From triple-A blockbusters like Assassin’s Creed and God of War to indie darlings like Hades and The Forgotten City, video games are an important medium through which contemporary creators represent and reimagine the Greek and Roman worlds. This talk will examine several case studies from recent games and discuss questions important to historical games scholars: What makes the classical past a valuable source of material for game developers? How do games make use ancient material to discuss modern themes? What claims about history and culture do these games make?
Hamish Cameron is a Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington where he works on the history and geography of the Roman Near East, representations of imperialism in classical literature, and reception in modern analog and digital games. His work has covered the representation of the Roman Army in Assassin’s Creed Origins, landscapes of violence and Herodotean conspiracy thinking in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, mythic paratexts in Hades, and using modern analog games to teach classics.
‘Playing with the past: classical worlds in video games’ is the 2022 Graham Zanker Lecture, a series curated by the University of Canterbury Department of Classics. This event is proudly brought to you by UC Classics, the UC Teece Museum and Christchurch City Libraries.
