanation (with 26 votes) was that 3D virtual

tours in video games are vital. This was because they would make the heritage they display

far more accessible and affordable than actual visits to the site. Such a benefit was

especially more applicable in the case of individuals from low-income and international

destinations who can ‘visit the site’ with relative ‘affordability’ and convenience from their

various locations around the world.

An important point that came up several times (8 times) in the explanations is that although

it would greatly benefit the reach and accessibility of the heritage, 3D virtual tours can

never achieve the same experiential quality of actually visiting the site. Especially on an

emotive and spiritual level. This was also the explanation behind the one negative answer

to Question 6.


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Table 4.5: A representation of the responses to Question 6 in a table form. It shows the

position of the respondents, the explanation behind their position, and the number of

respondents that had that motivation (Set in descending order of votes).


of Votes

Yes Websites are far more accessible and affordable to for

international or low-income audiences [as opposed to the actual

sites]

26

Yes [Explanation not provided] 4

Yes It would be an interesting way to 'preview' sites 2

Yes It would need to be interactive though 2

No It is necessary to actually visit the site, the experience cannot be

replicated

2

Yes It can be educational while protecting vulnerable sites 2

Yes Something entertaining needs to be included though, to keep

players engaged

1

Yes Especially with the popularity of virtual reality in video gaming

seen today

1


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Yes It shows the 'true story' behind sites and the video game 1

Yes As long as it is as accurate as possible 1

Yes It is a good was to get younger people interested 1

Yes Hybrid exhibits with virtual and physical features would be best 1

Yes It would be more convenient and comfortable 1

Yes It can put a person 'in [the] history’ 1

Yes As long as it is not viewed as a replacement for actually visiting

the original site

1

Yes and

no

It can help new people experience the site and preserve the

heritage, but can detract from experiences in the actual site

1

Yes 3D tours have worked in the past and can work for this case as

well, if done right

1

Yes It would make people feel like they are actually there 1


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Two notable exceptions from the general trends in the explanations were made. Firstly, the

spread of smartphones and their technical capabilities make it possible and affordable for

many to experience virtual reality. Secondly, 3D virtual tours should be used to augment

physical visits to sites and exhibitions instead of replacing them, as there should be some

kind of physical exhibition to fall back on should there be technical issues.

4.2.7 Question 7

This question was largely based on the experience of the visitor that could be attained from

the video game. In particular, focus was on gathering the views of the participants as to

whether there was any value to be derived from the player taking on the role of a tour guide

in a video game. Value in this regard could be defined in terms of an effective method of

teaching players about the heritage site. Similar to other questions, participants were asked

to explain their answers. Figure 4.3 shows the positions on this yes or no question were

more evenly distributed, with 42 per cent (21) responding in the affirmative, 30 per cent

(15) having a negative response, and 28 per cent (14) falling somewhere in between.

The general trend in the explanations behind the affirmative responses intimated that

having the player take on the role of the tour guide would cause them to be more actively

engaged with the data they are presented with and help them retain the knowledge learned.

However, many of the affirmative responses pointed out that this would have to be done

very carefully, to keep the video game interactive and the player engaged. Some noted that

although this approach would be attractive to some, others would not be interested in this

premise.


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Figure 4.3: Pie Chart of the position of participants in responses to Question 7 (Question 2

under 3D Tours of heritage sites in Appendix A). This pie chart shows the percentage of

participants that chose one of the three represented positions (yes, no and other) in brief.

The explanations behind the negative responses to this question followed several trends.

These included a variety of views: (i) this premise sounds boring and not terribly

entertaining, (ii) it will not appeal to the majority of video gamers, (iii) that some kind of

test or tutorial would be needed, (iv) that the player should be a tourist, (v) Educational

games tend to have design and pacing problems that cause players to lose interest, and (vi)

having the players take part in the heritage (i.e, events etc.) would be better than

communicating information about the heritage.

From those participants who fell somewhere between the positive and the negative answers

to this question, I believe the most valuable information can be found. This is because the

Yes

42%

No

30%

Other

28%

Pie Chart of Question 7

Yes No Other


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explanations that they provided can help in the process of developing video games such as

the one that I made, especially with earlier stages of development, notably the design of

the video game. These responses were either more considered and nuanced in their

explanation, or showed confusion as to how the ‘player as tour guide’ approach would be

accomplished. Chief among the latter confusion was not knowing exactly how the player

could function as a tour guide without having learned the relevant knowledge beforehand,

or having some kind of training or test.

4.2.8 Question 8

Question 8 was an open-ended question that asked participants what other role, other than

as tour guides, could players take in the video game. The responses to this question

followed several trends, including: (i) Having the player be a time traveller, trying to come

back to the present and each level having a vital piece of knowledge in order to progress,

(ii) An active role in the story as a main character, (iii) Having the player create some of

the heritage, as a craftsman or narrator, (iii) Being a tourist, historian, explorer, on-site

expert, or Indiana Jones-like character, (iv) Having the heritage function as the background

or setting of the video game, (v) Adding extra video game mechanics, like strategy, combat

or puzzles. Table 4.6 shows a more detailed account of these trends.


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Table 4.6: A representation of the responses to Question 8 in table form. It shows what

roles the respondents recommended the player should take, as well as the number of

respondents that had that (or similar) answer(s) (Set in descending order of votes).

Role Number of Votes

Leading or side role character in historical

events(s)

8

Tourist 7

Time-traveller 3

Detective 3

I don’t know 3

Hero from the past 2

Explorer adventurer 2

An interactive narrative role 2

Narrator 1

Historian 1


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Indiana Jones type or museum thief 1

Management role or on-site expert 1

There should be a choice in characters 1

Multiple characters 1

Heritage enthusiast 1

Soldier 1

Craftsman or artisan 1

This question did not ask participants to explain their answers, as it was expected that they

would give short answers consisting of one or a few words. Some participants, however,

did not answer the question and suggested video game mechanics instead. It might be that

they did this in order to suggest what would make the video game more engaging. These

responses were not included in Table 4.6 above because they did not speak to the question.

Among these responses, puzzle mechanics (2 votes), player feedback, environmental

storytelling, strategy mechanics, and action or combat mechanics were suggested.


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4.2.9 Question 9

Participants were asked whether they thought that having dialogue options as a method of

communicating information on the site would be effective in educating players about the

relevant heritage. They were also asked to explain their answers. Table 4.7 shows that

seventy per cent (35) of the participant responses were in the affirmative, four (8 percent)

were negative, 16 per cent (8) gave more nuanced answers without a clear position. One

participant answered with ‘I don’t know’ and another displayed confusion as to whether

the question concerned a website or a physical heritage site.

Among the positive responses, many simply agreed with the suggested method of

communicating information on the site. The rest argued that other elements should be

included in order to make the experience better and foster learning on the players’ part.

Such elements include voice-overs of dialogue text, visual and effects, and an interesting

story or narrative. Some of the negative responses had similar reasoning, but also noted

that environment storytelling and other mechanics or elements would help. In addition,

some further explanations from this group corresponded to the more nuanced answers that

were neither explicitly positive nor negative.


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Table 4.7: Responses (which took a definite stance) to Question 9. It shows the position of

the respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of respondents that

had that motivation (Set in descending order of votes).


of Votes

Yes [Explanation not provided] 17

Yes Having visuals will create a better experience though 6

Yes If spaced out or having audio 2

Yes It should be text-based and have audio 2

Yes If the game is being developed by heritage specialists then the

dialogue given will be well-rounded knowledge of the subjects

at hand

2

Yes If the information is relayed in an interesting manner, such as

the history or reason for a quest

2

No Players want interactivity and visuals 2

Yes Dialogue is more interesting than someone just telling

information

1


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Yes It would instruct the players as to what questions they should

be asking in real life as well as in the game

1

Yes If the dialogue options are actually what the character says 1

Yes If factually correct 1

No Players need to live through the experiences, to absorb the

information better

1

No Optimal game information dissemination relies heavily on

environmental storytelling over exposition

1

No Players would not have to engage with all the available

information in this case

1

The more considered responses noted several points. These included: (i) That the language

used would need to be tailored to the intended audience and that there would need to be a

balance of accuracy and accessibility, (ii) That the dialogue options would need to be

limited, in order to direct the players and progress the story, as well as have the players

take on a character’s role in order to invest them with the narrative and foster learning

through empathy, (iii) That environmental story-telling is far more engaging, and (iv)

Adding other mechanics, for example puzzles mechanics.


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4.2.10 Question 10

Participants were asked whether they thought that the storyline should be in first-person,

third-person, or through any other approach. Figure 4.4 represents the responses to

Question 10. Fourth-six per cent of the participants (23) chose a first-person perspective

and 14 per cent (7) chose a third-person perspective. Thirty-six per cent (18) chose ‘both’

as their answer, stating that each perspective has advantages in certain situations, and four

per cent (12) said that it depends on other factors.

Figure 4.4: Pie Chart of the responses to Question 10 (Question 5 under 3D Tours of

heritage sites in Appendix A). This pie chart shows the percentage of participants who

chose one of the represented positions.

1st Person

46%

3rd Person

14%

Both

36%

Depends

4%


1st Person 3rd Person Both Depends


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Although this question did not ask participants to explain their answers, some did. All of

the given explanations followed one trend. Briefly, this trend is that on the one hand first

person is better at portraying information as it involves the player more directly. On the

other hand, third person is more suitable for exploring an area.

4.2.11 Question 11

The focus of the question was on the participants’ views regarding the use of traditional

stories or folklore in video game development. Table 4.8 shows the positions of those

participants that took a clear stance on the question, as the responses of those who did not

do so did not answer the question as indicated. The responses that did not take a position

still provided explanations however, which I describe below.

Eighty-eight per cent (44) of the participants responded in the affirmative, 10 per cent (5)

gave more considered answers without a clear position and 2 per cent (1) gave a negative

response. The explanations behind the positive responses to Question 11 show that the

participants viewed folklore and traditional stories as interesting and informative

information that can be used to enrich video game experiences. A few went on to suggest

ways in which such stories could be presented (e.g. in small chunks), or that having such

stories play a bigger part in video games would help preserve the heritage and broadcast

the heritage to more people.


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respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of respondents that had

that motivation (Set in descending order of votes).


of Votes

Yes It’s informative and interesting 13

Yes There are so many exciting stories and legends that have not yet

been explored

4

Yes To teach more about heritage 4


Yes It can preserve the stories while making it easier to learn 3

Yes It allows for people completely oblivious to folklore and culture

to explore beyond what they know

2

Yes Folklore can be used as a story to create interesting games 2


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Yes These stories strengthen engagement 2

Yes Anything can and should be used in game development 1

Yes I would enjoy having traditional folklore and its metaphoric

story-telling play a bigger role in video games

1

Yes A lot of deep history to be unpacked. 1

Yes They have a certain degree of interesting events and characters 1

Yes South Africans have very deep roots. The Zulu and other

African nations have extremely deep lore, especially when it

comes to religion

1

Yes If it's quick, bite-sized chunks 1

Those participants that did not take a clear position stated three reasons. Firstly, that

including such traditional stories should not be forced. Secondly, that there should still be

interaction in the video game. Thirdly, that there should be clear line between fictional and

non-fictional use of traditional stories and folklore in video games.


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4.2.12 Question 12

With this question, I particularly wanted to establish whether participants thought that a

2D, rock art-inspired visual style would be effective at preserving the rock art site chosen

for this study, Game Pass Shelter at Kamberg, uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park. They were

also asked to explain their answers. Table 4.9 shows that seventy-two per cent (36) of the

participants answered in the affirmative to this question, 6 per cent (3) responded in the

negative, 14 per cent (8) responded with more considered answers without clearly taking a

position, and 4 per cent (2) responded that they did not know or couldn’t understand the

question.


respondents, the explanation behind their position and the number of respondents that had

that motivation. (Set in descending order of votes).

Position

Explanation Number

of Votes

Yes If it’s made well it can help preserve the art 8

Yes Bushman art is a very unique into the past and can make a

great art-style for a game

5



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Yes It fits the theme very well and can be interesting in itself 3

Yes It shows what the rock art looks like 3

Yes This is an approach which many other games have used in the

past

3

No Having something in 3D makes it feel more interactive and

realistic

2

Yes It is a vital part of the culture and heritage that we know and

love

1

Yes It creates an importance of said site art 1

Yes Video games are the most appreciated form of art nowadays 1

Yes In stories that are relevant to the era or group of people

responsible for the art. It should make sense why the art is

used. The art shouldn’t be used in stories that are not

connected to the art

1

Yes As long as it does not interfere with the art 1


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Yes It prevents damage and touching of the physical art 1

Yes As the world and technology grows, heritage sites are being

destroyed either on purpose or by accident. With this method,

the imagery is safe for years to come in, even if the original is

gone

1

No This doesn’t seem to do anything for the actual sights

themselves

1

Maybe Depending on how the story is told etc. 1

The explanations for the positive responses to Question 12 followed along several trends,

namely: (i) that this would help to preserve the rock art in a digital form, (ii) that Bushmen

rock art is unique and would make a good art-style for a video game, and (iii) that video

games using similar approaches have been successfully done in the past.

Two explanations provided for the negative responses. These were that having a 3D game

would create more realism and a more interactive feeling, and that trying to use rock art-

inspired art styles in a video game would not necessarily help improve the preservation of

the rock art in the actual archaeological site.


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The responses that fell somewhere in between a positive and negative stance on the

question had varied reasoning behind their responses. These include: (i) That it would

depend on the visual appeal and quality of the rock art, since the technical complexity and

the state of preservation of the rock art might be lacking, (ii) This style could be very

effective if it were done in the right way and would work if it complimented the overall

theme, especially if the audio was carefully considered as well, (iii) It would be entirely

dependent on who the target audience is, since even critically successful projects could be

entirely ignored by the intended users. Observational and user testing would be necessary

to gauge what art style would work best, (iv) It depends on how the story is told, (v) Using

such an art style could be a contentious issue in a country like South Africa, and claims or

inauthenticity could arise as a result.

