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Mac goes not back, but towards a more responsible representation of archaeology in video games

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Content Mac Goes Not Back, But Towards a More Responsible Representation of Archaeology in
Video Games
by
Rudi Vanzin
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulllment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(Interactive Media & Game Design)
May 2020
Copyright 2020 Rudi Vanzin
Dedication
For Alice and Akshyeta. We had a lot of fun, minus the scorpions, of course.
ii
Acknowledgments
First, I would like to thank my thesis chair, Laird Malamed, and faculty advisor, Margaret Moser, for
their help in bringing this project to life. It was a pleasure sharing production tribulations and triumphs
with you and I deeply appreciate your insight, emotional support, and guidance this past year. I would
also like to thank Jon Ingold of Inkle Studios, my industry advisor, for creating such a wonderful open-
source tool and for lending his time to the project. It would have been nice to meet you at GDC this
year!
I want to extend my sincere gratitude to the rest of the faculty and sta of the Interactive Media
and Games Department at the USC School of Cinematic for their endless support and for making USC
Games feel like home. Thank you especially to the following individuals: Sam, for always looking out
for me and countless opportunities { I actually could not have done this without you; Tim, for being the
best ocemate anyone could ask for; Martzi, Jesse, and Sean for inspiring me to creative antics and for
the many memories from Cardboard Camp to treasure hunting; Peter, for the best advice and for the
chance to work with you on Early and Often; Jim, for always making me laugh and giving out good job
advice; Dennis, for sundry conversation and gold-
ecked beverages; Collin, for everything you do for us
students; I know now that whatever it is, you are likely behind it; Andreas, Tracy, Richard, Jane, Carl,
David, and Maureen for your time and wisdom inside and outside the classroom. Thank you also to
Cory and Roger at the University Writing Center; I am grateful for the time I enjoyed with you and the
community you've built.
The production of Mac Goes Back would not have been possible without the nancial support of the
Sloan Foundation. I would like to thank and acknowledge the Sloan Foundation for partially funding
iii
the development of Mac Goes Back. It is an honor to have received the inaugural grant for games and I
am proud to be a part of the Foundation's mission to strengthen public understanding and engagement
with science. Nor could I have done this without the help of my wonderful team: Aspen Gavin Leavitt
(character art and animation); Tami Wicinas (background art); Mariel Jones (character art); Violette
Avouac (concept art); Abdal Almuqhim (engineering); Israel Jones (engineering and design); Claire Hu
(sound design); Isaac Mailach (musical score). It was a pleasure working with each and every one of you
and I cannot thank you enough for your contributions, enthusiasm, and patience.
Finally, more gratitude than can be expressed on this page is owed to the following friends and family
who made this journey possible: my wonderful MFA cohort for your kindness, perspective, and talent
these three years that pushed me to strive for more; friends from other MFA cohorts and wonderful
undergraduates alike; Karter, for nding some horror I can actually enjoy and for Diddy Kong Racing at
Rance's; Jivitesh, for teaching me so much in 532 and for always thinking deep thoughts; Emily, for your
faith in me even before this journey began; my friends in the archaeological community who provided
advice and whose excitement for the project inspired me to continue through roadblocks; Shawn, for
being an amazing designer and for delicious artisinal bread. To Albert, the reason I love games, and Nick
and Mom and Dad, thank you for everything, as always. And nally, to Alan: thank you for seeing me
through yet another master's degree. This is it, I promise.
iv
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
List Of Figures vi
Abstract viii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: The Aordances of Point and Click Adventure Games 5
Chapter 3: The Narrative Design of Mac Goes Back 10
3.1 Setting the Scene: Classic Maya Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2 Structure of the Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 On Research and Game Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4 Designing the Player Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Chapter 4: The Mechanics of Mac Goes Back 18
4.1 How the Player is Complicit in Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2 ePads as a Solution to the Inventory Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 5: Evaluating the Gameplay Experience 25
Chapter 6: Further Development 28
Chapter 7: Conclusions 30
Reference List 32
v
List Of Figures
1.1 In this screenshot from Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, the daughter of Nathan Drake exam-
ines framed magazine covers featuring her father's exploits. Note the magazines \Archae-
ology Now", encircled, in the left image. In the right image, \D&F Fortunes," the family's
treasure hunting company, is featured in archaeology and history magazines. Furthermore,
Cassie comments \This was denitely my favorite dig...", further blurring the lines between
treasure hunting and archaeology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2.1 Older point and click games, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis had a somewhat
overwhelming and tedious number of action options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2 The game Four Last Things (2017) uses a simplied wheel of actions, encircled in red, where
the player can choose to look at, take, or talk to any given hotspot by selection the action
icon. In this case, the mouse is hovering on the apples and a description appears at the
bottom of the game. Other games employ a \single-context" or \context-sensitive" scheme
where each hotspot has only one associated action that the player performs automatically
when activated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 The UI in Whispers of a Machine (2019) ts the game's cyber/sci- aesthetic. The game
also experiments with unique core mechanics, such as the heart-rate monitor seen in this
screenshot, which is always available for the player to access and is not tied to a particular
inventory object. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.1 Mac Goes Back features two player characters in two dierent worlds that are connected
through the archaeological record: Mac, on the left and circled in red, on a contemporary
excavation of Tikal, and Iki, circled in yellow, at Tikal during the Classic period circa AD
378. These parallel stories visually connect archaeological remains to the people to whom
they belong. For example, if the archaeologists recover feasting pottery in a scene from
the excavation, the player later sees that same pottery in use at a feast in a scene in the
Maya world. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2 Although a subtle dierence, the line art of one of the archaeology trenches initially featured
sloping baulks { or, edges of the trench. Archaeologists go to great lengths to keep the
baulk straight, something that the general public would not know. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1 Moving from cataloging puzzles in that appear in individual games to grouping them by
common mechanics or types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
vi
4.2 Since Mac (and the player, presumably) do not know how to excavate in real life, it makes
ludonarrative sense that a character in the game will explain the literal and game mechanics
of excavating. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.3 By mousing over the top of the screen, the player can access Mac's regular inventory.
By clicking on the ePad within that inventory, the player access the ePad and its digital
inventory of artifacts. The background colors on the artifacts tell the player whether there
is more work to be done on them. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
vii
Abstract
Mac Goes Back is a point and click adventure game in development for PC in partial fulllment of the
requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media & Games Design at the University
of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. In the game, titular protagonist { 18-year old Macaria
Magan { begrudgingly joins her mother Persephone, a professor of archaeology at the University of
Pennsylvania, on excavation at Tikal, Guatemala. The two have a strained relationship: one without
any future prospects, current ideas, or any sense of who she is, and the other determined on the outside,
but falling to pieces over the potential \loss"of her daughter. To top it o, the eldwork season is full
of surprises, the kind that have career-making potential, but also attract unwanted attention... In the
rare moments when Mac is not preoccupied with her own future plans, which may or may not involve
substituting college to move with her best friend to Los Angeles, California (where she will be closer
to her father), Mac helps the team uncover and analyze sensational evidence of political intrigue in the
Classic Maya period. But all that eldwork must be getting to her because Mac begins to dream about
the lives of the people whose remains and whose descendants surround her, especially a Maya woman
named Iki on the eve of an unforgettable \arrival" in AD 378.
