Games with Culture: Using Cultural Heritage as Game-Making Material

Abstract

This study examines how games express youth's engagement with different types of cultural heritage. It is part of the Europe Horizon project EPIC-WE (2023-2026), in which over 400 young people took part in 12 cultural game jams in three cities in the European Union. The paper combines a distant reading of all 116 EPIC-WE games with a close reading of three selected examples. The readings are based on a conceptual framework that draws its categories from UNESCO documents (tangible heritage and intangible heritage), critical heritage studies (authorised and subversive heritage discourses), game studies (national and regional heritage in games), and works related to the EPIC-WE project (games through culture and games for culture). The paper proposes a complex approach to the analysis of games and heritage, which may also be useful in the study of the complexity and intersectionality of game- and heritage- -related pleasures.