4.2.13 Question 13

The focus of this question was to establish what other visual styles participants could

suggest to represent a traditional story, apart from 2D. Figure 4.5 and Table 4.10 represent

the participants’ responses to Question 13. This question was analysed on a ‘voting basis’,

in order to the most desired visual style. Participants could vote for more than one visual

style.


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Figure 4.5: Pie Chart of the responses to Question 13 (Question 3 under 2D level Appendix

A). This pie chart shows the percentage of participants that chose one of the represented

visual/presentations styles.

A considerable number of participants (17 votes) were either unsure as to what visual style

they would recommend, or did not give an answer. The visual style that received the most

votes was 3D (30 votes) and several participants (6 votes) stated that would actually stick

to a 2D style. Following these, Virtual Reality (4 votes) and 4D (2 votes) received more

than one vote. The rest of the mentioned visual styles only received one vote each and were

grouped into the ‘Other’ category in Figure 4.5. The name of the style which only received

one vote can be seen in Table 4.10.

None/not sure

30%

3D

26%

2D

11%

Virtual Reality

7%

4D

3%

Other

23%


None/not sure 3D 2D Virtual Reality 4D Other


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Table 4.10: A representation of responses to Question 13. It shows the visual style the

respondents chose and the number of respondents that chose that visual style (Set in

descending order of votes).

Visual Style Number of Votes

None/not sure 17

3D 15

2D 6

Virtual Reality 4

4D 2

Pixel Art 1

Minimalist 1

Puzzle or Quiz Game 1

Isometric 1

Story or Flip Book 1


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Cartoony 1

Free Camera Movement 1

2.5D 1

Abstract 1

4K 1

Augmented Reality 1

Low-Poly (polygon) 1

Cell-shaded 1

4.3 Discussion

The discussion presented here is not necessarily following the same chronological

approach as the data presented earlier in this chapter. I am, therefore, discussing the data

gathered in terms of how the question and their responses were interlinked.


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The responses given towards Question 1 indicate that there might have been some priming

that led to the results becoming skewed. This is because the three most popular video games

were mentioned as examples in the question’s wording. All of the video game titles

identified by the participants do have heritage elements which can clearly be identified,

from the representation of historical life-ways seen in the Assassin’s Creed series to the

representation of traditional beliefs seen in the God of War series. Therefore, responses to

Question 1 should be read within this limitation.

What can be discerned from the responses to Question 2 is that in general, the video gaming

public is aware of the heritage benefits that could be derived from video games. This

especially concerns education and the broadcasting of accurate information. Responses to

Question 2 further indicated that some video gamers are aware of the care with which

certain topics should be approached in order to avoid controversy, while remaining

authentic. The responses to Question 4 were similar to those given to Question 2.

In Question 4, participants were explicitly asked whether they thought video games can

benefit the preservation of heritage. As with their responses to Question 2, participants

most frequently noted that video games would benefit the dissemination and education of

heritage information to the public. They also regularly mentioned that video games would

make such information far more accessible and affordable to people, and engage

individuals who might not know about it or do not engage with media normally employed

in heritage-related disciplines.


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Participants further noted that video games would benefit the heritage fraternity by

engaging the youth, for whom video games are a primary entertainment medium, and help

preserve heritage data in the digital age. As was stated above, one participant gave an

unexpected response, stating that fixed or once-off heritage content in a video game would

quickly lose its appeal. They recommended that games-as-a-service model, which adds

more content at later dates in the form of updates, would be a suitable model.

Question 3 revealed what video games are often expected to represent or feature as content.

Participants seemed to favour combat mechanics in video games. This conclusion is based

on the most voted-for topics of South African heritage. They all have to do with combat or

warfare. As was stated in the analysis of this question above, this is not particularly

surprising, as the content that focuses on combat of military aspects is one of the easiest to

‘gamify’, turn into some form of competition, or can be used as a metric for goal

completion. Such mechanics also have a history in video gaming that reaches decades into

the past and has several well-established ways of being represented.

Such representational conventions include score counters, real-time strategy conventions,

and loot or ammunition conventions to name just a few. An example of such a convention

are ‘loot drops or loot boxes’. These are randomly generated items which are selected from

an array of ‘loot’ items and are based purely on chance.

Other than topics that would focus on combat, cultural groups formed a large part of the

topics participants chose. These include ‘The Zulus’ and ‘The Boere’, for example.

Additionally, some of the participants were aware of the affordances that video games offer


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to the representation of less conventional content within video games, notably ‘traditional

healing’. This was a surprising topic that I had not previously considered.

It could be that recommendations of topics are informed by the dominant games that were

presented in responses to Question 1. Thus, the responses to Questions 3 and 8 reflected

what video gamers are familiar with in terms of video gaming content and the role of

players within video games. Most notable here was having the player take on the role of a

time-traveller or hero from the past. An interesting direction in some of the responses to

Question 8 was that players would could take on the role of craftsmen of some kind and

who would then need to make the heritage that the video game focuses on while in those

roles.

The majority of respondents, as noted from their responses to Question 10, highlighted the

subjective nature of storytelling. Thus, whatever the topic chosen, be it general history or

warfare, it will always be told from subjective reasoning. Therefore, it does not matter

whether it is a first-person or third-person perspective used in the video game, the reasoning

will remain the same. This viewpoint is also informed by the relatively equal distribution

of the responses (see Figure 4.4) and the fact that a third of the participants chose ‘both’ as

their answer. Besides the combative stories, the majority of participants (to Question 11)

said they would like to see more folklore, traditional stories and mythology being featured

in video games.


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In terms of informing the content used in video games, participants’ responses to Question

5 generally thought that heritage professionals should become more involved in the

creation of video games. In this way, historical accuracy, which is an explicit goal of video

game developers, will be significantly enhanced. Some of the notable additions to

participants’ stance on this question can be seen above. One stood out as not being part of

the literature, or expected by me - that heritage professionals could benefit the development

of video games, since they are more likely to be aware of information that developers would

not be aware of.

I interpret this as meaning that heritage professionals can go beyond just validating the

accuracy of portrayals of heritage, but can also enhance the ‘believability’ of stories to

enhance even entirely fictional settings on solid principles or premises. This would increase

the sense of cultural presence within a video game.

Moving away from the discussion on whether video games can best present cultural

heritage, responses to Question 6 showed that the majority of participants thought a 3D

tour of a site would be an appropriate way of presenting a heritage site to the public. This

especially concerned issues around the recommended content for video games and the

accuracy of such content. An important point that appeared several times in the

explanations is that although it would greatly benefit the reach and accessibility of the

heritage, 3D virtual tours can never achieve the same experiential quality of actually

visiting the site, especially on an emotive and spiritual level.


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This was also the explanation behind the one negative answer to Question 6. Thus, 3D

virtual tours should primarily be used to augment physical visits to sites or exhibitions

instead of replacing them, as there should be some kind of physical exhibition to fall back

on should there be technical issues.

A few notable exceptions from the general trends in the explanations were evident. For

example, the spread of smartphones and their technical capabilities make it possible for

many to experience virtual reality in a much more affordable manner, a point which is

noted in the literature (see Lowthorpe et al. 2013: 277; Newzoo 2017: 13). Work in

preserving data on archaeological sites, artefact, or traditions should not necessarily be seen

as ends in themselves, although they may be.

Rather, in cases where sites are still open to visitation from the public, such work should

act as a catalyst to new people becoming interested in archaeological heritage. For instance,

they could become more interested in visiting the site once they have seen it in the video

game. Otherwise, when a site is no longer accessible to the public or is in a critically

endangered state, then creating a video game representing the site can serve to expose

people to a site that can no longer be visited.

Linked to views on whether 3D virtual tours could work, participant’s responses to

Question 13 show that video gamers mostly prefer traditional 2D and 3D visual styles,

while the others represent segments of the video gaming public that are interested in niche

styles or styles which have not yet reached their full accessibility or optimisation (such as

4D and virtual reality). For Question 12, the majority of participants found that a rock-art


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inspired art style for a 2D game would be effective at preserving the heritage of Game Pass

shelter. There were those who did not take a clear stance. However, they noted that it would

depend on the quality of the rock art, the interests and preferences of the target audience

and user tests or prototyping.

For Question 7, I believe the most valuable information can be found in the responses that

fell somewhere between the positive and the negative answers. These responses were either

more considered and nuanced in their explanation, or showed confusion as to how the

‘player as tour guide’ approach would be accomplished. I found these ‘in-between’

responses to be more informative as they showed that video gamers are aware that having

players take the role of a tour guide could be problematic if the information players choose

to communicate was inaccurate.

The particippants recommended that there would need to be some kind of learning or

training before the player takes a guiding role, or that there would need to be some kind of

test beforehand. Chief among the latter confusion was not knowing exactly how the player

could function as a tour guide without having learned the relevant knowledge beforehand,

or having some kind of training or test.

Communicating information through dialogue was overwhelmingly considered, as can be

understood from the responses to Question 9, to be the most effective method. Many

participants, however, also thought that there would need to be stimulating visuals

accompanying such dialogues. Including dialogue was therefore generally thought to be

more engaging than only having visuals. A few also mentioned that there would need to be


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some action and interactivity for optimal knowledge retention and entertainment, while

several stated that other video game mechanics would be required. For example,

environmental storytelling was suggested as being a suitably engaging method of

communicating information.

Reflecting some more on the results of the survey, I would like to discuss a one final point.

Most of the video games identified in question one are Triple A titles, with Senua’s

Sacrifice being a notable exception. The video game I developed was not Triple A, but an

Indie video game (made by an independent developer). Although AAA games have major

publishers and are respected amongst the gaming industry, they all started as Indie Games,

where there reputation and status had to be earned. Thus, it is not uncommon for my game

to fall under the Indie game category. There is in fact a relatively large market for Indie

video games.

4.4 Conclusion

In general, the results show that players prefer Triple A video games. As indicated earlier,

these are video games with big budgets and are supported by big corporations. There is

also general support to having video games that have heritage elements in them. This is

expected since these are the types of video games that are most frequently and effectively

marketed to audiences, especially if they have detailed visuals and established franchises

(as the aforementioned Triple A video games do).


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The results showed that the majority of participants would like to see more heritage in

video games and that they are able to correctly identify video game features that can benefit

heritage efforts. Most stated that they would like to see more involvement from heritage

professionals in video game development

The participants in this survey preferred to play video games with combat features, cultural

data, or trading/economics as their core gameplay mechanics. Participants mostly stated

that a 3D tour would be appropriate for broadcasting information on an archaeological site

to the public. The data from this questionnaire suggest that a sample of video game players

would like to see more heritage work in video games. It also showed that a 3D tour of an

archaeological site would be suitable for educating players about that site, but that having

the player take on the role of a tourist should be considered before having the player take

the role a tour guide. The results of this questionnaire also show that having rock art form

the visual style of a 2D video game would be effective at preserving the heritage of a rock

art site and that sample of video gamers would like to see more folklore and traditional

stories in video games.

From the above, I concluded that creating the 3D tour part of my proposed video game

would in fact be beyond the scope of my research. I therefore decided to focus on the 2D

part of the video game. I came to this conclusion based on the responses to the survey

questions in general, from the topic suggestions, which included several under which

‘Bushmen culture and heritage’ falls, to the positive reception of having a Bushmen rock

art inspired visual style be the presentation style of a video game about Bushmen heritage.


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Chapter 5: Post-Mortem and Asset Creation

5.1 Introduction

The content of this chapter follows two themes, although the structure thereof does not

reflect this. The first theme is modelled on post-mortems, which are reports of the

development of video games. The second theme is a description of a development

workflow for assets in SE. Additionally, I provide an overview of the design of SE, the

impression of sequence of events in which development took place, and a more technical

description of developing assets.

In the first theme, I highlight the impact of the recommendations I received from the survey

participants on my design decisions, the challenges I experienced during development, as

well as a reflection on what I could have done differently to possibly make the process of

developing my video game much easier. I particularly focus on three big lessons which I

learned from this research and use these to provide recommendations for potential future

research projects.

5.2 Designing SE

I originally planned for my video game to have two parts: (i) 3D tour of the chosen rock

art site, and (ii) 2D tour of the rock art site. In the 3D tour of the Game Pass Shelter at

Kamberg in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park, the players would have taken on the role

of the tour guide, giving them the power to focus on those aspects of the site and associated

data which they found most interesting. An ability to make such choices would thus have


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given them the agency and power to lead the tour as they wished and to freely explore the

presented heritage. I originally planned a system of dialogue that would direct the way in

which the player learns about the heritage before communicating it to the virtual tour group.

My idea was to have this dialogue system linked to a probabilistic system which would

have had the type of information that the player chose to communicate to arise more

frequently in future dialogue choices.

Besides the 3D tour of the Game Pass Shelter, I further planned for the second part of the

video game to be presented in 2D. This part would use the rock art tradition associated with

Game Pass Shelter as the art style. It would also use the traditional uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park Bushmen story that was most applicable to the rock art motifs at the site.

A significant amount of the participants showed confusion as to how the player would take

on the role of tour guide during a 3D tour of Game Pass Shelter. This eventually led me to

the decision not to include the 3D tour in my video game.

I made the above decision in good conscience, as the survey also showed that nearly all of

the participants were interested in the 2D part of my video game. As one of the purposes

behind conducting this survey questionnaire was to create a video game, the results

indicated several things concerning the development of my video game. Firstly, it indicated

that a relatively small percentage of video gamers would find taking on the role of a tour

guide to be interesting or optimally effective, without a clear and well-planned idea as to

how such a role would retain the engagement of the player. This would then need to be

communicated effectively and ‘sold’ as part of the package.


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Additionally, the amount of video game features (puzzles, knowledge tests,

environmentally-embedded data, etc.) that the participants suggested for inclusion in the

3D tour I posited would be far too much for a project as small as mine to accomplish. Some

of the features that they suggested were part of my original plan, such as environmental

storytelling. Others, such as puzzle mechanics, were not. Most video games (and especially

Indie video games) would lean in on one feature, optimise it and have the rest take on lesser

roles, but this would still require too much time and labour for my video game.