This paper rst problematizes the state of video game archaeology and outlines the project goals of
Mac Goes Back { to provide a more realistic alternative to misleading archaeology ctions like Indiana
Jones. It then discusses the narrative and gameplay design elements that support the game's goals and
re
ects on less successful iterations . It also describes the challenges of a research-based game and lessons
learned over the course of the game development process. Finally, this paper conveys the vision for a
longer version of the game and outlines ways to evaluate the player experience.
viii
Chapter 1
Introduction
Archaeology, according to popular video games like Tomb Raider, Uncharted, and Indiana Jones in
his movie and game forms, is traveling to an exotic setting and using weapons to take cultural heritage by
force, without regard for lives lost or priceless architecture destroyed. Since each protagonist is explicitly
connected to archaeology { Lara Croft is the alternately the daughter of archaeologists or an archaeologist
herself, even though her sobriquet \Raider" is far more accurate; Nathan Drake is professionally denoted
a thief, but there are explicit connections to archaeology in the series (Figure 1.1); and Indiana Jones
himself is a professor of archaeology { we understand their adventures and actions to be archaeology.
While it is true that archaeology has a dark colonial history not unlike that of video game archaeology,
it has not resembled its former self in over 50 years.
Figure 1.1: In this screenshot from Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, the daughter of Nathan Drake examines
framed magazine covers featuring her father's exploits. Note the magazines \Archaeology Now", encircled,
in the left image. In the right image, \D&F Fortunes," the family's treasure hunting company, is featured
in archaeology and history magazines. Furthermore, Cassie comments \This was denitely my favorite
dig...", further blurring the lines between treasure hunting and archaeology.
1
Archaeology today is the work of academic researchers and professionals requiring years of study and
practice to become qualied and permits that take months in advance and a mountain of paperwork
to secure. There is no impulsive travel or unfettered access to cultural heritage sites, and the laws
are so stringent and the local communities generally aware and protective of their nearby archaeological
resources, that anyone who breaks these norms (inside or outside of the community) by removing artifacts
is a criminal. Furthermore, contra the solitary, exploitative romps of Lara Croft and Nathan Drake, and
the insensitive sidekicks of Indiana Jones, local communities in real life generally warmly anticipate
archaeological expeditions as they provide small economic boosts to the town, city, or village { by renting
property, buying local materials, tools, and food, visiting museums and sites, and hiring in many forms.
Why, then, do we continually see inaccurate and often sensational portrayals of archaeology in video
games? While these inaccuracies do exist in other media representations of archaeology (e.g. lm), this
paper and MFA project focus on the impact of video game design. However, the root of the problem
with why popular archaeology is bad archaeology applies to other entertainment and can be summarized
as such: ctional archaeology is usually more exciting than \real" archaeology. While the games that
explicitly feature archaeology do not actually number that many, the popularity of some like the Uncharted
and Tomb Raider series is quite extensive.
1
In fact, the more recent Uncharted series (four games from
2007-2017) is one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed franchises of all time, with Uncharted 2:
Among Thieves holding an incredible 96/100 rating on Metacritic and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
at 92/100. Meanwhile, Tomb Raider has enjoyed a much longer history and greater cultural in
uence
since its inception in 1996. With a playable \female Indiana Jones", the Tomb Raider franchise, in
addition to twelve games with generally good reviews and over 75 million copies sold worldwide, sparked
the \Lara Phenomenon" and probably helped create the same market that Uncharted later dominated.
2
If the critical success of these titles is due to high quality graphics, animation and motion capture,
1
In a content analysis conducted during pre-production, I played or watched games where archaeology or archaeologists
are a primary, explicit (i.e., not implied) theme. Games in this category are Tombs and Treasure (1988), La-Mulana (2005)
which is actually described as an \Archaeological Ruin Exploration Action Game\, Heaven's Vault (2019), Rise of the Tomb
Raider (2015), NiBiRu: Age of Secrets (2005), Nancy Drew: Tomb of the Lost Queen (2012), Lost Civilization (2014), and
Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis (1992). Games that are loosely or implied to be archaeological, like Pitfall, Spelunky or
feature an archaeological character or class, like in World of Warcraft, Nethack, or The Sims were noted but excluded.
2
Jansz and Martis (2007).
2
and innovative storytelling through gameplay, the commercial success of these \archaeology" themed
adventures is almost certainly due to their action-adventure genre, where action and action-adventure
are among the most popular game genres in the world.
3
In action-adventure games, the narratives and
gameplay are designed around typical action mechanics, such as jumping, running, looting, shooting,
and ghting, whereas the adventure aspect can add exploring, escaping, climbing, surviving, and puzzle
solving.
It is little wonder, then, that an action-adventure game with an archaeology theme focuses on the
exciting activities of bad archaeology { those colonial adventures where the lone European hero dodges
traps to steal beautiful treasures from archaeological contexts to solve a mystery or save the world while
causing the careless destruction of archaeological sites through gunghts. If we contrast those exciting
actions with the \verbs" or actions of real archaeological science, such as excavation, measuring, recording,
labeling, cleaning, researching, and publishing, it is obvious that this content would not support the design
of an exciting, commercially successful action-adventure game. Other archaeology themed games that
are not 3D action adventures, such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, NiBiRu: Age of Secrets, or
even the recent Heaven's Vault, instead respectively highlight equally bad representations of archaeology
involving: the extraterrestrial or mythical (e.g. Atlantis), the supernatural (e.g. curses), or have no basis
in the historical real world and thus, even if they are the closest game that exists to a \good" archaeology
game, do little to counter all of the bad representations that we continually see. And it is precisely this
incessant access to bad archaeology with no alternative that eventually becomes both tired and rather
insidious, eectively minimizing or erasing the accomplishments of real historical (non-European) peoples
from around the world.
Given that bad archaeology is so popular, how can \good" archaeology begin to compete? As a
former archaeologist now studying game design, I wanted to explore this question through my MFA thesis
project, Mac Goes Back, since I maintain there is a lot to celebrate about the discipline and the histories
it illuminates. However, the representation of archaeology and how to eectively share archaeological
3
According to the preview of Technavio's \Global Gaming Market Report 2018-2022". Technavio is a leading market
research company.
3
data is an ongoing and unresolved discussion in the archaeological community for many reasons including
the failure to adopt more popular forms of communication and outreach. Therefore, developing a video
game showcasing more real archaeology seemed especially worthwhile, since it has not been done well,
and gamers are now more numerous and diverse than ever.
