Experimental Archaeogaming

Abstract

Archaeogaming is an area of increasing interest within archaeology. As archaeogaming's theory and practice are being fleshed out, it is worth considering if there are parallels to traditional archaeological methods within the study of video games. Here, we examine one such possibility: is there an archaeogaming equivalent to experimental archaeology? As a case study, we explore the system used for the mid-1980s development of an unreleased video game prototype for the game company Activision. Through examining this development system, whose use would be otherwise invisible in the finished software artifact, we demonstrate how we have both reconstructed a seemingly lost piece of the system virtually and used this reconstruction for experiments. The methodology we describe can be applied to digital artifacts within contemporary archaeology beyond the scope of video games, and it illustrates some key differences between studying physical and digital artifacts.