Journey to Chang’an is a 2D serious game that aims to raise players’ interest in the culture and history of the Tang Dynasty. Players could experience over ten different storylines and explore various collectable items in the game to know what life in the Tang Dynasty could be like in immersive situations.
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Speaking of cultural heritage, a universal agreement is that they are part of the heritage of a group or individuals, and they can contain various tangible or intangible contents including artworks, historical sites, traditions, rituals, and so on. As digital technology has developed into an interconnected era, more and more practices are being taken in new media approaches to protect and propagate cultural heritage. Serious games, sometimes called applied games, are one of those new media approaches that contribute to the digitalization trend of cultural heritage protection in their unique relaxing way. The definition of serious games is still blurry and controversial, but a common understanding is that they are games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment, or fun as their primary purpose.
This project, Journey to Chang’an, then comes from the question: why do many serious games related to cultural heritage lack engagement? I tried to solve this problem by grabbing ideas from successful commercial games. From my research, some useful methods including emergent game mechanics and multi-media interactions are concluded. So this game actually serves as the application of these methods to make serious games more interesting and engaging.
So I studied a lot of history materials, broke up the long introductions about cultural heritage in the museum, and integrated them into different storylines. Different from many cultural heritage digitization projects which often offer overwhelming text or visuals for the audience to intercept, this game enhances emergent game mechanics to incorporate the cultural contents in dispersive interactions. What’s more, I spent a lot of time designing sound, music, collection interfaces, etc. Hopefully through the combination of contents in various media formats, people can stay interested in the game thus get to know more about the cultural message behind the gameplay.
This is just a start, Journey to Chang’an will get better, and hope you can see it again in the future.
Tags:#Seriousgame#Culturalheritage#Traditionalmusic