The second big indication from the survey was that a 2D video game using uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park rock art as a visual style would generally be well-received by video

gamers. In theory, it would also be easier to achieve than creating the 3D tour. I therefore

decided that I would need to focus all of my attention on developing the 2D level. I thus

decided to focus my attention on the 2D part of the video game.

5.3 The Narrative of SE

One of my goals throughout the development of my video game was to keep it as authentic

to the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen traditions as possible. This meant that I

would use the rock art actually found at Game Pass Shelter for the art and visuals, unless

the rock art at the site did not include what was needed to represent the Spoiling of the

Eland story. The aim of the above was to maximise the degree to which my SE

communicated cultural presence (see Champion 2015: 179-186). As it applied to the

narrative of my video game, I needed to represent all of the objects and ideas mentioned in

the story to the greatest extent possible. For example, there are no hartebeest motifs at


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Game Pass Shelter, but these animals are feature in the Spoiling of the Eland story. I

therefore decided to use hartebeest motifs from elsewhere within the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park rock art. Additionally, although I focused on the Spoiling of the Eland

story, there were other beliefs that the Bushmen held that are directly associated with eland,

but that are not part of the story. For example, the Bushmen believed that eland received

some kind of aid from the creator god, Cagn, in order to evade hunters (Howard 1999: 103-

107). Such additional content serves to further contextualise the Spoiling of the Eland story.

I decided to divide my 2D video game into three acts. Act One was to be centred on the

‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art. Act Two was to represent the Spoiling of the

Eland story. Act Three was to be an act focusing on Bushmen hunting eland. I designed

the progression of the narrative to take place in different ‘times’. Act One takes place in

the ‘narrative present’, a time contemporary with the painting of the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of

southern African rock art. Act Two is set in the most distant past or primordial time of

creation, or the ‘narrative past’. It provides detail and context to the events within Act One

and Act Three. Act Three is also set in the ‘narrative present’, but with the scenes in a

reverse order when compared to Act One.

Act One and Act Three function as the repeated phrase that so often occurred in oral

traditions. The acts in my video game’s narrative are further comprised of scenes. These

scenes serve to segment the acts into smaller pieces of gameplay, as well to structure the

narrative in a neater ‘mirror image’. These are defined by events within the narrative, rock

art panels at Game Pass Shelter, and the mechanics in the scenes.


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I structured the narrative of the video game in this way, specifically in order to keep it as

authentic as possible. I tried to structure the narrative according to how individual lines are

recited in paragraphs (or stanzas) in oral traditions. As it applies to my video game’s

narrative structure, the first lines in a paragraph are often repeated. This creates smaller

units of a given narrative and helps the narrator to keep track of where they are in a story,

as well as giving them the freedom to make these ‘units’ of narrative their own. Although

it was not explicitly stated, audiences in oral traditions knew or expected that narrators

would follow a ‘skeleton’ or ‘rubric’ of a narrative, which was normally defined by the

repeated phrase at the beginning and end of a stanza or paragraph. All of the details of the

‘event’ between the repeated instances of the phrase gave more content and this is when

individual narrators were given the opportunity to contribute to a unique experience of

storytelling.

Keeping to the authentic presentation of the traditional story, I further decided to make it

the explicit purpose of the player to ‘perform the narrative of the Spoiling of the Eland as

it is presented to them in text. This is arguably the only goal or objective that the player

needs to fulfill. I only minimally edited the account of //Kabbo, in order to adjust the pace

of the narrative of SE. I additionally tried to present the remaining story of SE from the

same narrative perspective- that of a Bushman informing a non-Bushman of their culture.


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5.4 The Narrative Timeline

As indicated earlier, the narrative of the video game is segmented into three acts, each of

which is further comprised of smaller scenes. A brief plan of how the narrative of my video

game is structured is presented in Table 5.1. An explanation of the terms used in Table 5.1

is necessary before I explain what exactly transpires in these scenes. I will start with the

terms used for the three acts. ‘Rosetta Stone’ indicates that the contents of Act One has to

do with the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art. More specifically, it focuses on

representing what is happening in this panel, and the event (a normal successful hunt of an

eland) that immediately preceded the event represented in the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern

African rock art.

The normal successful hunt of an eland is what I call ‘Rosetta Hunt’ so as to more clearly

distinguish it from ‘First Hunt’. Calling it ‘Second Hunt’ could lead to some confusion.

‘Rosetta Hunt’ also indicates that the hunting that is taking place is a hunt as it would have

happened at a time contemporary to the painting of the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African

rock art. The ‘Spoiling of the Eland story’ connotes that the scenes in Act Two represent

the events within the Spoiling of the Eland story. I have identified two scenes of creating

eland within this story, each of which is followed by a hunting scene.

The hunting scene which form parts of Acts Two should not be confused with those in the

other acts, as they happen in the distant past and are governed by different rules and

conditions. I therefore term the hunting scenes in the Spoiling of the Eland story ‘First

Hunt’, as it was the first hunt to happen since the creation of eland.


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An important distinction needs to be made with regards to Table 5.1. Although I use the

term ‘scene’ to describe the individual narrative parts in SE, this should not be confused

with ‘scenes’ in Unity. In this context, I use ‘scene’ to describe the narrative as it is the

term used in literature, theatre and film. Its use can be equated with ‘events’ in narratology

(Corvellec 2006).

Table 5.1: A representation of the Narrative Structure of SE

Narrative Segment Narrative Time

Act One: Rosetta Stone Present

Scene 1: Rosetta Hunt Present Perfect

Scene 2: /Num Transfer Present Continuous

Act Two: Spoiling of the Eland Story Perfect Past/Primordial Time

Scene 1: Eland Creation #1 Perfect Past

Scene 2: First Hunt Time immediately after the above

Scene 3: Eland Creation #2 Time immediately after the above

Scene 4: Second Hunt Time immediately after the above


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Act Three: Rosetta Hunt Present

Scene 1: Rosetta Hunt Present Perfect

Scene 2: /Num Transfer Present Continuous

To understand the terms used in the ‘Narrative Time’ column of Table 5.1, I employed

categories to distinguish verb tenses. I use ‘Narrative Timeline’ to distinguish between the

traditional story and the ‘The Narrative Times’ in my video game. The Narrative Times of

the three acts are the general periods in which the events within the narrative occur occur.

These ‘Narrative Times’ are relative to a conceptual storytelling event, wherein a Bushman

tells the Spoiling of the Eland story at a time contemporary with the painting of the rock

art at Game Pass Shelter.

The verb tenses are useful within the Narrative Times of the scenes within the acts. ‘Present

Continuous’ indicates the corresponding scene is currently happening in the Narrative

Timeline (Aarts 2014). ‘Perfect Present’ indicates the corresponding scene happened in the

immediate past of the ‘Present Continuous’. ‘Perfect Past’ indicates the farthest point in

time that comprises the narrative past. It is effectively the primordial beginning and the

farthest past simultaneously. ‘Time immediately after the above’ indicates that its

corresponding part happened immediately after the scene that preceded it. For example,

Act Two: Part 2 happened immediately after Act 2: Part 1.


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In Table 5.2 below, I try to convey how this structure to the scenes in the narrative can be

understood as the rhyme scheme of a poem. I do this in order to clarify how the structure

of the scenes in SE reflect storytelling in oral traditions. The letters in Table 5.2 represent

a rhyme scheme reminiscent of poetry, where the repetition of individual scenes serves

mnemonic purposes in SE. This serves to familiarise players with the mechanics and rules

of SE, while incrementally progressing them through the narrative.

Table 5.2: A representation of SE’s Narrative Structure as the Rhyme Scheme of a poem.

Narrative Structure Poetic Structure/Rhyme Scheme

Act One: Rosetta Stone Stanza One

Scene 1: Rosetta Hunt A

Scene 2: /Num Transfer B

Act Two: Spoiling of the Eland Story Stanza Two

Scene 1: Eland Creation #1 C

Scene 2: First Hunt D

Scene 3: Eland Creation #2 C


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Scene 4: Second Hunt D

Act Three: Rosetta Stone Stanza Three

Scene 1: Rosetta Hunt A

Scene 2: /Num Transfer B

In Table 5.2 the scenes on the left-hand side of the table have corresponding letters within

the rhyme scheme on the right-hand side. Stanzas One and Three have the same narrative

content. This repeat of letters A and B serve to encapsulate the entire narrative, and with

the first event being fully contextualised at the end. This achieves the aim of

communicating the significance of the Rosetta Stone of southern African rock art to

players.

Stanza Two contains a standard repetition of narrative scenes, but with slight alterations in

narrative content, which serve to introduce players to the mechanics of the video game

while gradually progressing the Spoiling of the Eland story.

By structuring the narrative and the timeline in this way, I believe that I have made these

aspects of SE authentic to the tradition of oral storytelling of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg

Park Bushmen (and likely other oral storytelling traditions too).


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5.5 Structure and Content

Here I describe the events that transpire in the narrative acts and the scenes that comprise

them. I progress through the narrative as it is presented to the player, that is, from the

beginning of Act One to the end of Act Three.

5.5.1 Act One:

1. Scene 1: Hunters are hunting a herd of eland. The player is one of these hunters.

The goal of the player is to successfully hunt an eland by throwing spears at it.

2. Scene 2: The Shaman (player) needs to walk up to a wounded eland, in order to

transfer /num from it to himself. The /num which is originally inside the eland is

transferred through the tail of the eland, into the hand of the shaman and finally into

the shaman.

In the description of the scenes in Act One above, I firstly show the player how hunts

contemporary with the painting of the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art would

have happened. During Scene 2, I represent what is occurring in the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of

southern African rock art during Scene 1. This shows the player about the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park Bushmen beliefs concerning eland and the spiritual power (/num) they

possessed. This is done in a brief and simplified form.


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Through the rules and constraints of this hunt, which I go into further detail in the

breakdown of the mechanics below, I convey the difficulty with which such hunts would

have happened in the narrative present. This is arguably the entire purpose of the Spoiling

of the Eland story. Here, the player does not necessarily know how the rules of the video

game works, adding to the feel of how difficult hunting eland was. There are prompts

letting the player know what they can do as the hunter they control, but the rules of the

video game (or system) are not made clear. This is done through the narrative of Act Two.

5.5.2 Act Two:

1. Scene 1: Cagn acts out the events of the narrative of the Spoiling of the Eland story

which occur before the first hunt of an eland. In this part, the player controls the

actions of Cagn.

2. Scene 2: The player’s perspective of the story changes from controlling Cagn to

controlling Gcwi. The player twice attempts to hunt the eland, but fails on both

times. The player only succeeds on the third attempt, because the eland was asleep.

This is the First Hunt.

3. Scene 3: The narrative after the First Hunt, but before the Second Hunt takes place.

This occurs during the second event of creating eland. First Gcwi attempts to

recreate the eland, but fails. Cagn then attempts this as well, but even he cannot

replicate the first eland.


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4. Scene 4: The player takes on the role of three characters: Cagn, Cogaz, and Gcwi,

respectively. The goal is to get the player fully acquainted with the rules of the

video game, and the conditions for success. As Cagn, the player needs to hunt three

eland, as Cogaz he needs to hunt two, and as Gcwi one.

There are two main objectives that underlie the events in Act Two. These are to

contextualise the events in Act One and to communicate the rules, constraints, and win/lose

conditions of the video game system. In the contextualisation of Act One, the player learns

three lessons: (i) why eland have such great spiritual potency, (ii) how eland are spoilt, and

(iii) why man must hunt them. In the communication of the video game system, the player

learns: the ‘abilities’ of the different hunters as player characters, how the eland behave in

the different scenes, the constraints of the video game, and what the win or lose conditions

of the hunting scenes in the video game are.

5.5.3 Act Three:

1. The player once again needs to hunt an eland as a normal hunter in the ‘Perfect

Present’. Once he has successfully hunted/wounded an eland, which does not die

outright, a Shaman appears. The player once again controls the Shaman and

transfers the /num from the eland into the Shaman.

In act three, the player again needs to hunt an eland with a normal hunter in the ‘narrative

present’. This he/she does with the contextualised knowledge of why it is difficult, how to

play the video game, and why eland are special and spiritually potent.


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As can be seen in the breakdown of the act and scenes above, SE is structured in a way that

goes back and forth between narrative scenes and hunting scenes. The variations on hunting

scenes are the foundation of SE’s gameplay, which are contextualised by the narrative

scenes before or after them. Now I want to focus my attention on the description of video

game mechanics to discuss the technical aspects of the video game.

5.6 Description of the Mechanics

5.6.1 The System’s Mechanics

In SE, there are several mechanics that form the rules of the video game in general. I shall

now briefly describe these mechanics. I will not go into detail on the specific values or

constraints of the video game, but include such when necessary to explain the mechanics

of the video game.

As mentioned earlier, the presentation of my video game is two-dimensional (2D). This is

because although the rock art of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen often gives

the impression of three-dimensions, they nevertheless remain 2D motifs on rock surfaces.

My video game allows the player and other characters within the video game to move both

vertically and horizontally, since real-world rock art is best interpreted without vertical or

horizontal constraints (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2009: 43). There is no reason to assume

the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen would have interpreted their rock art from

left to right, or top to bottom.


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Having said this, I confine the events of the video game to keep the action relatively close

to the player by limiting the playable area to about two ‘screen heights’ and a limited

horizontal plane. This acts to avoid an endless cycle where the player is doomed to chase

fleeing eland forever. The eland, therefore, are permitted to move out of the screen view,

but their movement speed is greatly constrained at a certain point.

During all the hunting events in the video game, the defining aspect of winning is the

successful hunt of the target eland. This varies according to which hunt is being played.

The character that the player controls changes according to which hunt is being played,

which eland is being hunted, and the features or mechanics linked to the specific player

character and eland. The First Hunt, for example, has the character taking on the role of

Gcwi, who eventually kills the first eland by successfully hitting it with a spear. All hunting

scenes use spears for weapons. This is because the Spoiling of the Eland story explicitly

mentioned that Gcwi ‘could throw well’. The weapon of choice does not change in later

hunting events in the story.