4
Thus, Mac Goes Back, ultimately, is an
experiment in game design that draws upon actual methods and evidence that the scientic archaeological
community has achieved consensus on. The goal is to oer an alternative representation of archaeology
to audiences, something that contrasts with the looting, shooting, and supernatural while highlighting
some of the exciting and fascinating realities of archaeology and what it teaches us about our shared
human past.
4
It should be noted that Nancy Drew and the Tomb of the Lost Queen depicts some realistic aspects of archaeology,
including the excavation tents and their contents, and subverts the idea of Egyptian curses with what ends up being a
rational explanation. Similarly, Heaven's Vault was lauded as an archaeology game and makes wonderful strides towards
contemplative, somewhat anthropological investigative gameplay but it does not feature any archaeological practice at all.
See, for example, the review by Khee Hoon Chan in Polygon (Hoon Chan (2019)).
4
Chapter 2
The Aordances of Point and Click Adventure Games
As noted above, the genre of an archaeology video game can aect what kind of archaeology is
portrayed in the game and what the characters do, so what kind of game Mac Goes Back should be
required careful consideration. Since action-adventure games do not support the responsible archaeology
gameplay of the project goal, there were three potential design options along the game design spectrum
that might: an archaeology game as simulation (the most accurate), an archaeology game as strategic
game (where it is possible to do well or not), and an archaeology game with a story and characters
(narrative).
Each of these designs were entirely dierent ways to approach the problem, and each has its own
aordances and constraints. Archaeology simulators where the user engages in virtual archaeological
practice exists in some forms already, such as VRchaeology
1
, a virtual eld school, and other experiences
focused on digitizing archaeological spaces and artifacts, both for preservation and education. These
primarily educational experiences allow users to experience archaeological methods and sites from the
comfort of their home and negate any costly travel or other barriers like access to eld schools or experts.
Games in the simulator space include simulators of nearly everything, from truck driving to cooking to
managing various business enterprises, like zoos or theme parks. While not necessarily intended to be
1
Yates (2020).
5
educational, these games do prioritize realism above all in their design, including the laws of physics and
realistic graphics.
2
Related to, and often compatible with, simulation games are strategy or resource management-type
games where there are systems, usually based on real-world systems or economies pertinent to the game's
theme. A classic example is Sid Meier's Civilization, which is a game that distills human history into
various constituent systems such as technology and warfare, while Homeworld focuses on resource man-
agement and
eet expansion in space. Applying this framework to archaeology could result in a game
that focuses on the systems in an archaeological career, from the academic \economy" of collecting arti-
facts and other data to publish and advance along a career path, or directing an excavation by managing
funding, personnel, space, and excavated material.
Even though an excavation simulation or a game managing archaeological resources would highlight
dierent aspects of real archaeological work in important ways, we decided to focus on the third option
{ character and narrative { for Mac Goes Back for several reasons. A story-driven game is likely to
have greater appeal than the more niche simulator or strategy genres and would therefore allow for the
broadest amplication of the game's mission to redress the inaccuracies of popular archaeology like Tomb
Raider and Indiana Jones. The best parts of archaeology are, in fact, the narrative bits: the wonder
and discovery, learning about what people did and how they lived and marveling at their ingenuity. It is
these stories, pieced together from multiple lines of evidence, that capture people's attention. Moreover,
narrative games have a low barrier to entry for players since the mechanics are generally uncomplicated,
and thus allow for greater audience accessibility. This also meant that it was a technical challenge I could
approach with condence as the game programmer, one that also happens to align with my personal
interest in (and library of) narrative adventure games.
Of all the kinds of narrative games in said library, point and click adventures seemed to be the best
t. These games are primarily narrative-driven, focused on exploring a world and interacting with things
2
For example, Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 describes itself on the Steam Store as an \incredibly detailed and highly
realistic simulation game, where attention to car detail is astonishing," and in Planet Zoo, players can \research and manage
each species to allow them to thrive..."
6
and people, behaviors which can be applied to the world of archaeology since it does, in fact, involve
frequently talking to people and using objects for methods and analysis and understanding. However, the
point and click genre is somewhat polarizing in its popularity { as beloved as it is reviled, most often due
to its reputation for obtuse and illogical puzzles { so pursuing this route successfully would require careful
attention to ensure ludonarrative harmony.
3
While \good" and logical puzzle design should always be
practiced (to not frustrate the player), the challenge of adapting the point and click structure to t a
story about archaeology was critical to the mission of Mac Goes Back.
The key components of point and click adventure games are 1) keyboard-and-mouse input where
gameplay is primarily conducted by clicking the mouse buttons (hence, point and click); 2) one or more
player character(s) (PC) that the player controls; 3) a limited set of verbs or actions that the
PC can perform on people or things in the environment represented by words or icons (Figure 2.1); 4)
an inventory of objects that the player uses to solve problems and progress through the narrative.
These core design elements are present in some form in all point and click games, although there has been
considerable innovation in the genre since its peak popularity in the 1990s. Most of the developments we
see in \modern" point and click games involve streamlining and simplifying the interface (Figure 2.2),
more logical puzzle design, and UI that adds to the game's aesthetic (Figure 2.3). Some modern games
have even explored these mechanics in a 3D space and have even incorporated controller support.
4
For the design of Mac Goes Back, it was both desirable and necessary to preserve the core gameplay
of a point and click game, especially the casual and accessible interface, focus on exploring world and
characters, and importance of objects in progressing through a story. These components already support
the design of responsible and realistic archaeological activities. However, the genre's traditional inventory
system and what it implies (a person carrying things around) is problematic for an archaeological setting,
as picking up artifacts and carrying them around is not responsible archaeology. Despite this, which
entailed a design solution discussed in further detail below, Mac Goes Back does not aim to revolutionize
3
Ludonarrative refers to the interaction between ludic (gameplay) and narrative elements in a video game, as coined by
Clint Hocking. A harmonic relationship means what the player does in the game (the mechanics) reinforces what the game
is about (the narrative).
4
E.g., Dreamfall Chapters (2014) and Blacksad: Under the Skin (2019).
7
Figure 2.1: Older point and click games, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis had a somewhat
overwhelming and tedious number of action options.
Figure 2.2: The game Four Last Things (2017) uses a simplied wheel of actions, encircled in red, where
the player can choose to look at, take, or talk to any given hotspot by selection the action icon. In
this case, the mouse is hovering on the apples and a description appears at the bottom of the game.
Other games employ a \single-context" or \context-sensitive" scheme where each hotspot has only one
associated action that the player performs automatically when activated.
8
Figure 2.3: The UI in Whispers of a Machine (2019) ts the game's cyber/sci- aesthetic. The game also
experiments with unique core mechanics, such as the heart-rate monitor seen in this screenshot, which is
always available for the player to access and is not tied to a particular inventory object.
the genre in any way; rather, it uses the point and click adventure game blueprint to showcase innovative
content about archaeology. The sections below discuss how further design decisions, both narrative and
gameplay mechanics, support that content.
