Building Virtual Worlds: Comparing the Values Behind Virtual Worlds in Academic Scholarship and Video Games

Abstract

Virtual worlds have recently emerged as innovative tools in studying, preserving, and presenting history and cultural heritage. Within the digital humanities, scholars have begun deploying virtual worlds as a method of academic scholarship, using the digital environments to analyze the past and convey their arguments. In this thesis, I compare the emerging practice of using virtual worlds as an academic tool with the use of virtual worlds in video games. Through the comparison, I seek to uncover the value systems that underlie virtual world creation for both scholarship and video games and how those values interact with each other when a project simultaneously engages with academic and entertainment goals. Additionally, I strive to further the understanding of employing virtual worlds as tools for knowledge creation and documentation within the digital humanities. To accomplish this, I analyze three specific virtual world projects based in history, each with different groundings in academic and entertainment interests. I examine the development and decision-making process that went into building the virtual worlds for the academic virtual world project Contested Memories: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, the scholarly video game Walden, a Game, and the commercial video game Assassin’s Creed Origins. Ultimately, my analysis suggests virtual worlds built as academic tools focus on maximizing communication, virtual worlds in video games focus on creating an engaging player experience, and in-between cases negotiate a balance between the two.