There is a difference between the first eland and the ‘normal eland’ in Acts One and Three,

respectively. This is because the first eland had not been spoiled as later eland had. More

specifically, it was neither wild, nor aggressive. It was, however, evasive. As this applies

to what the player can do as Gcwi, the player can also stab with his spear, which normal

hunters from future scenes cannot do. Normal hunters, such as the player, are however able

to use a different ability.


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Players are able to ‘rally’ the other hunters in the scene, which then attempt to corral eland

in the scene towards the player. Characters that the player does not play as are controlled

by artificial intelligence. Such non-playable characters are commonly referred to as NPCs

in video gaming.

During Act Two, the player has an inventory that is visualised on the heads-up display of

the player. This simple system allows the player to pick up items when the correct

conditions are met, contributing towards story progression. What the player experiences

here is familiar to most video gamers. In my game, when the player presses one of the

‘interact’ buttons within a predefined distance to a inventory object, they can pick it up.

5.6.2 The Player Mechanics

The player has several mechanics in which they can interact with the video game system.

Depending on what specific player character the player controls, certain features may be

removed or added. These features include: (i) free-directional (horizontal and vertical)

movement, (ii) a melee attack, (iii) a ranged attack, (iv) a special ability, and (v) an

interaction button.

In order to allow the greatest degree of freedom within SE, I chose to allow the player to

freely move in any direction they chose, whether this is vertically or horizontally. This

decision was informed by the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park rock art not being limited to

any single directional axis. In addition, the rock art should also not be viewed through a

‘Western lens’ of left-to-right, or top-to-bottom. Instead, rock art panels should be regarded

in their entirety in order to improve interpretive potential (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2009:


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43). The vertical movement of the player is clamped, thus can be limited to a maximum or

minimum value. In this case a maximum speed value is used. Structuring the movement in

this way also allows greater flexibility in composing everything within scenes.

The melee attack mechanic is applicable during certain events within the Spoiling of the

Eland story, where it mentions attempts at stabbing. It also results in gameplay that is

slightly more action-heavy since it brings players closer to the eland, which may react

aggressively. The ranged attack mechanic of the player is a spear throw.

The player also has a special ability mechanic, which is a ‘rally’ ability during hunting

scenes. The ‘rally’ ability causes NPC hunters to move towards eland and try to drive them

towards the player. This effectively makes it easier for the player to try hunt eland, for a

limited time.

The buttons that are for a ranged attack varies depending on the context of the current

moment of gameplay. In Act Two, it can be both the ability to create, or do a ranged attack.

The player is implicitly directed by the narrative on whether they are able to create or

perform a ranged attack at any given time. In the /Num Transfer scene these buttons cause

the player character to perform a trance dance.

The interact mechanic allows the player character in the narratively driven parts of scenes

to interact with objects and NPCs in order to progress the narrative in the desired way. For

Cagn, this is a catch-all for the interactions needed to progress the story. For the Shaman,


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it is specifically to initiate the /Num Transfer event. The interact mechanic also is used by

Gcwi during Part 3 of Act Two, as he attempts to create eland.

5.6.3 Character Artificial Intelligence

Character Artificial Intelligence can be one of the most challenging things to convincingly

implement in video games. Artificial intelligence (hereafter AI) defines the ways in which

entities ‘behave’ in video games, and can involve much coding to implement.

Unfortunately, I did not set up my Unity project in a way that would have allowed me to

use the in-built features of Unity that facilitate this. To fully describe the process of creating

the character AI is beyond the scope of this research, but I will briefly explain what the

resulting behaviour of the AI in SE is.

The primary goal of the AI in my video game was to get various types of characters to

behave in appropriate and realistic ways within hunting scenes. For eland, this entailed

having them move in random directions and variable speeds when a hunter is not nearby.

They additionally stop and idle if no hunters are nearby for a predefined amount of time,

clustering together, unless a predefined condition is met. Such a predefined condition can

be a hunter being too close, resulting in fleeing which supersedes clustering. The eland

become wounded if hit once with a spear and die when hit a second time.

The hunter AI only features in Act One and Act Three, and during Rosetta Hunt parts. This

AI differs from the eland AI in that the NPC hunters generally just follow the player.

Although the hunters do not attempt to attack eland and only actively participate in hunting

the eland when they are ‘rallied ’by the player. . This is done through the use of the above-


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mentioned use of the player character’s special ability. To reiterate, this‘ rally ’call makes

it easier for the player to hunt eland by making the AI attempt to direct eland towards the

player. This assists the player somewhat by helping them find eland if they lose track of

them and provide them with a better opportunity to successfully hit eland.

5.7 Asset Creation

For the project of making this video game, I initially thought that I had all of the art and

images that would comprise the visual element of SE created. Although I expected that I

would need to edit the images in order to get the desired style, I did not foresee how long

the process would take. In the following section, I will describe the process of making

various assets in a pipeline that culminates in an animation, in this case a hunter character’s

‘Idle’ animation. To do this, I needed to become familiar with Autodesk Sketchbook, which

is an application designed for creating digital art and which can be used to edit existing

images. I also needed to familiarise myself with various in-built features and systems

within Unity, which I describe below.

As mentioned in Chapter 3, I had a collection of photographs that I had taken of the rock

art at Game Pass Shelter to work with during the development stage of SE. I consulted this

collection of photographs to begin the process of developing the visuals for the video game.

Initially, I went through all of the photographs and looked for identifiable and relatively

complete images of eland, hunters, and Shaman. I then isolated the images I chose from

those surrounding them within a particular painted scene and grouped them in separate

documents for hunters, eland, and Shaman. I use ‘isolated’ to indicated that I separated a


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desired image from all of the surrounding visual data from a photograph, to get a ‘cut’

image to work with in further asset development steps.

Figure 5.1: Photograph taken of rock art at Game Pass Shelter, Kamberg, in the

uKhahlamba Drakensberg.

I used various tools and features within Autodesk Sketchbook to isolate and edit images

from my collection of rock art photos. These tools included the selection tool, the erase

tool, and the layer feature, to name just a few. Using the ‘Select’ tool, more specifically the

‘Lasso’ selection tool, I followed the outline of individual motifs to select them, copied

and pasted the selection on that same layer, upon which Sketchbook would automatically

put the new image on a new layer.


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Individual layers within Sketchbook can be edited without affecting the images on other

layers, allowing for easier editing of separate elements within a single Sketchbook file. If

I was not satisfied with the results of a selection, I further used the ‘Hard Eraser’ tool to

clean up images.

Using the ‘Layer Editor’ feature of Sketchbook, I organised all of the hunter images in one

document. These were in a tiff. file which is the default file format Sketchbook uses. This

files format allows multiple layer with images to be saved in one file, where PDF or PNG

files save only what is visible on-screen as on layer. I then went through all of the hunter

images to look for one that I found to be the most correct in terms of proportions, as well

as relatively complete (that had not decomposed a lot).

Having found a hunter, I then deactivated the background layer of the document, which

created an alpha channel which defines the transparency of an image element. This was

necessary for transferring the resulted image file to Unity in the right way. I then saved the

image as a PNG file and imported the file into the ‘Project’ window in Unity.


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Figure 5.2 shows the layout of Autodesk Sketchbook, as well as the original image of a

hunter that I edited and used for inclusion SE. In Figure 5.2, the tool marked as ‘1’ is the

‘Select’ tool, the tool marked as ‘2’ is the ‘Lasso’ selection tool, the window marked as ‘3’

is the ‘Layer Editor’ feature and the layer marked as ‘4’ is the ‘Background’ layer (made

indivisible by clicking on the eye icon on the left-hand side of the layer icon).

Figure 5.2: Autodesk Sketchbook layout. An isolated Bushmen Hunter, as he is positioned

in the rock art at Game Pass shelter.

After I had exported the hunter image to the ‘Project’ window in Unity (see the window

marked as ‘1’ in Figure 5.3), I firstly had to generate an Anima2D Spritemesh from the

Sprite of the hunter body image. The Unity Manual defines a sprite as ‘2D graphic objects’

in their documentation and the sprite file format is the default for all image files that are

imported to a Unity project (https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Sprites.html). The

generation of a spritemesh, which is different to a sprite, was necessary for me to work

with Anima2D which is a development tool that is free to download from the Unity Asset


https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Sprites.html

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Store (a marketplace for assets). It is designed to streamline the process of animating 2D

images. Spritemeshes allow for pseudo-3D animation by rigging sprites to ‘bones’, in a

manner that is reminiscent to 3D animation.

Figure 5.3: Unity layout. A hunter character is shown with some of the most common

windows and tabs in Unity.

Having generated a spritemesh of the hunter body image (hereafter ‘HB spritemesh’), I

moved it into the ‘Hierarchy’ window. The ‘Hierarchy’ window is labelled as ‘2’ in Figure

5.3. The hierarchy window shows and manages all of the game objects within a Unity

scene. Game objects are important parts of Unity, which act as placeholders for

components, which build functionality into scenes and/or game objects

(https://docs.unity3d.com/560/Documentation/Manual/class-GameObject.html).


https://docs.unity3d.com/560/Documentation/Manual/class-GameObject.html

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Components are modular features/tools which can be attached to gameobjects in order to

get the gameobject to function in the desired way. Under the ‘Inspector’ tab (label ‘5’ in

Figure 5.3), developers manage components attached to gameobjects, thereby adding

functionality in a modular fashion. The window marked as ‘3’ is the ‘Console’ window,

which is the primary tool used in debugging and which informs developers of any errors in

the project or code that might occur. The window marked as ‘4’ is the ‘Scene’ (hereafter

Scene view) window, which shows the virtual (2D or 3D) space, all the gameobjects in the

project. This differs from the ‘Game’ window, to the Scene window’s immediate right,

which shows the scene as it would be seen by players.

Having moved the spritemesh into the Hierarchy view, it is then necessary to optimise the

spritemeshe to show exactly what is intended. To do this, Anima2D offers the SpriteMesh

Editor feature which allows developers to edit what is shown in spritemeshes, and is further

used to define how spritemeshes further interact with other features they are linked to.

In the SpriteMesh Editor, I optimised the HB spritemesh in order to allow convincing

movement to be shown in animations. This step in the asset development process allowed

some flexibility in working with images, as it could be used to correct relatively untidy or

rushed work in previous steps. If there was some ‘noise’ in the visual data (e.g. specks in

an image that were not properly erased), then the SpriteMesh Editor could ‘clean’ the image

by defining what part of the image should actually be rendered (processed as visual data).

I did this by using the editing affordances of the SpriteMesh editor, namely defining edges,

vertices, and weights.


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Defining the edges and vertices of images are two of the three primary tools in which the

SpriteMesh editor is useful. With these two tools, a 2D polygonal shape is made and defines

the visual parameters for later animation.

I sometimes used the SpriteMesh Editor to ‘clean’ images by placing the edges and vertices

on the outline of the image I wanted to be rendered within SE. This effectively cuts out all

of the visual noise in the image. It was further necessary for me to add vertices in specific

areas within images where I knew there would need to be movement in animations,

specifically at the joints of characters. This is because one of the vital functions of vertices

and edges is to define where the rendered image can be ‘bent’. As a simple heuristic, more

vertices mean more versatility in bending potential. I found that placing vertices in a

diffusing pattern offered the most flexibility in making animations, with more vertices

being clustered to the origin of bending. I illustrate this in Figure 5.5, which shows the

spread of vertices (the yellow highlighted ones) around one foot of our hunter.

In Figure 5.4, the torso and legs of a hunter sprite is shown with all of the edges and vertices

defined (the arms and apparel had their own spritemeshes, respectively). The blue lines

between the dots are edges and the dots are vertices. Vertices are the points at which two

or more lines meet in a geometrical shape

Commented [NND1]: Am I correct to understand that you

begin with figure 5.5. then refer to 5.4? If that were the case,

then the order needs to change, to 5.4 then moving to 5.5.


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Figure 5.4: SpriteMesh Editor window. The HB spritemesh is shown with edges and

vertices already placed.


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Figure 5.5: Spread of vertices in the SpriteMesh Editor.

Having defined the geometrical data of the HB spritemesh, I then went back to the Scene

view in order to build its real functionality. To do this, I had to go to the Hierarchy window,

and create Anima2D ‘bones’ for the HB spritemesh. In Anima2D, bones are primarily used

to control the movement of spritemeshes during animation. This is done by defining what

bones are attached to spritemeshes in the Inspector and further offering additional

development flexibility through the weight system in the SpriteMesh Editor. I explain this

below.


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The top of the HB spritemesh can be seen with several bones attached in Figure 5.6 (see

Figure 5.3 above for the HB spritemesh with all its bones, which are in different colours).

The white triangular shapes are the graphic representation of bones that come with

Anima2D by default. The thicker end of the bone is the pivot point (static during rotations),

while the point at the other end moves during the rotations of bones. The result of rotating

a bone can be seen in Figure 5.7, which shows the same view of the HB spritemesh from

Figure 5.6, but with all bones set and the ‘torso bone’ rotated to the right (anti-clockwise).

Figure 5.6: Bones attached to the HB spritemesh. The ‘PlayerHunter’ gameobject is

highlighted, as well as the HB spritemesh (edged in orange).


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Figure 5.7: Rotated ‘Torso Bone’ (relative to Figure 5.6). The torso bone rotated to the

right (anti-clockwise).

To briefly describe the process of ‘setting’ bones to spritemeshes, I first needed to add all

of the bones I wanted for the HB spritemesh and position or rotate the bones to align to it.

I then assigned the bones to it in the Inspector window, which shows all of the values and

components of a gameobject. The last step is done in the Inspector, under the ‘Sprite Mesh

Instance’ component attached to the HB spritemesh. Having done this, I needed to go back

to the SpriteMesh Editor to complete the process of setting the bones.


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In the SpriteMesh Editor, I needed to adjust the edges and vertices of the HB spritemesh to

the placement of the bones set to it a spritemesh. Once I clicked ‘bind’ and ‘apply’ (seen

at the top left and top right of Figure 5.4, respectively), I was finally finished with setting

up the bones and could move on to further aspects of setting up the HB spritemesh.