9
Chapter 3
The Narrative Design of Mac Goes Back
3.1 Setting the Scene: Classic Maya Period
Mac Goes Back is set during the Classic Maya period at the archaeological site of Tikal, one of the
iconic Maya sites and monumental archaeological parks. It was important to choose a setting that is
recognizable for appeal and accessibility, but also because the very real nature of Tikal directly confronts
the ctional Atlantises, Kitzehs, and Shambalas of other video games.
1
Since Tikal was excavated by the
University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 60s and its material has been studied ever since, there was
an abundance of available excavation information to use in the game. Furthermore, as the Classic Period
has been a major research focus for Mesoamerican archaeologists, complementary and additive data from
nearby sites yield a strong body of evidence to draw on for reconstruction about the Maya world more
broadly.
Aside from the availability of resources, this setting in particular furthers the goals of the game because
Maya culture is often sensationalized or combined with other Mesoamerican cultures, like the Aztec, into
a blanket Mesoamerican backdrop. The 2018 installment of the Tomb Raider series, Shadow of the Tomb
Raider, is a good example of this. While the game made some strides towards cultural sensitivity (such
as the ability to turn on indigenous languages for a more immersive experience), it ultimately disserves
1
From the games Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Uncharted 2, respectively.
10
Mesoamerican archaeology { for entertainment purposes { by morphing the most sensational aspects of
dierent Mesoamerican cultures into one exceedingly exotic, mysterious, and very, very other other (i.e.,
dehumanized) that Lara Croft needs to save the world from.
Although Mac Goes Back certainly does not have the reach of a AAA game, it is important to provide
alternatives to such sensation as in Shadow of the Tomb Raider by accurately contextualizing many of
the rituals that seem so mysterious to us today but were actually quite mundane, and to celebrate
indigenous American cultures without any impending apocalypse. Indeed, there are very real aspects of
Maya culture that we have archaeological and epigraphic evidence for, including human sacrice, political
intrigue, beliefs about the end of the world, and other cosmological rituals, that can be quite sensational
and appealing because they are very dierent from what we experience in our own cultures. These aspects
can make great game material, but only if they are responsibly contextualized so as to avoid perpetuating
convenient colonialist tropes.
3.2 Structure of the Narrative
One way that Mac Goes Back tries to strike a balance between the sensational archaeological wonders
we crave and the realities of archaeological eld work is through a back-and-forth parallel-story narrative
structure. In this way, Mac Goes Back actually tells two stories, one that takes place in the present on
a ctional modern excavation at Tikal, and the other during the time that the team is excavating, the
Classic period circa AD 378 (Figure 3.1). Bringing the past to life in this way creates narrative and visual
drama while also illustrating the archaeological connections between practice in the present to the people
that archaeologists are trying to understand.
In the game's contemporary present, ctional excavations at Tikal have been \reopened" for a team
of archaeologists, including the titular player character, Mac. Inspiration for the layout of the excava-
tion draws on the Tikal excavation reports and plates, my own experiences on digs, and other modern
excavations at other Classic Period sites in the Maya lowlands. What the team nds during excavation
11
Figure 3.1: Mac Goes Back features two player characters in two dierent worlds that are connected
through the archaeological record: Mac, on the left and circled in red, on a contemporary excavation
of Tikal, and Iki, circled in yellow, at Tikal during the Classic period circa AD 378. These parallel
stories visually connect archaeological remains to the people to whom they belong. For example, if the
archaeologists recover feasting pottery in a scene from the excavation, the player later sees that same
pottery in use at a feast in a scene in the Maya world.
are actual artifacts recovered from Tikal, including a very important inscription on an artifact known as
el Marcador, and artifacts and material found at other Classic period sites.
2
Altogether, the material
that the team uncovers during the game illustrates aspects of Classic Maya life, from the household to
the elite, a mix of special and quotidian nds, and how archaeologists generate knowledge about the past
from artifacts. In other words, the player learns about life in the Classic period through the artifacts they
interface with in the game. This design is intended to highlight the archaeological process of analysis
and interpretation as well as the limitations of what archaeologists know; only glimpses of the past are
possible.
At certain points in the game the narrative switches to the Classic Period, circa AD 378, and the
player plays as Iki, a Maya woman in the reconstructed city-state of Tikal on the verge of an important
historical event that we know from the epigraphic record and evidence from other nearby sites. These
sources discuss the historical gure, Siyaj K'ak, also known as Spearthrower Owl, who marched from
Teotihuacan in central Mexico in AD 378 to overtake and depose the ruling dynasty of Tikal.
3
This
moment was a pivotal moment in the history of the city and surrounding area and an ideal setting for
what is essentially a work of historical ction. In it, Iki, the elite Maya woman, is sent on behalf of the
2
E.g.,Coxemans (1988).
3
E.g., as discussed by Estrada-Belli et al. (2009), Montgomery (2001), Wade (2020).
12
Jaguar Dynasty to unravel a mystery when she discovers evidence that the coup of 378 is afoot. Although
the end of her story has already been recorded by history { the arrival of Spearthrower Owl and the death
of Tikal's rulers - the rest is fabricated within the connes of understanding Maya society in the Classic
period and existing evidence to support a visual reconstruction.
Bringing to life a researched and reconstructed Maya world is intended to connect what the team
is doing in the present with the people they are learning about; moving from facts about the recovered
artifact to seeing how it was used and in what contexts. For the player character { the titular Mac who is
discussed in greater detail below and who is the conduit through which the player experiences archaeology
{ this tactic serves her character development as she grows from a resentful and apathetic teenager to
someone who becomes invested in the people around her. Ideally, the character's journey mirrors the
player's own journey: as Mac and the player assist with excavation and the analysis of artifacts, they are
informed about what they \mean", and when she and the player together see these same objects used
by people in the Maya world, and as the historical ction unfolds, they may become more interested and
invested in the material.
3.3 On Research and Game Development
While a balanced commitment to accuracy is the only way to ensure a responsible portrayal of archaeology,
it was an ongoing challenge during the development of Mac Goes Back. Since archaeology is not well
understood by members of the general public, my team members included, it fell to me as the director and
subject matter expert to do most of the research and nd an eective way to communicate the important
details to set them up for success in their tasks. This ongoing communication helped me realize that I
frequently had a clear understanding in my head based on years of study but failed to communicate all
the necessary details (Figure 3.2). It also constantly challenged me to have a proactive sense of what I
13
Figure 3.2: Although a subtle dierence, the line art of one of the archaeology trenches initially featured
sloping baulks { or, edges of the trench. Archaeologists go to great lengths to keep the baulk straight,
something that the general public would not know.
needed to look for, parse what I was reading for any useful design elements, and then further distill those
ndings into details necessary for the task at hand.