Anima2D generates a map of how much ‘weight’ set bones have on individual vertices,

edges and the polygons they define, but it was frequently necessary to further adjust the

weights of the bones to get animations to look right. This often involved a lengthy process

of adjusting weights for each vertex in using the weight tool of the SpriteMesh Editor.

However, sometimes the auto-generated weights worked perfectly and no further

adjustment was necessary.

In Figure 5.8, I show how weight adjustment happens. Both of the visual aids for the weight

tool are enabled, ‘Overlay’ and ‘Pies’. The overlay toggle represents the weight of bones

on the defined polygons within the HB spritemesh, with different colours being assigned

to individual bones. The influence of bone weight is represented with their corresponding

colours in the polygons and vertices. The pies toggle represents the percentage of weight

assigned to each vertex per bone with each bone’s corresponding colour. The weights of

two bones, the head and torso bones, are shown in yellow and red, respectively.


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Figure 5.8: Full visualisation of adjusting the weights of bones on vertices in the

SpriteMesh Editor.

To finalise the HB spritemesh, I needed to add inverse kinematics (hereafter IK) to the ends

of specified bones set to it. In brief, IKs allow for easier animating by moving chains of

bones according to predefined parameters. Anima2D represent IKs with a blue circle by

default (see Figure 5.6). In the case of the IKs in Figure 5.6, any movement of an IK moves

the two arm bones that it is attached to. Additionally, I needed to define in which direction

the IK is meant to rotate the bones attached to it to prevent unnatural bending. In Figure

5.7, the IK on the left has been moved upwards, which caused the arm spritemesh that the

associated bones are attached to bend at the elbow in the correct direction. Creating the IKs

was the last step in setting up spritemeshes in my project.


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Having completed the HB spritemesh, I could animate it in conjunction with the other

gameobjects (and their respective spritemeshes) under the ‘PlayerHunter’ gameobject

(hereafter ‘player gameobject’). To do this, I needed to assign the ‘Animator’ component

to the player gameobject that all the spritemesh gameobjects were attached to (see Figure

5.6) and create or assign an ‘animator controller’ for the animator. After activating the

‘Animation’ and ‘Animator windows, I could then begin animation. The animation window

is similar to video editing applications and allows extensive control over the timing of

movements within animations, as well as offering other useful features like animation

events. Figure 5.9 shows the animator window in Unity, which is used to organise or

customise created animations and transitions between them

(https://docs.unity3d.com/530/Documentation/Manual/AnimationSection.html).

Figure 5.9: Animation Window. The Hunter1Idle (Idle) animation is shown with timeline

data.


https://docs.unity3d.com/530/Documentation/Manual/AnimationSection.html

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The ‘Hunter1Idle’ animation (the player gameobject’s ‘Idle’ animation) is the animation

being shown in Figure 5.9, labelled as ‘1’. Label ‘2’, the ‘Dopesheet’, starts blank with

new animations and records every gameobject that is moved in an animation. Gameobjects

need to be a ‘child’ of a ‘parent’ gameobject in order to be recorded on any given dopesheet,

with the parent gameobject being the one that has the animator component attached. The

parent-child relationships between gameobjects is a hierarchical system of group ‘sub-

gameobjects’ under other gameobjects. In other words, it allows gameobjects (parents) to

work as containers for other gameobjects (children). Only gameobjects that are parented

under the gameobject with the animator can be part of an animation.

When the record button on the playback bar (labelled ‘3’ in Figure 5.9) is active and a

gameobject is transformed (has its position, rotation or scale altered) and automatically

added to the dopesheet. This simultaneously adds a ‘keyframe’ (a moment) on the

‘timeline’ of the animation (see ‘4’ in Figure 5.9), which records the time during which a

keyframe occurs. In Unity, keyframes are visualised as diamonds on the timeline (see ‘4’

in Figure 5.9). This allows flexibility in the animating process, as the keyframes can be

moved to different moments on the timeline by sliding them left and right (earlier and later)

in the timeline, respectively (see https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/animeditor-

AdvancedKeySelectionAndManipulation.html). The timeline-dopesheet relationship is

vital to the animating process, as it can become quite complex when there are many

gameobjects being moved in an animation.


https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/animeditor-AdvancedKeySelectionAndManipulation.html

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/animeditor-AdvancedKeySelectionAndManipulation.html

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Another useful aid in the animation process is an additional feature offered by Anima2D,

called the ‘Onion Skin’ window. This visualises the position of the gameobjects within an

animation, with frames prior to the current frame being one colour and later frames being

another colour (for more information see the Anima2D User Guide: 29). This helps to see

where and how gameobjects are moving in an animation, and makes adjustments easier to

grasp. This is especially useful with animations of more complex movements, such as

running. Figure 5.10 shows what the onion skin feature looks by default, with red images

showing where gameobjects were in previous frames of the timeline and green images

showing future frames.

Figure 5.10: Animation with the Onion Skin feature enabled. Different colours show past

(red) and future (green) positions, rotations and scale of gameobjects.


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Coming back to making the ‘Idle’ animation for the player gameobject, it is common in

video games for idle animations to give the impression of a character not really doing

anything apart from breathing. To show the character breathing, this is normally done with

slight vertical movement of a character (the inhale) and returning to the original position

(the exhale). I did this for all of the characters within SE, with slight variations to make

individual characters a little unique (head bobbing, moving arms a little, etc.).

Once I was satisfied with animations, I then ‘baked’ them. Baking animation is the process

of recording animation completely during development, frame-by-frame, in order to reduce

the processing requirements of actual playthroughs of a video game (once completed) (see

Blender Manual). This is because computer systems need to process unbaked frames in

real-time, which could have an impact on performance with larger projects that could have

hundreds or thousands of things happening at once.

At the completion of the animation in the animation window, it automatically gets added

to the animator window as a ‘state’. In short, animation states control what animations are

played at any given time (see https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-State.html). It also

allows developers to control the transitions between different states, when specific

conditions are met. There are various features and functions that can be used to do the

above, including ‘blending’ states with one another for smooth transitions and

manipulating playback speeds, to name just a few.

In Figure 5.11, a few states (the rectangular blocks) are shown as they are visualised in

Unity. The ‘HunterIdle’ state is the idle state of the player gameobject, and its orange


https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-State.html

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colour indicates that it is the default state. Depending on whether the player provides input

to move the player gameobject during play sessions, the player gameobject will either stay

in the idle state (and occasionally do a trick) or walk (play the walking animation).

Figure 5.11: Animator Window. The animator for the player gameobject is shown with

states (the blocks) and transitions (arrows).

This completes the primary description of my development pipeline of a simple animation,

if all steps in the above process go smoothly. After completing a gameobject or asset, I

sometimes found that I had not set them up in an optimal manner. Such an occurrence leads

to bugs, glitches or jarring visuals. It was therefore often necessary for me to go back a few

steps in the process to resolve such issues.

The benefits of this approach was that the development of spritemesh gameobjects and

setting up of characters vis-à-vis spritemeshes only needs to be done once (if done


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correctly). New animations can simply be added onto properly set-up characters or

gameobjects. However, things can get quite punishing and time-intensive when one little

fault is made in the set-up process. For example, if the edges and vertices of a spritemesh

were not set up properly then it could ultimately result in a jagged edge or smudged features

in an image during specific points in an animation. This can be quite jarring to see and can

break the immersion that players experience. It would mean that several additional hours

of work would be necessary to fix that issue.

5.8 Lessons on and Implications of the Asset Development Process

Most of the steps in the development process were dependent on earlier steps being carried

out in optimal and correct ways, which meant that any faults in previous steps would cause

errors later on. I experienced some of these issues several times during development,

including: (i) Changed file directories (where they are located in the project folder), which

resulted in Unity giving a ‘Missing!’ message, (ii) NullReferenceExceptions, where

specific files were deleted for any number of possible reasons, and (iii) Sub-optimal

spritemeshes, which resulted in sharp edges, unnatural movement in animations and

‘stretched’ features in spritemeshes (which were derived from the original photographs of

the rock art).

Correcting the above errors could be either quick and simple, or very lengthy and complex.

Such corrections often resulted in several extra hours of work, either to correct the issue or

start the assets from scratch. More importantly, it led me to make an important decision

regarding the development of SE.


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My goal was to get spritemeshes to represent the images collected from the rock art as

closely as possible. Although I succeeded in doing this with several characters in the video

game (a hunter and an eland), this turned out to be truly sub-optimal. It simply took too

long to implement without glitches. This led me to decide to change my intention behind

how I wanted to represent the rock art via SE. Instead of representing the rock art as it can

be seen at Game Pass Shelter today, SE shows the same art as if it was freshly painted.

The spritemeshes as I originally approached them can for example be seen in Figure 5.2.

The flecks that were the result of decomposition or other destructive process (i.e. the grey

flecks in the other black image of a hunter) sometimes were stretched in unappealing ways.

I had been considering approaching the spritemeshes and the art of SE differently for quite

some time, specifically to make the art appear ‘freshly painted’. Such an approach would

be resonant with the setting of the Spoiling of the Eland story, which happened at the

genesis of the Bushmen worldview or mythology. As such, a fresh look to the rock art

would be ideal. I therefore altered my approach to creating new assets to this ‘fresh’ look,

as it made sense within the setting of the Spoiling of the Eland story. It additionally also

made sense for Act One of SE, as its setting on the narrative timeline is at a time

contemporary to when the rock art was painted.


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This decision had both positive and negative consequences on the development of new

assets, but I believe that the overall effects were to my benefit. The negative consequence

was that instead of simply isolating the desired motifs from my collection of photographs

of the rock art, I had to isolate them and then paint over them on different layers within

Autodesk Sketchbook. This affected the time it would take to make the initial image that

would turn into a spritemesh. Additionally, changed directory issues and null reference

exceptions could still occur despite changing the visual approach.

The positive consequences of this decision, however, meant that the third issue, the

stretching one, would not occur. It additionally became useful later in development when

I needed to add visual art that either does not appear in the broader tradition of uKhahlamba

Drakensberg rock art or Game Pass Shelter specifically. For example, hartebeests and

partridges are specifically mentioned in the Spoiling of the Eland story, but are not found

in the rock art of Game Pass Shelter (Orpen & Bleek 1874: 143-144; Howard 1999: 101).

Hartebeests are found at other sites though and I imitated the manner in which they were

painted in Autodesk Sketchbook. Partridges are not specifically identified in the broader

rock art tradition, but images of birds that look like fowl are. I therefore imitated this in the

Autodesk Sketchbook. As to the images that are not found in the broader rock art tradition

at all, there was an issue of the characters in the Spoiling of the Eland story. More

specifically, Cagn and his wife, Coti, were believed by the Bushmen to have been both

animals and people simultaneously. Cagn was believed to have been the ‘mantis’ god of

the Bushmen. Cagn’s name in fact means ‘Mantis’ (Howard 1999:25). Coti was thought of

as being a dassie, or rock hare.


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To represent the unity between being both a person and an animal, as the Bushmen believed

of Cagn and Coti, I consulted my collection of photographs for therianthropic motifs. I

decided that the best manner through which I could represent Cagn and Coti would be to

represent them as therianthropes, since the broader tradition of uKhahlamba Drakensberg

rock art seems to indicate that this is how the Bushmen would have represented such

animal-human beings.

Using a normal motif of a hunter from Game Pass Shelter as a starting point, I altered the

head of Cagn to be that of a Mantis. This is because animal heads are the most prominent

feature of the therianthropic motifs in the broader rock art tradition. In existing

therianthropic motifs and some of those found at Game Pass Shelter, the legs of these

figures will often end in hooves. This is because the therianthropes are human-antelope

combinations. I decided that having the animal ‘feet’ be part of the Cagn and Coti

gameobjects would not be necessary, as the animal heads would be enough to represent

their animal-human state of being.

I needed to consult images from the broader tradition of uKhahlamba rock art for

images/motifs representing mantises and lynxes, but found neither. There are images of

‘cats’ or ‘felines’ in the tradition, but not lynxes specifically, and there is only one motif

that I could find which could be interpreted as representing a mantis. I therefore deemed it

necessary for me to make wholly new art for the head of Cagn and Coti. They are both

simple images, with the prominent features being large insect eyes and antennae for Cagn,

and the pointed ears of lynxes for Coti. The most important rules I followed for creating

new art was: (i) keep it simple, and (ii) stick to the colour palette of the rock art tradition.


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I therefore needed to keep the images mainly on a spectrum of white, yellow, red, and

black.

As stated above, the decision to change my approach to the artwork helped with making

all the future visuals in SE. This included visual effects (spoors, blood) and objects (traps,

pots, gourds). One additional object I needed to create from scratch was a sprite (not

spritemesh) of a ‘kloof’. This is because the Spoiling of the Eland story specifically

mentions it.

5.9 Post-Mortem

According to Atwood (2007), post-mortems are reports of the development of video games,

or a retrospective of the development process made by the developers. This is what I am

doing in this section, reflecting back on the process that has been (what went right, what

went wrong, and what I could have done differently), and the lessons that have been

learned. As I have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, one of the biggest reasons

why I embarked on my journey to develop a video game helping to preserve South African

heritage was that I felt the need to do something artistic for my masters project.

This artistic need is something that I most certainly fulfilled, despite having to limit myself

to a smaller project than I had originally anticipated (the 2D part of the original idea). I

learned several new skills during this process, but could not manage to learn others. For

instance, I learned how to use several key features in Unity, the basics of 3D modelling,


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how to animate 2D spritemeshes, how to use image editing software (Autodesk

Sketchbook), and how to code in C#.

I was unfortunately not able to learn how to apply some of the skills and practices

associated with the 3D which was part of my original video game idea. This includes

creating a 3D environment using photogrammetry, creating 3D characters, creating a causal

dialogue system for 3D characters and animating 3D models. I am sure that there are others

that I am not aware of, as something almost always comes up when making something as

complex as video games.

I will now focus on three aspects: (i) What went right with the concept I had of creating a

video game, (ii) what were the challenges and how were they resolved, and (iii) what I

could have done differently.

5.9.1 What Went Right

From the beginning of my research, the conceptualisation of the initial idea, there were two

apparent advantages to my video game idea. The first was that I essentially did not need to

make any concept art for SE. Concept art communicates ideas and visual styles in video

games, for characters, environments, etc. I did not need concept art because I had the entire

corpus of uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park rock art that functioned as such. Second, I did

not need to make a game narrative from scratch, since there is the collection of Bushmen

folklore stories that I could draw on as required.


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Once I knew that I was going to focus on the rock art at Game Pass Shelter for my research,

I had a much more refined body of rock art to start the development of the game. I

eventually found the one traditional story that was applicable to the site (the Spoiling of the

Eland). As I initially suspected, having the rock art as conceptual guide for my video game

was probably the greatest advantage I had. This no doubt saved me a lot of time and effort

when compared with normal video game development projects.

I additionally found that working on my own, for the most part, was also a great advantage.

This is because it granted me the capacity to make any crucial decision immediately. I ran

the idea by a few individuals who had experience with video games, but the main method

I used to gauge the interest in my idea was done through the survey questionnaire. I found

it quite to my liking to be in control of most of the areas of development. The only help

which I received in developing the video game had to do with some of the more complex

coding, which needed someone with more experience and competence than I had.

Lastly, I initially expected it to be rather difficult to represent the content of a traditional

folklore story as a video game. This is because of the fact that the video game needed to be

heritage focused and so any violence or combat (a staple of video games) would not be

appropriate. Unless, of course, it had to do directly with the heritage being represented.

Fortunately for me, the Spoiling of the Eland story has to do with hunting and the rock art

at Game Pass Shelter concerns either hunting scenes or the results thereof (i.e. the RS).

Hunting, therefore, became the foundation of SE’s gameplay and this fact made

development much easier, as the content in SE became much easier to ‘gamify’.


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5.9.2 What Went Wrong

The most frustrating things that happened during the development phase in my opinion

resulted from my inexperience with developing video games and the learning process

always being undertaken by developers. I believe that video game developers are always

learning new things about their craft, even if they are specialists. This is simply because of

advancements in the industry. These advancements are profound in a field that is based so

heavily on both technology and artistry. New technology is developed, software is

optimised, and innovators think of new ways to do things. Any of these three aspects can

basically cause a paradigm shift in industry standards.

The biggest problems that I experienced can no doubt happen to any developer, since they

normally result from small oversights, silly mistakes, inattention, and disposition. The

problems that I experienced most often had to do with setting up spritemeshes, my

inexperience with coding in general, as well as coding in C# specifically. With setting up

spritemeshes, it is relatively easy to decide after the initial set up, for example during

animation, that something about the original spritemesh was not optimal for later steps.

Such a decision might cause me to delete a bone that was effete or that made an animation

look unnatural. This would then result in a NullReferenceException error, which meant

that Unity can no longer locate a file that it needs to do a process.

Unfortunately, Unity is not always able to tell developers exactly what is missing, or what

cannot be done. This either results in extra time or labour needed to resolve the issue,

abandoning an asset to make a better one (my option of choice) or working with a (slightly)

‘broken’ asset. Sometimes it is necessary to shrug things off if they achieve their purpose.


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Another way in which the setup of a spritemesh could be done sub-optimally is if the

planning of where vertices and edges in a spritemesh are located was not thoroughly

thought out. For example, when creating the spritemesh for a hartebeest, I consulted some

source material for how they were painted in uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park rock art. I

then replicated the rock art style of painting a hartebeest in Autodesk Sketchbook without

realising that the general stylistic representation of hartebeest legs was less than ideal for

animation.

Figure 5.12 shows the traditional style of representing hartebeest legs in the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Park rock art (left) and the way in which I ended up painting them for the

spritemesh (right). The difference between curving the legs (left) and ‘bending’ them

(right) may seem small, but had a noticeable effect on animation. While I was checking the

movement of the different bones and IKs during the setup of the hartebeest spritemesh, I

noticed that the legs did not look precise when I followed the stylistic representation of the

art.

A very sharp edge appeared on the front of the knee-joint and the back folded incorrectly.

By ‘joint’ I mean the intersection point between two Anima2D bones. Making the legs

straight with an identifiable joint resolved this visual issue.


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Figure 5.12: Simplified example of different ways of painting hartebeest legs. The

traditional uKhahlamba Drakensberg stylistic representation is shown on the left and the

way I painted them is illustrated on the right.

What made it frustrating to resolve was that I needed to unbind the bones from the

suboptimal spritemesh, make the change to the hartebeest sprite, then redefine the edges,

vertices, and weights for the new spritemesh. This was a fairly lengthy process that could

have been avoided had I only known of the trouble that working with those curved legs

would have caused. I now think it safe to assume that curves (in general) do not function

well when they end in joints. Such a small oversight resulted in much extra time and labour

on my part.


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5.9.3 What I Could Have Done Differently

During the development of SE, I learned that there were four alternative ways in which I

could have initially approached the development process differently in order to avoid some

frustrations during later phases of development. These alternative approaches include; (i)

focusing on a 2D video game from the outset, (ii) setting up my Unity project as a 3D

project instead of a 2D project, (iii) using Unity’s Spine system for animating in 2D instead

of Anima 2D, and (iv) working in a small team instead of alone.

Focusing on a 2D video game from the outset

Concerning the first alternative approach, it was a difficult decision to forego the

development of the original 3D part of my video game as I had put a lot of work and thought

into its design. However, it did turn out to be quite necessary. This decision was ultimately

influenced by two major factors: (i) I did not have a collection of photographs of Game

Pass Shelter that were extensive enough to generate a 3D model of the site, and (ii) I did

not have enough time to create the 3D part of the video game. Additionally, the survey

questionnaire I conducted showed that the participants were enthusiastic about a video

game that used rock art as the visual style of a 2D video game.

During my visit to the site, I made sure that I thoroughly photographed the rock art located

there, so I had all of the visual source material to choose from for the 2D part when I started

development. I was able to generate 3D models of the rock art panels using Autodesk

ReCap Photo, which is a software for generating 3D models from still photographs

(photogrammetry).


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Unfortunately, the 3D models were not optimal for the project. They could perhaps have

been used as interesting backgrounds to in-game menus or splash screens. They were not

optimal because I did not have the time to take photos of the rock art panels in their entirety,

but had to focus on the specific rock art motifs.

I therefore had a collection of photographs of all the motifs at the site, but not how they

related to each other spatially. For example, if two distinct eland were located to the

immediate left and right of each other in real life, then I had no way of knowing this in

cases where I did not take a photograph of the panel they are in. Instead, I would have two

isolated photographs of individual eland. As a result, the 3D models of the rock art panels

sometimes had ‘holes’ where no photograph covered that spot on the 3D model. This

resulted in some of the 3D models being incomplete.

The 3D models of the rock art panels that were complete needed to be exported to Autodesk

Maya before I could import them to Unity. My hardware system was unfortunately not

capable of importing the generated 3D models into Maya without long waiting periods,

and I did not yet know enough to be able to edit them in the way that I desired.

As I had all of the source material that I needed to develop the 2D part of my video game

and not the 3D part, it was natural to shift my focus and attention onto the 2D part. I fully

realised that I needed to decide not to develop the 3D part when I experienced how time

and labour intensive developing the 2D section of the video game was. I originally thought

that developing the 2D part would be the easiest of my tasks, but after my experience, I

can no longer hold the same view.


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I made the decision above after realising that my original video game proposal was too

large in scope. This is often cited as being a serious impediment to completing the video

games alongside ‘feature creep’ (Petrilllo et al. 2008: 710). I now realise that the

development of SE would have been too much to handle if I did it alone. Even with the

decision to only focus on the a 2D video game, I needed assistance from a consultant more

experienced in coding and mathematics.

One of the biggest lessons that I learned while developing SE is that it is extremely difficult

to estimate how long development will take. Almost everything took longer to implement

than I originally thought and this limited the freedom I had to try different approaches to

achieving developmental goals. Additionally, there are certain features of Unity that I was

not able to utilise because of the way in which I had set up my project.

Setting up my Unity project as a 3D project instead of a 2D project

The second alternative approach led to perhaps my greatest regret in the development of

SE: that I set up SE as a 2D project in Unity. The first step in setting up a project in Unity

is to choose either a 2D project or a 3D project for your video game. It seemed logical to

me that it would be a 2D project, since I was working on a 2D video game. This turned out

to be suboptimal as there are certain features of Unity that are only applicable to 3D projects

and thus are not available for 2D ones. For example, I needed the eland in my video game

to behave like animals would in real life.


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Unity has an in-built feature that greatly facilitates the implementation of navigating

gameobjects within a scene, including follow or evade behaviours, and obstacle avoidance.

This feature is called ‘NavMesh’ and creates a grid (mesh) which ‘agents’ then use to

navigate a scene. NavMesh did not work for my project and after some extensive

troubleshooting online, I learned that NavMesh only works for 3D projects.

I later also found that there were specific commands in Microsoft Visual Studio, used for

programming in C#, that also could not be used in 2D projects. There are a number of

reasons for this. For example, I wanted the projectiles for ranged attacks to move in an arc,

but I experienced difficulty in implementing such movement. Normally, Unity’s C#

command for a ‘Slerp’ handles this. ‘Slerp’ refers to a spherical interpolation either

between two points, or two vectors. In other words, it moves a gameobject in an arc. I

struggled to implement this, despite attempting a few different applications thereof.

Due to this limitation, it sometimes meant that I needed to implement more complex and

time-consuming code in order for the project to work as I wanted. In the case of the ‘Slerp’

that I wanted, I needed to implement a C# method for SE to calculate a parabola to the

position of the mouse pointer on the screen, and then move the projectile along the

calculated parabola. This command needed variables that were beyond my abilities to

achieve this, but I was able to get assistance from a consultant on this. The resultant code

was more complex than using a ‘Slerp’ command, which is already defined in Unity.


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One simple choice to make the project a 2D in the very beginning caused problems cause

much headache further on in development, when I was too invested with the project to

reconfigure the project. I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort if I had set up SE

as a 3D project instead of a 2D one. Again though, this is not certain, as things would work

differently and new problems inevitably pop up, but I think it would have been easier

nonetheless. This would have meant that I needed to have a fixed camera angle for my

video game to give the impression/perspective of a 2D video game and I would also need

to basically omit the use of one of the three dimensions. There are always work-around for

implementing something in a video game and I think that I needed to do more to implement

content in a 2D project than I would have in a 3D project.

Using Unity’s Spine system for animating in 2D instead of Anima 2D

The third alternative approach of developing SE that could have been done differently

concerns my choice to use Anima2D to create the visuals of SE and animate them.

Anima2D is an additional feature offered by Unity that I needed to add to the project. Using

Unity’s in-built sprite system of sprite animation might perhaps have been more time

efficient, but I am not sure on this point. Using Anim2D did require some additional

troubleshooting, time, and labour to get right.


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I found Anima2D’s use of meshes for sprites to be useful, as they are similar to how 3D

models are made and I had some experience with 3D modelling. However, it often took a

lot of time to fully set up a spritemesh asset for animation, as I frequently needed to

manually allocate weights to numerous vertices in order for animations to look right. This

was especially the case with eland spritemeshes, which are far more complex than hunter

spritemeshes.

Working in a small team instead of alone

Lastly, the fourth alternative approach concerns working as part of a small team instead of

by myself. Although one of the biggest reasons why I decided to focus my research on

preserving heritage through video games was so that I could learn as much about video

game development as possible, and later found that it could have been to my benefit to

have worked with a small team. I have experience with video games, art, music and

narratives, and therefore thought that I had most areas of video game development covered

by what I already knew.

Other aspects of video game development, such as animating, came to me relatively easily,

but when I was developing SE, I found that some of the more complex coding was a very

challenging task for me. Coding would no doubt come easier with more experience and I

believe that I was able to achieve a lot in the relatively short time at my disposal. However,

I now think that it would have been to my benefit to consistently work with someone with

more coding experience throughout development.


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I did have a consultant who was able to assist me on serious roadblocks and this gave me

an appreciation for the skills of more experienced individuals. I am truly grateful for the

assistance I had during the development of SE. The ease with which this consultant helped

me with coding that had me stuck frustrating lengths of time really opened my eyes to

working with a team.

5.9.4 Recommendations for Other Archaeologists Developing Heritage Video Games

There are several lessons that I learned from the development of SE, which I believe will

be crucial for any further work that I will do in video game development. I believe that

these lessons will be helpful for heritage professionals that would like to develop video

games to preserve heritage.

First, have a clear idea from the outset of what heritage it is that you want to make into a

video game. Specifics can come later, but as the possibilities of what video games and

game engines offer are limitless, a core idea of what video game you are aiming to create

is essential. This will help further during development when you inevitably think ‘Wow, it

would be so awesome to include that!’, as such thoughts (when left unchecked) lead to

feature creep. This can lead to failed or incomplete projects, or extended development

periods. If you have a core idea in mind, then additions to the video game that are not vital

to the core idea can be dismissed before they take up time and resources (even if the idea

might be really awesome). This helped me with designing my video game, as I needed to

limit the content to dealing with the Spoiling of the Eland story, and believable hunting

gameplay.


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Second, ensure that you identify the simplest way to get your idea realised, in terms of your

games design, game mechanics, etc. You should think of what the minimum is, in terms of

features, mechanics and assets, that you need to get your idea across. Initially, I thought

that mechanics such as sneaking and dashing would be necessary for SE. However, once I

realised how much time and labour it took to implement even the basics of movement,

attacking and AI, I decided to scrap sneaking and dashing to get the core gameplay down

first. This does not mean that other mechanics should be done away with entirely, but at

the very least, they should be side-lined for a time when the core gameplay mechanics are

finished. Once the core features of the video game have been established, each extra

mechanic or feature should be added incrementally. This of course depends on the goals

you have for your video game and what you find to be the most important.