4
In retrospect, the amount of research overall was much greater and took much longer than I anticipated
because many questions arose during development and iteration. I sometimes lost days to research, trying
to locate a specic answer about building materials or colors, architectural style, outt details, or nding
appropriate references images for my artists. Preliminary research conducted in pre-production allowed
for a fact-based outline of the story and gameplay, but when it was time to program that part of the game
during actual production, I realized that I or my team did not have the information or assets needed
to complete the task. In these instances, I would have to pause development to nd answers, consult
books and experts, then make tough decisions if I found more than one useful example, and nally try
to communicate with my engineers or artists. These research days did not feel quite as productive as
development days, but they were necessary to support the goals of the project in terms of archaeological
accuracy. I recognize now that I did not build enough time into the production schedule for research or
anticipate time for ad-hoc and post-hoc research, especially when iterating on designs, but now I also
know more about what research questions would have been useful to ask and answer in preproduction.
4
An example of this process is such: I knew broadly there would be a scene in a throne room and that I would need
art for this scene eventually. So when I researched the royal courts of Tikal, if I was doing my job well and kept asking
myself what my artist might need to know, I would comb through the abundant information for details about what kinds
of furniture would be present and what that furniture might be made from as well as how the building would have been
constructed, etc.
14
3.4 Designing the Player Character
Point and click games enable players to come to know their player character's personality when the
character interacts with objects and people in the world. In most of these games, the player character is
an important part of the story, so the star of Mac Goes Back warranted careful consideration. Should
Mac be an actual archaeologist with expertise already? Should she be smart and capable, a Nancy Drew
who is piecing together evidence like a detective? What is her connection to archaeology? To meet the
goals of the game, Mac needed to be someone who has access to the world of real archaeology and a
reason to participate, but to preserve ludonarrative harmony, not be an expert. Since the player likely
has little prior knowledge about archaeology, it was important to have a character that they could access
and who could, in turn, understand them. In this way they can \learn" along with Mac as they progress
through the story, who herself has little prior knowledge, and feel like her learning is their learning as
well.
In terms of gameplay, this learning occurs when the characters around Mac give her instructions
about what to do since she is a character who is not supposed to know what to do already. If she were an
expert, but for gameplay purposes other characters were explaining to her what to do, the player might
question this. Thus, Mac is narratively positioned for a reason to consult with the \experts" around her,
to get involved with their methods and progress in the archaeological narrative, while emphasizing a key
aspect of archaeology { that archaeology is never a sole venture; it involves a community of people. As
Mac goes through a day on the excavation, she interacts with dierent personnel on the site, all based on
real people and specialties, and helps them with their research, in turn learning a bit about what they
do and why it is important to the overall picture.
All of this requires a character who, again, is in the world of archaeology but not necessarily interested
and so has committed very little about archaeology to memory: introducing Macaria Magan, the daughter
of academic archaeologists. Her character is loosely based on the children of real-life archaeologists and
she has a narrative reason to be at the excavation, but is completely disinterested in, and even resentful
15
of, her parents' academic careers. She actually resembles Lara Croft, in a way, as the daughter of an
archaeologist and with her brown hair and tank top, although the tank top was a complete accident;
perhaps suggesting how Lara would be if she did more archaeological work and less raiding. Mac's story
of her summer on excavation, however, is more of a Bildungsroman, with family drama as well as a cast
of colorful characters with their own personalities and side stories, to help her grow into a mature, smart
young woman.
The decision to introduce a player character who is neither an expert nor particularly interested in
the archaeology was not without its own challenges, namely making Mac a sympathetic character. At the
start of the game, Mac is a rather selsh teenager in the way that teenagers can be, and she does not want
to participate in the excavation until she is made to. This alone creates the potential for instances where
the player is excited about doing some archaeology yet Mac the character is disinterested, which can break
immersion for the player. Another challenge to ensuring ludonarrative harmony was balancing what Mac
would know about archaeology being around the world so much with what she would actually internalize
and remember. For example, what vocabulary would Mac the character use to talk about the things
she sees? An important mechanic in point and click games, especially for characterization purposes, is
when the characters describe things in their environment. In service of \teaching" the player, Mac could
describe things around her using the proper terminology she would likely know but the player probably
would not, so these interactions had to be carefully designed.
Perhaps the biggest overall challenge in the process of making responsible archaeology entertainment
was accepting that if it is going to be entertaining, then it will require some liberties taken with accuracy
and suspension of disbelief on behalf of the player. There is an understanding, when turning on a
videogame, that the player is in fact playing a game, which is not reality.
5
For Mac Goes Back, that
means that the player is not really conducting archaeological research, but is experiencing a representation
or adaptation of research methods as game interactions. Adapting and simplifying those methods for a
game is only possible if concessions to accuracy are willingly made. Other instances in the gameplay that
5
This has been discussed with regards to the \magic circle", see Linser R. and Vold (2008).
16
require suspension of disbelief exist to further the game's goals of immersing the player in a more realistic,
albeit ctionalized, archaeological world. These interactions involved the player character consulting a
specialist to get a piece of information, but the specialist instead asks Mac to nd the information by
herself. In reality, that person would likely provide an answer because of their specialty, but in a game,
it is usually more satisfying to earn the answer through some form of play. The design intent of these
interactions is to give the player an entertaining, ctionalized taste of the kind of logical deduction and
other scientic thought processes that go into the analysis of archaeological artifacts and culture with an
understanding that they are intentionally not a substitute for the real thing.
17
Chapter 4
The Mechanics of Mac Goes Back
4.1 How the Player is Complicit in Archaeology
The premise of Mac Goes Back - in which the player plays as the teenage daughter of an archaeological
dig director helping out on site - enables opportunities for the player to learn about both archaeology
the Classic Period Maya. They do so by working with surrounding experts to analyze a few artifacts
using approximations of scientic methods, as discussed previously. One aordance of point and click
adventure games is the variation in puzzle sequences throughout gameplay. In other words, in a point
and click setting, it is perfectly acceptable to do an activity once and then never again.
1
Since one goal of
Mac Goes Back is to provide examples of various archaeological methods, some preproduction research
involved a content analysis of the variety of puzzles in existing point and click games in order to develop
a \library" of puzzle ideas for how to adapt archaeological methods to gameplay. Games that roughly
matched the specs of Mac Goes Back (e.g. 2D, between 2-7 hours long) were analyzed for every single
puzzle during the game, then screenshots were compiled into categories (Figure 4.1).
This information was helpful for understanding how common puzzles might be adapted to archaeology
and how to approach programming such puzzles. A brainstorm of archaeological methods and actions
broken into step-by-step details revealed that a lot of \simplied science" involves variations on the simple
1
It is usually undesirable to design mechanics that players use once and never again, as this increases the burden on
player memory, but these rules are highly dependent; see Desurvire and Wiberg (2009).