For SE, I focused my efforts on two goals. The first was the creation of the visual assets

and animating the rock art motifs to move realistically or in ways that correspond to how

they appear in the source material (the rock art). I knew that I always had to consult my

collection of photographs from Game Pass Shelter to create new assets. The second goal

was to depict the hunting scenes as realistically as I could using the software and rock art

at my disposal. This involved the coding of (for me) complex AI, for which I luckily had

help. I knew that having convincing hunting scenes and animal behaviours (for the eland

AI) was important, as hunting was such a vital part of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

way of life.


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Lastly, expect problems, error messages, and new challenges to arise throughout the course

of developing your video game. Video games are complex, interconnected systems that

can surprise you with things that work almost immediately and others that take much longer

than initially thought. Throughout the development of SE, I found it helpful to all

unexpected occurrences as vital learning experiences that would help me to plan better for

future projects.

Many people who aspire to become video game developers simply abandon their projects

when things get tough, or simply forget about them after taking a long break. I am a big

believer in incremental progress, and it really helps to keep coming back to a project or

problem and building on it little by little. Do not lose motivation because of setbacks, as

they will happen. Expect them and learn from them.

5.10 Conclusion

For this chapter, I have provided an overview of how I designed the video game, the main

asset pipeline I used, the mechanics of SE, and the challenges I encountered and how I

addressed these. I finished this chapter by discussing the biggest lessons from my

experience developing SE and how they can be used by heritage professionals to better

plan for similar research. The main goal of this chapter, then, was to communicate how the

video game was designed, what went wrong, what went right, as well as presenting

recommendations for future research.


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As noted in the introduction to this chapter, its two themes are; 1) a post-mortem of SE,

and 2) an overview of some of the vital development steps. The goal of my post-mortem is

to communicate what went wrong and what went right during development, as well as my

recommendations for heritage professional that would like to do work similar to my

research in the future.


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Chapter 6: Conclusion

Video games are arguably the most influential digital medium in the modern world, which

draws on many varied disciplines and practices in order to create entertaining and engaging

experiences (Bottino & Martina 2017: 436-438; Champion 2017a). This research took the

positions that video games are ideally suited for the preservation of heritage, as they are

the fastest growing modern pastime, they engagement foster, they necessitate interactivity,

and they afford pronounced advantages to learning (Belotti et al. 2012: 2; Bostan 2005: 1;

Champion 2017a; Copplestone 2017a: 33; Haddad 2016: 705-709; Majewski 2017: 198;

Mol et al. 2017: 9; Morgan 2009: 483; Newzoo 2017: 32 Mortara et al. 2014: 318;

THESSA 2017: 4).

I would argue that research has a significant potential in the preservation of uKhahlamba

Drakensberg heritage by collecting two traditions associated with the uKhahlamba

Drakensberg Bushmen in the form of a video game; rock art and folklore. This video game,

SE, focused on primarily on the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art, but also drew

from the rock art of Game Pass Shelter, Kamberg, in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park.

It was sometimes necessary for me to draw on the broader tradition of uKhahlamba

Drakensberg rock art in when the rock art at Game Pass Shelter was incomplete or I deemed

motifs to be too decomposed. This mostly resulted in me looking at the broader tradition

or reference material, in order to ‘reconstruct’ desired motifs. I did this with the first aim

of this research in mind. Namely, to develop a video game that was authentic to

uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park traditions.


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I similarly drew on the broader traditions of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen

when the Spoiling of the Eland story mentioned something not seen in the rock art at Game

Pass Shelter. For example, the Spoiling of the Eland story mentions partridges, but neither

of these animals are to found at Game Pass Shelter. As far as I know, no bird motifs in the

broader rock art tradition have specifically been interpreted as a partridge, but there are

motifs of general ‘fowl’. I therefore used this motif for SE.

Associated folklore was represented in conjunction with the rock art motifs in the ‘Rosetta

Stone’ of southern African rock art and at Game Pass Shelter, and focused on eland hunts,

dying eland and Bushmen shamans. Notable amongst the included folklore was the

Spoiling of the Eland story, as it is in my opinion vital for understanding the world-view

and beliefs of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park Bushmen. It is also the traditional story

that can be most strongly associated with the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of southern African rock art

and other rock art at Game Pass Shelter.

6.1 Research Results

During the early stages of this research, I decided that it was important to ensure that my

project was responding to some demands amongst video gamers. I selected a survey

questionnaire as the best way in order to identify and measure this, and decided to

disseminate it online in order for it to broadest possible reach. I used Google Forms as the

dissemination platform, due to the flexibility it offers in structuring, asking and analysing

questions. I summarise the survey and its results below.


183

Fifty participants volunteered to answer the survey questionnaire and the majority of them

were South African. I designed the questionnaire around three general topics. (i) video

gaming and heritage, (ii) virtual 3D tours and the 3D part of this study’s proposed video

game, specifically, and (iii) folklore and traditional stories as content in video games and

visual styles to present such stories, as well as the 2D part of this study’s proposed video

game. There was a combination of open- and close-ended questions and both quantitative

and qualitative data were collected.

The participants had to be familiar with the video gaming medium to allow them to

meaningfully contribute towards the study. This was necessary, as the participants would

otherwise not be familiar with the terminology used in the questionnaire and would not

have serve the purposes of thereof. Amongst these purposes were: (i) to establish the extent

to which informants think heritage management can benefit from the use of video games,

(ii) understanding what heritage video gamers considered interesting for a video game, (iii)

and allowing video gamers to provide technical advice on the development process of SE.

Although combat features, cultural data, or trading/economics were the preferred gameplay

mechanics for the survey participants, the majority stated that a 3D tour would be

appropriate for broadcasting information on an archaeological site to the public. The

majority of participants further indicated that they would like to have more heritage in

video games and the input of heritage professionals could benefit video game developed in

the right circumstances. It also showed that a 3D tour of an archaeological site would be

suitable for educating players about that site, but that this could be tricky to pull off.


184

However, I did not include a 3D section in my video game due to the difficulty and scope

constraints of my research.

The results of this questionnaire established that having rock art form the visual style of a

2D video game would be interesting for video gamers. It would also be more effective at

preserving rock art heritage. The majority of participants further indicated that they like to

see more folklore or traditional stories in video games.

6.2 Discussion

The development of SE was a complex, difficult, and time-consuming process. To do so I

needed to learn about various aspects of video game development and working with the

specific systems within Unity. In developing SE, I additionally learned much about

adapting heritage data so as to make a new form of intangible heritage, thereby helping to

preserve the adapted heritage.

Adapting the heritage in SE involved the design thereof, which I attempted to achieve by

having various aspects of the videogame remain authentic to uKhahlamba Drakensberg

Park Bushmen traditions. For example, the narrative structure of my video game is

modelled on oral storytelling and poetic techniques. The techniques generally serve

mnemonic purposes for the teller, but also help listeners to remember a story and to expand

on the core ideas of narrative events. In SE, this is accomplished by structuring the scenes

in the video game and smaller parts thereof in a rhyme scheme. This rhyme scheme follows

the following pattern: AB CDCD AB.


185

Apart from initially learning how to use the Unity’s systems, I actually needed to learn how

to practically use them in developing a video game. This involved a lengthy process of trial

and error, in which I learned much about the affordances of the systems I was using, how

to optimise my workflow and how to approach various steps in the workflow in order to

avoid frustration in later steps. For example, in creating the gameobjects for Bushmen and

animals (‘living’ gameobjects), I learned that I needed to create separate spritemeshes for

the limbs in front of bodies, for the bodies and heads (in one spritemesh), and for the limbs

behind the bodies. I learned that this led to cleaner animations later on, as I initially made

‘living’ gameobjects as one single spritemesh. Having a single spritemesh for ‘living’

gameobjects resulted in jarring animations, because parts of the spritemesh would

noticeably stretch.

Coding for the video game was a very thought-intensive process and involved much trial

and error. This is because there is a multitude of ways in which any single task of outcome

can be achieved, all with various degrees of complexity. After having spent much time on

implementing something, I could later discover that Unity had a system dedicated to that,

which would mean that I had to restructure my previous implementation in order to

facilitate similar work later on. Such was the case with animating multiple gameobjects in

a single video clip or cutscene. My work-around for this is too extensive to describe here,

but after a few initial implementations, which were admittedly rather ‘buggy’, I later

discovered Unity’s ‘Timeline’ systems was built for the task.


186

Figure 6.1: Screenshot of the Rosetta Ritual scene in SE. Then shame with the walking

stick in the centre has successfully tranced danced into a hallucination state. The vignette

effect and entoptic shapes indicate this to the player.

Sometimes I tried to use a dedicated Unity system only to have it fail completely, after

which I needed to work around it or achieve a similar effect differently. For example, the

NavMesh component is used to define the navigational behaviour of objects within a scene

with the use of a grid or mesh. All one needs to do is attach the component to a game object,

define some conditions and behaviours, and Unity sorts out the rest. However, this systems

is only available for 3D projects, while mine was a 2D project. I therefore needed to

implement complex artificial intelligence in order to get the eland and the NPC hunters in

SE to behave as I intended.


187

6.3 Limitations to the Research

As Majewski (2017: 198-199) describes, there are several issues that can result from

attempting to work with video games in the heritage sector. The first among these is the

protocols and procedure that are used by ethics committees and ethical guidelines,

especially when cultural heritage is concerned (Majewski 2017: 198). This is especially the

case when permitting the consumers or users to modify the results of virtual heritage

projects and the regulation of what content is appropriate for the video game (Majewski

2017: 198-199).

Many cultural groups already have a significant history of tension with the archaeological

and heritage disciplines, indicating that unregulated and inappropriate content could stand

to unduly intensify existing tension (Majewski 2017: 198-199). This indicates that allowing

modders to alter the content of video games that are created to represent and communicate

the heritage of cultures that remain a sensitive or controversial issue would not be

appropriate or recommended for heritage and academic contexts (Majewski 2017: 198). It

would therefore seem best to facilitate the manipulation of content represented in a video

game through game mechanics and content that has been made by the archaeological and

heritage disciplines according to likely and predefined parameters.

These parameters, beyond the input of informed disciplinary input, should also be partially

constructed according to the expectations and desires of the intended end-users (players)

(Ibrahim et al. 2011: 278-282). The consideration of end-users according to Ibrahim et al.

(2011: 278) is an element which is not typically given attention by virtual heritage


188

researchers and developers. Namely, video games are generally entertainment media, and

pedagogical approaches to creating video games could, such as gameplay that focuses too

much on evaluating learned information, can cause video games to feel like tests or exams

(Ibrahim et al. 2011: 178).

6.4 Final Remarks

Despite the difficulties I experienced in developing SE, I found the whole development

process to be very interesting and engaging. I found being involved in all of the steps in

adapting heritage into a video game to be very rewarding. Although there were definitely

frustrating times when I just could not wrap my head around a particular problem and

needed to clear my mind before further attempts, those moments when something suddenly

just worked were truly redeeming. The feeling of accomplishment is immense at such times

and progress is very identifiable.

Trouble is, often times when progress is made, it resulted in the realisation that further

work is needed and maybe that extensive changes needed to be made in order to realise a

goal. For example, as the Spoiling of the Eland story mentioned Cagn picking objects up

and using them, I needed to have the Cagn character pick things up. This meant that he

needed an inventory, a common visual feature showing all the items a player has collected.

Creating an inventory system for Cagn meant that I needed to create visuals for the items

using sprites (not spritemeshes) to visually represent them in the inventory, and would need

to add code to help find items, pick them up and drop them. The player also needed to be

able to interact with these items, which required further work.


189

All of the above leads me to the most important point about adapting heritage as a video

game and developing video games in general: video game design is key. I cannot stress

this enough. It is imperative that careful thought be put into what needs to be done, how

things will be accomplished and what the intended effects are. For me, the guiding principle

behind the design of SE was to develop a video game that was authentic to the represented

traditions.

From what I can gather, the process of improving on design and implementation thereof,

as well as the workflows that one uses during development, are a continuous process that

will always change in response the specific projects at hand. However, much expended

time and frustration can be avoided with careful design. Additionally, it is also important

to keep the design as simple as possible.

As things inevitably turn up that need to be addressed throughout development, a simple

design can greatly decrease the spectrum of possible complications later on in

development. Developers commonly mention these last two points (design is key and keep

it simple), but it does not quite register until it is personally experienced and learned.

To reiterate, I found the process of adapting heritage for a video game to be highly

rewarding. I believe that similar efforts in preserving heritage will be a prominent practice

in the future and look forward to taking part in and observing such work in the coming

years.


190

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Appendix A: Survey Questionnaire

General Information

South African heritage has much to offer modern media. One of the newer media forms,

video gaming, has not yet been ideally applied within South African heritage management.

This research recognises that video games are an immensely popular pastime that greatly

informs the knowledge frameworks of players and that it has great potential for educating

players about South African heritage. This is due to the unique manner in which video

games promote learning (by making it fun and engaging). Additionally, video games offer

much to heritage preservation efforts, as they streamline the delivery of impactful visual,

audio and descriptive data in a manner that can be interacted with.

This questionnaire is designed to inform the development of the proposed video game. All

personal information is solely for the purpose of recontacting selected participants for beta

build access.

Your assistance is warmly appreciated.

Email Address

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………


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Name

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………

Manner Contacted

1) ZA Gaming Alliance (Facebook)

2) GfpoG.NGa (Discord)

3) Referral from a friend

Future Contact

Please not: All personal information given above will NOT be given to any third parties,

but are only for the purposes of further research (play-testing and feedback questions).

Heritage in video games

1) The influence of heritage and cultural traditions can be seen in many video games

(e.g. God of War, Age of Mythology, Assassin’s Creed). What is your favourite video

game that includes heritage?


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………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

2) Would you like to see more video games that incorporate heritage? Please explain

your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

3) What South African heritage would you most like to see represented in a video

game?

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

4) How do you think video games can benefit the preservation of heritage?

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................