18
Figure 4.1: Moving from cataloging puzzles in that appear in individual games to grouping them by
common mechanics or types.
puzzle mechanics already present in point and click adventure games, such as matching patterns, (e.g.
sorting) jigsaw puzzles (e.g. pottery reconstruction), decoding (e.g. reading a graph) or logical inferences.
Other interactions in point and click adventure games are conversation based, involve combining or using
items on people or things, or are just \ddly bits" where the player interacts with something like a button
or a level for the sake of interaction.
2
Whatever the puzzle or interaction, good narrative game design requires that it drive the narrative
in some big or small way, otherwise it will just feel like \work". This is something not exclusive to Mac
Goes Back, but in the case of an archaeology game, it was a design pitfall we were especially cognizant
of, since for the professional archaeologist, archaeology is, in fact, work. As a result, the archaeological
narrative of Mac Goes Back is supposed to be driven by the wants and needs of the characters on the
excavation, which leads Mac to interface with artifacts, and what Mac learns about them through the
interactive \puzzles" (i.e. simplied archaeological methods) foreshadows the chapters of the game that
take place in the Maya world. Therefore, the archaeological interactions that drive gameplay in Mac
Goes Back { both conversations about archaeology and \doing" simplied archaeology { are the greatest
opportunities for teaching the player responsible archaeology without sacricing the narrative or seeming
too educational.
2
Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Studios in his 5-year anniversary developer commentary of Blackwell Legacy advises
designers to give the player an opportunity to interact whenever possible.
19
In terms of teaching archaeology, there was no question that excavation had to be somewhere in
the game. It might be the most important interaction to include because all data in archaeology is
retrieved from the ground through excavation and yet popular archaeology rarely shows the protagonist
excavating. Yet, how to best translate excavation into a game was an entirely dierent matter. Should it
be a minigame? What excavation principles could be \gamied"? To answer this question, we tried a few
dierent prototypes exploring some of the principles of excavation, but in the end, the game's 2D graphics
and mouse input provided us with a clear \right" answer.
3
When we realized that the physical sensation
of excavating did not translate well to a computer, we pursued a dierent aspect of the experience of
excavating: the feeling of uncovering something, having something emerge from the dirt unexpectedly,
the thrill of discovery. Thus, the excavation interaction in the game allows players to \dig" without
knowing what they will reveal beneath the dirt. Additionally, the interaction is somewhat educational
in that one of the senior members of the sta instructs Mac in both how to excavate in real life but also
how the mechanics work in the game. In this way the realism is tied to the mechanics, which use a click
and drag to \erase" the dirt to simulate the act of scraping away dirt with a trowel in real life (Figure
4.2).
At every opportunity we tried to tie principles of archaeology to the interaction, even it was a simple
as using the right vocabulary to contextualize the game activities in terms of archaeological methods.
For example, a simple jigsaw is framed in terms of helping a conservator with a reconstruction. Trying
to match a glyph involves using an epigrapher's syllabary, which is how an actual epigrapher tracks the
logograms. To further underscore and contextualize the player's actions, the player can ask the experts
around them more about the methods if they are curious, but these conversations are optional to avoid
making the narrative feel too educational. Overall, the dierent archaeology interactions are designed to
subtly show the player a very simplied version of how the archaeologist goes from artifact in the ground
in the eld to understanding something about it and how that contributes to an overall interpretation.
3
E.g., when excavating, it is necessary to evenly peel back layers of dirt, otherwise the excavator is cutting through time.
There is also some strategy in deciding where to excavate and putting excavated dirt into buckets that must be sieved and
sorted.
20
Figure 4.2: Since Mac (and the player, presumably) do not know how to excavate in real life, it makes
ludonarrative sense that a character in the game will explain the literal and game mechanics of excavating.
The player experiences a variety of activities that represent the types of activities that archaeologists
engage in while having an opportunity to interact and \do" these things on their own. In these ways,
Mac Goes Back lets the player be complicit in archaeology, where other games do not.
4.2 ePads as a Solution to the Inventory Issue
In most point and click games, the puzzles revolve around the inventory, a collection of objects that the
player picks up, combines, uses, or gives to others throughout the game to unlock and progress the story.
This allows for some notoriously delightful and absurd puzzles that involve the unlikely combination of
items to solve a problem, but it is part of the charm of the genre (and often the source of frustration).
4
However, in terms of archaeology, picking things up that either do not belong to the player because they
are someone else's possessions, or they are an artifact that cannot be removed without proper recording,
would oppose the goals of the game. It would mean the player is a thief, no better than Nathan Drake.
Therefore, Mac Goes Back required an inventory solution that avoids any connotations of a deep pocket
yet feels familiar to the point and click adventure player.
4
E.g. Creighton (2012), Gilbert (2004).
21
The design solution to this problem is the \ePad system", which allows for the responsible handling of
artifacts. Most contemporary excavations in the real world have moved towards a digital recording system,
such as using iPads or laptops in the eld, in lieu of paper recording which can be slow, voluminous,
and prone to data loss. In the game, one of the team members inspired by such methods, devises a new
recording system using ePads (i.e. a tablet) for the excavation but becomes sick, so bequeathing his ePad
and research responsibilities to Mac. Becoming ill on an archaeological dig is almost a rite of passage,
so this narrative beat serves the additional purpose of worldbuilding and provides Mac a reason to use
the ePad as well as some emotional stakes. Through the ePad, Mac can interface with artifacts in a
somewhat realistic manner, although there are some ctional, quality-of-life features on the ePad system
for usability reasons, such as easing the player burden on memory.
5
For the ePad to make narrative sense and not be too much of a technological or ctional stretch, the
player actually has two inventories { one is a traditional one for \real-world" objects such as the ePad
itself or the trowel the player uses to excavate (Figure 4.3). This is consistent with the point and click
genre and relies on the known drag and drop interface with a disappearing inventory bar at the top that
appears on mouse over. However, one dierence in Mac Goes Back is that each object Mac receives for
her inventory is given to her with consent; she cannot pick anything up from around the site. Within
that inventory lives the ePad, a second \digital" inventory of artifacts and simultaneous record of the
player's progress as well as some hints to remind the player what they were working on or where they
might look next. One of the core functions of the ePad, which is explained in-game as the excavation's
recording system, is to record artifacts either by taking a picture of them in situ or by drawing them by
hand.
6
Once an artifact is recorded on the ePad, Mac can safely do things to the digital version of the
artifact by showing her ePad to specialists if she wants to discuss it or manipulate the drawing/photo
5
For example, the ePad automatically updates text related to each artifact as Mac learns more about it. This text
reminds the player what they did to earn it (e.g. \I put the pieces back togethe") and points them towards the next step
(e.g. \I wonder what these symbols mean?").
6
The player need not choose whether to take a photo or draw the artifact, but the dierence exists for narrative reasons.
The act of recording artifacts onto the ePad is emphasized in dialogue to help clarify that everything on the ePad is a photo
or a drawing and not the artifact itself.
22
Figure 4.3: By mousing over the top of the screen, the player can access Mac's regular inventory. By
clicking on the ePad within that inventory, the player access the ePad and its digital inventory of artifacts.
The background colors on the artifacts tell the player whether there is more work to be done on them.
in some way. Dragging the ePad onto another character to show them an artifact is meant to evoke the
deliberate behavior of showing someone something in the real world, but it does create a somewhat clunky
divide where there are two separate actions { \talk" to the character (which results in world and character
building dialogue) { and \show ePad" to (which allows the player to ask anyone about any of the artifacts
they currently have recorded and are working on). In other words, anything related to the archaeology,
such as discussing an artifact or conducting an analysis, involves the ePad, but other interactions take
place using the regular inventory items or through regular conversation. There is, perhaps, some work to
be done to make this separation less ludonarratively disruptive for the player, although this may just be
a good example of the limitations of the point and click genre.
Along those lines, yet another limitation to the idea of an inventory system and how it applies to
archaeological artifacts is the problem of in
ow and out
ow. In point and click adventure games, this

ow is crucial as inventory items are usually used up to solve problems. In fact, one way that players can
track progress or success, in a well-designed adventure game, is how many items they have left in their
inventory. If there are items remaining, the player knows that they will probably need to use it before
they can move on. For the artifacts in Mac Goes Back, this raised several questions about what becomes
of the ePad items as you collect them and progress. The solution we implemented is a system where each
artifact has a research \path", beginning as an unknown and ending when it is \fully researched." Each
artifact has a unique path, requiring Mac to experience dierent methods in order to \complete" the
23
artifact's research trajectory. When that happens, the player is rewarded with Mac's understanding of
what that artifact was used for, and then they work with an NPC to \upload" the data to the excavation
team's network so that the data is backed up. Uploading the data is both a short term and long-term
goal for the narrative and frames the core loop: record an artifact, research the artifact to completion,
then upload and advance the narrative. Ultimately, this loop is just a re-framed version of the loop at
the heart of all point and click adventure games: procure an object, gure out how the object is used in
the puzzle solution, use the object correctly and advance the narrative.
24
Chapter 5
Evaluating the Gameplay Experience
All game design is a hypothesis until it is tested in the hands of players and they either experience
what the design intends, or they do not, and changes to the design must be made. This testing can
occur in informal and formal ways, from a simple observational playtest to a more robust research plan
involving surveys or other methods. Throughout the development process we primarily tested Mac Goes
Back in informal ways, and even this casual testing led to numerous changes, but the project would
certainly benet even further from a more formal, controlled evaluation when the nal build is ready.
1
Early playtests on inchoate builds were disappointing but useful as they revealed several shortcomings
of the planned puzzle design as well as frustrations with the narrative. Players did not like Mac the
character or relate to her, and they were frustrated by boring puzzles that prevented them from getting
to the more exciting archaeology parts. In fact, the only parts of the game players seemed to enjoy
enjoyed were the interactions with artifacts, including excavation and a simple jigsaw puzzle that was
ready at the time. This led us to remove a lot of non-archaeological content, as noted earlier, to get to the
archaeology faster and make sure it was central to the game experience.
2
These early tests also revealed
some unintentional and very undesirable issues related to \pixel-hunting" which were quickly rectied.
1
Mac Goes Back was playtested on an ad-hoc basis using conveniently sampled volunteers, e.g. friends, peers, colleagues,
or faculty members, although several archaeologists also played and commented on the game.
2
For example, in an earlier version of the game, there was a rather lateral puzzle sequence derived from point and
click classics where the goal was to help someone with an injury by procuring duct tape from the generator to serve as a
band-aid. On paper, it was an amusing idea designed to build the world and characters, but in execution was rather tedious
and players did not enjoy it.
25
Later tests on the rst fully playable build, which had more archaeology and more of the narrative, were
simultaneously encouraging yet revealed further issues with narrative stakes and emotional connection.
While players like \doing things" and wanted to know more about the artifacts, the game was too linear
and too direct, also \boring" and \clinical". Mac { and by extension, the player { was frequently told
what to do and shuttled from one task to another. This too closely resembled the \work" territory we
were trying to avoid, as players reported a lack of sense of discovery and possibility, and any real emotional
connection to other characters or the world that made them want to be in the world of archaeology and
explore it fully. These results were the primary catalyst for our biggest and most important revelation
(one of the concessions discussed earlier): the game needed to be entertaining above all, with archaeology
done well but second to compelling gameplay. If people liked the game and enjoyed their experience
in the game, then they would likely walk away with favorable feelings about the kind of archaeology
they engaged and possibly be more receptive to the message of the game. Subsequent major narrative
and gameplay revisions intended to address this multifaceted issue have yet to be tested completely, but
intermittent feedback indicates that we are moving in the right direction.
3
It would be possible to evaluate how well the design of Mac Goes Back accomplishes its goals using a
more formal research plan, with the understanding that the game is not intended to be educational or a
treatment to disabuse misconceptions about archaeology. An ideal test would ask fans of point and click
adventure games to play Mac Goes Back and gauge sentiment on their experience through observational
playtests, surveys, interviews, or perhaps telemetry. We would collect information on whether players
understand the puzzle logic, whether it is too hard or too easy, if the narrative makes sense, what beats
resonate the most with the player, etc. Then, we would delve deeper into the archaeological subject matter
through interview and survey questions, likely pre-and-post play questionnaires, designed to understand
if and what players learned about archaeology by playing the game. There are several ways to gain
3
For example, we initially planned for Mac to work on a timeline which meant she had to work on the archaeological
material in chronological order and then gure out the order of things at the end. This rigid chronology led to rigid, linear
gameplay. One of the major revisions allows Mac to work across contemporary units and not worry about chronology,
and we cut the timeline. We also tied the game goal \upload the researched artifacts" to the character's personal goal of
connecting with her friends in the outside world.
26
insight into what the archaeology might mean to a player: for instance, we could ask them to describe
or dene archaeology before and after playing the game, or list what they think it is archaeologists do,
or archaeological word associations, etc. Since the game assumes that players who play Mac Goes Back
have little prior knowledge but will walk away with more than what they came in with, it would be
sensible to design a research study that interrogates that assumption. However, it is important to note
that any research on player experience in Mac Goes Back would be used only to improve the design of
the game, and not in any way to suggest or evaluate the ecacy of video games to \teach" archaeology,
although the results could inform future pursuits.