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5) Do you think that heritage professionals should become more involved in the

development of video games? Please explain your answer

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

3D Tours of heritage sites

1) Do you think that a 3D virtual tour is appropriate in presenting heritage sites to the

public? Please explain your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

2) It is currently proposed that a player takes the role of a tour guide in the video game

to be created. Do you think that this is an effective method for teaching players about the

heritage site? Please explain your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................


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3) Besides acting as a tour guide, what other role do you think a player should take in

the video game?

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

4) At present, a selection of dialogue has been chosen for communicating information

on the site. Do you think that this is an effective method for informing players on the

relevant heritage? Please explain your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

5) Should the storyline be in first-person, third-person or any other approach?

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................


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2D level

1) Do you think that traditional stories/folklore should be used more in video game

development? Please explain your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

2) A 2D visual style, inspired by Bushmen rock art, has been selected for the

representation of a traditional story. Do you think that this is an effective in preserving the

site’s art? Please explain your answer.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................

3) Besides 2D, what other visual style do you suggest?

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

…....................


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End of Survey

Thank you for answering the above questions. The information provided will be used in

order to develop a proposed video game. Your contribution is greatly appreciated.


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Appendix B: A Summary of the Spoiling of the Eland Traditional Story

In the Spoiling of the Eland , Cagn’s wife, Coti, took Cagn’s knife to sharpen a digging

stick, with which she dugs out roots (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 143). In doing so she spoiled

his knife, which seems to mean that she used it without getting his permission first (Orpen

and Bleek 1874: 143). Cagn scolds her, subsequently informing her that evil will come to

her (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 143). She then immaculately conceives the eland, apparently

as a consequence for spoiling Cagn’s knife (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 143).

Neither Coti nor Cagn know this new animal’s name and Cagn uses charms, an aromatic

mixture of herbs and bark, to enquire as to the young eland’s name (Orpen and Bleek 1874:

143). When he names it correctly, the eland replies ‘Aaaa’, and Cagn’s affection for it

grows (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 143). He embraces it, puts it in a gourd and protects it by

ensconcing it in a secluded kloof surrounded by hills (Orpen and Bleek 1874: 143). The

eland then grew and Cagn taught it to be obedient, to come when he called its name (Orpen

and Bleek 1874: 143). But while Cagn was away to fetch poisoned arrows from his nephew,

his two sons came upon the eland and did not know what it was (Orpen and Bleek 1874:

143).

Cagn’s sons then attempt to kill the eland, but fail to do so several times (Orpen and Bleek

1874: 144). Eventually, while the eland is asleep, Cagn’s youngest son, Gcwi, kills it with

a spear and the sons cut up the eland, and take the meat and blood home (Orpen & Bleek

1874: 144). When they have returned home, they realise that it was Cagn’s eland, because


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it was amongst the traps and weapons of Cagn (Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144). They then

become afraid, and rightly so, for when Cagn returns home after the days of being gone he

is angry (Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144).

Cagn punishes Gcwi by throwing his nose in the fire, but then decides against it and returns

to Gcwi his nose (Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144). But he tells Gcwi to atone for his actions,

asking Gcwi to place the eland’s blood in a pot and churn it with a stick (Orpen & Bleek

1874: 144). But Cagn is not satisfied with the results of this, and does it himself (Orpen &

Bleek 1874: 144).

Cagn then takes fresh eland blood and the fat from the eland’s heart and adds it to the

churned mixture, which morphs into bull elands who start to act aggressively towards Cagn

(Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144). Cagn subsequently makes multitudes of eland (Orpen & Bleek

1874: 144). He then tells Gcwi that he spoiled the eland, because they are now aggressive

and no longer obedient (Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144). He then goes on to say to Gcwi that it

was Gcwi’s work to hunt the eland and that he should now try to do so (Orpen & Bleek

1874: 144). When Gcwi does so, he fails in the attempt, and returns tired and foot-sore

(Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144).

Thus, it was that the sons of Cagn hunted the new and unknown eland (Howard 1999: 74;

Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144). Gcwi successfully killed the first eland, and as punishment for

his actions the eland became wild and men were made to hunt eland for meat (Howard

1999: 74; Orpen & Bleek 1874: 144). The knowledge that this myth communicates is

believed to concern appropriate marriage and hunting rituals (“whom to marry” and “what


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to eat”), as well as the observances and beliefs associated with them (Klingender 1954;

Parkington 2003: 136-143).


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Appendix C: Examples of Scripts made for SE

The following is an example of some of the scripts (code) that I used within SE. The first

is script called ‘ElandAnimator’ (hereafter italicised), which receives signal events from

the ‘ElandBrain’ (hereafter italicised) script and controls the Animator component on the

eland game object to correspond with eland states. I explain this in more depth below.

The ElandAnimator script was coded entirely by myself. All of the text that is formatted

differently is from the script, whereas comments for this appendix is formatted as seen in

the rest of this paper. Additionally, I use the conventions used in the C# scripting language

to provide even more clarity. These C# comments are more extensive than those found in

the actual scripts in SE in order to provide a better description of the code without breaking

the flow of reading the code with the formatting used throughout the rest of this paper. As

in C#, comments in the code are prefaced by double forward slashes (//) and do not affect

the functionality of the code in any way. The appendix comments explain what the

underlying code does in a broader sense.

The following lines of code form the opening portion of the ElandAnimator script. The

lines starting with ‘using’ defines what definitions the script can access. The following line

in square-brackets (crotchets) ensure that this script can only be attached to game objects

that have the ElandBrain script attached, as the ElandAnimator script would otherwise not

function appropriately.

The subsequent lines declare the fields, properties and components that are required by the

script in order to produce the desired effects in the animator.


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// Declares namespaces used by the script. using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine; [RequireComponent(typeof(ElandBrain))] public class ElandAnimator : MonoBehaviour { [SerializeField] private GameObject noseBleed; // References to other fields, properties, components and scripts. private ElandBrain _elandBrain; private Animator _animator; private GameObject elandGO; private float elandTransX; private float elandTransY; private bool m_facingRight; private Vector2 _pos; private Vector2 _lastPos; private bool isFleeing = false; private float walk2Run; private float graze2Run; private Brain _brain;

In the opening method of the script below, some of the fields, properties and component

declared above are either referred to gameobjects in the scene, components on those game

objects. Additionally events within the ElandBrain script are referenced as well.

// The Awake method is called when the game object is made active or a scene starts. private void Awake() { // References other components on the game object to which this script is attached and field they contain. _elandBrain = GetComponent<ElandBrain>(); _animator = GetComponentInChildren<Animator>(); elandGO = this.gameObject; _lastPos = elandGO.transform.position; // Subscribe to events in elandBrain. // These will make sure the functions get called ever time the event gets activated. _elandBrain.OnRelocationStart.AddListener(OnRelocationStart); _elandBrain.OnGrazingStart.AddListener(OnGrazingStart); _elandBrain.OnFleeingStart.AddListener(OnFleeingStart); _elandBrain.OnAttackingStart.AddListener(AttackingStart); _elandBrain.OnChargingStart.AddListener(OnChargingStart); _elandBrain.OnHitStart.AddListener(OnHitStart); _elandBrain.OnDeathStart.AddListener(OnDeathStart); _elandBrain.OnAnimEnd.AddListener(OnAnimEnd); }


217

//The following methods are called from sources external to the ElandAnimator script. private void Update() { _pos = elandGO.transform.position; elandTransX = elandGO.transform.position.x; elandTransY = elandGO.transform.position.y; float eMoveSpeed = elandGO.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity.sqrMagnitude; float currentAnimSpeed = _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0).speed; float nextAnimSpeed = _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0).speedMultiplier; //Determines whether the eland game object is facing right or not, and flips it if needed. if (elandTransX > _lastPos.x && m_facingRight) { m_facingRight = false; elandGO.transform.localScale = new Vector3(-1, 1, 1); } else if (elandTransX < _lastPos.x && !m_facingRight) { m_facingRight = true; elandGO.transform.localScale = new Vector3(1, 1, 1); } _lastPos = _pos; //Changes the speed of the eland animations to 1 if the eland is running. if (_animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0).IsTag("Running") || _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0).IsTag("Charging") || _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0).IsTag("Hit")) { _animator.speed = 1f; }

The following methods change variables on the animator component attached to this game

object to play the desired animations. By switching the Booleans (true or false variables)

that are not associated with the current state of the eland off and switching on the Boolean

that the current eland state is associated with on- the eland animates accordingly. The

current state of the eland is determined by the ElandBrain script, which is the main artificial

intelligence script for the eland.


218

To briefly illustrate this, the Relocating state of the ElandBrain script calls the

OnRelocationStart event, which has a listener declared in the ElandAnimator script (see

above). Whenever the eland enters the Relocating state and the OnRelocationStart event is

called, the ElandAnimator script then calls its own OnRelocationStart method.

The OnRelocationStart method is not to be confused with the OnRelocationStart event that

trigger the method being called. Although the ElandAnimator cannot be applied to a game

object without the ElandBrain script being attached, the latter can function perfectly

without the ElandAnimator. The events called in the ElandBrain always get called and

only function as signals to other scripts to indicate what is happening in it.

Finally, all the animator Booleans inside the OnRelocationStart method are declared false,

except for isWalking, which is declared true. Thus, when the eland ‘relocates’ it ‘walks’.

private void OnRelocationStart() { _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", true); } private void OnGrazingStart() { _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", true); }


219

private void OnFleeingStart() { _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); _animator.SetBool("isRunning", true); var currentAnim = _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0); if (currentAnim.IsTag("Walking") || currentAnim.IsTag("Grazing")) { _animator.speed = 3f; } } private void OnChargingStart() { var player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player"); FlipToTarget(gameObject, player); _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", true); var currentAnim = _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0); if (currentAnim.IsTag("Walking") || currentAnim.IsTag("Grazing")) { _animator.speed = 3f; } } private void AttackingStart() { var player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player"); FlipToTarget(gameObject, player); _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", true); } private void OnHitStart(ElandBrain eland) { _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); _animator.SetBool("isHit", true);


220

var currentAnim = _animator.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0); if(currentAnim.IsTag("Walking") || currentAnim.IsTag("Grazing")) { _animator.speed = 3f; } noseBleed.SetActive(true); } private void OnDeathStart() { _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); _animator.SetBool("isDead", true); } private void OnAnimEnd() { _animator.SetBool("isRunning", false); _animator.SetBool("isGrazing", false); _animator.SetBool("isWalking", false); _animator.SetBool("isCharging", false); _animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false); } // The following methods are called from sources external to the ElandAnimator script. public void ParamChangeEvent(string param, bool value) { _animator.SetBool(param, value); } public void NoAttack(string param) { _animator.ResetTrigger("isAttacking"); }

The FlipToTarget method flips the eland game object if called and this only occurs if

either the eland is moving in the opposite direction to which it is facing or if the target it is

moving towards is on its other side. For example, OnChargingStart identifies the player

game object and calls FlipToTarget if necessary.


221

private void FlipToTarget(GameObject obj1, GameObject obj2) { if (obj1.transform.position.x < obj2.transform.position.x) { obj1.transform.localScale = new Vector3(-1f, 1f, 0); } else if (obj2.transform.position.x < obj1.transform.position.x) { obj1.transform.localScale = new Vector3(1f, 1f, 0); } }

The following is an excerpt from the ElandBrain script and only shows one of the state

within it. It shows an example of one of the eland states associated with the animations in

the ElandAnimator script. The entire script is not included here as it is nearly 1700 lines

long.

// Relocating state is derived from ElandState set direction and velocity for Relocation. public class Relocating : ElandState { protected float minMoveDist = 2f; protected float maxMoveDist = 10f; protected float moveDist; protected Vector2 startPos; protected float minGrazeDist = 10f; protected float lastClosestDist = 0f; protected bool _collision = false;

// Instantiates the game object that will be relocating and where to derive ElandBrain code from. public Relocating(ElandBrain eland) : base(eland) { // Calls OnRelocationStart for other scripts. _eland.OnRelocationStart.Invoke(); // Sets direction and velocity for relocation. // A proportional mixture of a random direction and the direction to the herd centre according to _eland.herdAdhesion value. _eland._actor.Velocity = (RandomDir() * (1 - _eland.herdAdhesion) + (GetHerdCenter() - _eland.Pos).normalized * _eland.herdAdhesion).normalized * _eland.idleSpeed; moveDist = Random.Range(minMoveDist, maxMoveDist); startPos = _eland.Pos; GameObject elandHead = _eland.GetComponentInChildren<ElandHeadFinder>().gameObject;


222

Collider2D attackColl = elandHead.GetComponent<CapsuleCollider2D>(); if (attackColl.enabled) { attackColl.enabled = false; } } public override void Update() { base.Update(); _eland.centre = GetHerdCenter();

// Logic of the ElandState(Relocating). If the eland collides with some other object, it transitions to the Grazing state. It a hunter gets too close it transitions to the Flee_Hunter state. if (ShouldStopMoving() || _collision) { _eland._state = new Grazing(_eland); } if (MinHunterDist() < _eland.tooCloseHunterDist || _eland.FleeingElandClose) { _eland._state = new Flee_Hunter(_eland); } } // Finds a position to move to that is free. // Returns a unit vector in a random direction. protected Vector2 RandomDir() { var angle = Random.Range(0, 2 * Mathf.PI); return new Vector2(Mathf.Sin(angle), Mathf.Cos(angle)); } // Returns true if the eland should stop relocating protected bool ShouldStopMoving() { if (Vector2.Distance(startPos, _eland.Pos) > moveDist) return true; var minDist = MinElandDist(); if (minDist < minGrazeDist && minDist < lastClosestDist) { return true; } lastClosestDist = minDist; return false; } // Returns true if the _eland collides with another game object with a collider. public override void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D collision) { base.OnCollisionEnter2D(collision); _collision = true; } }


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This concludes the example of scripts attached to the eland game object used in SE. To

recapitulate, the ElandBrain script controls the eland artificial intelligence, which is a state

machine. As the eland game object transitions to different states, event get called the cause

the ElandAnimator script to animate the eland in the appropriate manner.


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