27
Chapter 6
Further Development
The playable build of Mac Goes Back for the purposes of the MFA thesis project is a fraction of the
overall game, an hour or less total playtime of the envisioned 5-7-hour game. This means that the full
game would have a much longer narrative,
ipping back and forth between Mac and Iki several times,
with more time to slowly build character and world through more interactions in both the excavation
and Maya worlds, ultimately resolving in a parallel conclusion. Mac's personal development in the game,
where she becomes more invested in the Maya people and her peers around the excavation, is designed
to unfold over this longer narrative; it is dicult to convincingly convey character growth in a 40-minute
narrative game. Another important aspect of the longer version of the game is the time to slowly introduce
and then build up archaeological knowledge in the player, creating important \ah-ha" movements, for
example, when the player is able to recognize and artifact later on or know exactly whom to speak to
about a specic topic. This is, perhaps, the ultimate experience of Mac Goes Back, and yet the truncated
version does not fully capture it, although I believe the potential for this experience is communicated.
Some planned features for the longer game, such as additional ePad functions and optional artifacts for
the sake of learning more/\completionist" players, would also support that experience.
As a result of a reduced scope, some narrative beats appear earlier than intended and other shortcuts
were taken to make the story even a little bit satisfying and to emphasize the archaeological parts of
the game. The beginning of the game is also designed to get the player doing archaeology as quickly as
28
possible, eectively preventing them from doing anything but the rst couple of tasks which are necessary
for narrative and mechanical introductions. In other words, the \on-rails" design is deliberate but not
originally intended, and whose implementation was the result of both playtest feedback and constantly
measuring the game against its experience goals. Since Mac Goes Back thesis edition is an experiment
in designing a point and click adventure game about real archaeology, it was necessary to prioritize a
concise, archaeology-focused demo over a slower, less guided, more exploration-focused experience, as the
full-length game might allow.
29
Chapter 7
Conclusions
The production of Mac Goes Back was an arduous, but extremely worthwhile personal and professional
journey { nally, the actual manifestation of an idea I have ruminated on for a long time: sharing my
passion for and experience with archaeology through the medium of video games. Although the nal
product by May 2020 is more towards a proof-of-concept than actual nished, shippable product, it is an
important milestone and accomplishment, nonetheless.
The design of Mac Goes Back, thesis edition, does a few things successfully and leaves room for
iteration and improvement in others. Overall, it represents the successful adaptation of a point and click
game to the world of archaeology. A point and click style game remains the best choice to meet the goals
of the game as it allows players to explore a narrative through interacting with characters, objects, and
the world. These interactions in the game take the form of actions that a real archaeologist does regularly:
look at, talk to, examine, record, etc., and they lead to the discovery of new knowledge that eventually
comes together to tell a story. There are some limitations inherent to the point and click model, such as
too much clicking, a lot of text to read, and the inventory system, that are worth exploring in the future,
and yet Mac Goes Back probably also could have done more to fully embrace point and click gameplay.
1
1
By this I mean the player only ever has a few objects in their inventory and infrequently uses them by dragging and
dropping them onto hoptsots in the world, so either builidng that out more fully or designing a way around it would probably
be best. Also, the genre is known for really elaborate puzzle sequences and everything in Mac Goes Back is pretty short,
mostly do to scope.
30
The narratives in the past and present, even in their truncated forms, work well to support the goals
of the game and to create synergy between the two worlds, although most of the characters are noticeably
under-utilized and the game could do much more in the future to emphasize the sense of community on an
archaeological dig given time and resources. One limitation to the chapters of the game set on excavation
is the limited traversable area. In other words, the player navigates the same 6 or 7 panels over and over
and interacts with the same characters, except for a few possible unlocks in the longer game, such as the
occasional extra room or new trench or site visitor. Even still, a hallmark of point and click adventure
games is unlocking and exploring entirely new areas or parts of the world as the game progresses, often
never to return to previously traversed panels once completed. Thus, sustaining player interest on the
excavation in Mac Goes Back is both a risk and an exciting design challenge, but the narrative set in the
past allows for much more traditional point and click adventure gameplay, with Iki visiting dierent parts
of Tikal and exploring dierent aspects of the Maya world, so ideally the two narratives could balance
each other out.
With more time and resources, and by incorporating the production and design lessons learned from
these 1.5 years of development, the nugget that is currently Mac Goes Back could be revised, expanded,
and released as a full-length game in the future. In fact, making Mac Goes Back available for the public
to play is the only way to fulll the underlying mission of the game: providing an accessible, more
realistic alternative to the ctional yet enduringly popular and wildly inaccurate fantasies that dominate
the public's understanding of archaeology.
31
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Coxemans, V. (1988). El marcador de juego de pelota de tikal: Nuevas referencias epigracas para el
periodo clasico temprano. Mesoam erica, 9(15):117{135.
Creighton, R. (March 2, 2012). The six most infamous puzzles in adventure game his-
tory. Gamasutra. https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RyanCreighton/20120302/164164/
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Mac Goes Back is a point and click adventure game in development for PC in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media & Games Design at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. In the game, titular protagonist—18-year-old Macaria Magan—begrudgingly joins her mother Persephone, a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, on excavation at Tikal, Guatemala. The two have a strained relationship: one without any future prospects, current ideas, or any sense of who she is, and the other determined on the outside, but falling to pieces over the potential “loss”of her daughter. To top it off, the fieldwork season is full of surprises, the kind that have career-making potential, but also attract unwanted attention... In the rare moments when Mac is not preoccupied with her own future plans, which may or may not involve substituting college to move with her best friend to Los Angeles, California (where she will be closer to her father), Mac helps the team uncover and analyze sensational evidence of political intrigue in the Classic Maya period. But all that fieldwork must be getting to her because Mac begins to dream about the lives of the people whose remains and whose descendants surround her, especially a Maya woman named Iki on the eve of an unforgettable “arrival” in AD 378. ❧ This paper first problematizes the state of video game archaeology and outlines the project goals of Mac Goes Back — to provide a more realistic alternative to misleading archaeology fictions like Indiana Jones. It then discusses the narrative and gameplay design elements that support the game’s goals. It also describes the challenges of a research-based game and lessons learned over the course of the game development process. Finally, this paper conveys the vision for a longer version of the game and outlines ways to evaluate the player experience.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Vanzin, Rudi Helena (author)

Core Title Mac goes not back, but towards a more responsible representation of archaeology in video games

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/22/2020

Defense Date 04/16/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag archaeology,Classic Maya,game design,OAI-PMH Harvest,point and click adventure,science outreach,Tikal

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Malamed, Laird (committee chair), Ingold, Jon (committee member), Moser, Margaret (committee member)

Creator Email rudivanzin@gmail.com,vanzin@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-283157

Unique identifier UC11673492

Identifier etd-VanzinRudi-8298.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-283157 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-VanzinRudi-8298.pdf

Dmrecord 283157

Document Type Thesis

Rights Vanzin, Rudi Helena

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA