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Digital Ludeme Project Modelling the Evolution of Traditional Games |
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A World of Games Exhibition Museum of World Culture (Världskulturmuseet) in Gothenburg, Sweden 1 April 2023 – 31 September 2025 In 2022 we were delighted when the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden, invited the Digital Ludeme Project to be part of their major upcoming exhibition A World of Games.  After more than a year of somewhat intense preparation the exhibition opened to a packed house on 1 April 2023.  The opening ceremony included a concert by classical musicians playing interpretations of famous video game themes.  We are very pleased with the results. The exhibition looks stunning and really captures the world of games and play.  The exhibits include an impressive range of games from many cultures and time periods, including possibly the oldest known game board (the Mn board at the bottom right, from Ancient Egypt c.5500–3050BC).  A World of Games is very "hands on" and provides several replica game sets with which visitors can play ancient games against each other while sitting inches away from the originals.  The DLP is well represented with three installations in its own room.  The centrepiece of the DLP section is a large wall screen showing the animated story of games and how they have spread across the world throughout history. Users can interact with the map to select categories of games, make time run forwards or backwards, and pull up details on any particular game. This installation summarises the wealth of historical information stored in the DLP games database in an accessible way.  In the Make Your Own Game activity, users are invited to create their own games by selecting a board on a touchscreen, dragging pieces onto it, then selecting movement, capture and winning rules. They can then test the resulting games by playing against a friend or an AI opponent (a simplified version of our Ludii program). This activity conveys the notion that games are mixtures of ludemes – a concept central to the Digital Ludeme Project! – and that it is easy to create new games but not so easy to create interesting new games.  The exhibition had 12,000 visitors in its first two weeks and the museum expects to receive around 150,000 visitors per year. A World of Games runs for 18 months at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg then moves to the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm for a further 12 months.  DLP
Day of Public Talks Museum of World
Culture (Världskulturmuseet) in Gothenburg,
Sweden
On Wednesday 3 May the Digital Ludeme
Project ran a day of public talks and
workshops on ancient games and AI at the Museum of
World Culture (Världskulturmuseet) in Gothenburg,
in conjunction with the A
World of Games exhibition. This event
featured talks from DLP team members and invited
speakers, followed by two workshops. The talks
were: 2. Discovering
Dadu: A Ludemic Enigma from South Asia 3. The Digital
Ludeme Project: Reconstructing Ancient Games 4. The Past as
Playground
The workshops
focussed on the challenge of reconstructing
plausible and workable rules sets for ancient and
traditional games given very little information to
work with. Participants were divided into groups
and given replicas of ancient game sets and
information sheets listing what is known about
them, then tasked with devising how those games
might have been played. Some creative ideas
emerged and it was interesting to see how many of
the participants worked concepts from modern games
– even video games – into these ancient contexts.
The event was well
attended with around 40 participants and
highlighted how well games lend themselves to such
"hands on" activities that really engage the
public and stimulate their interest and
imagination.
Thanks to the
Museum of World Culture (and Björn Lindgren in
particular!) for arranging and hosting the event.
Here are the
worksheets devised by Walter for the workshops:
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Maastricht University Data Science and Knowledge Engineering (DKE) Paul-Henri Spaaklaan 1, 6229 EN, Maastricht, NL |
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Funded by a €2m ERC Consolidator Grant (#771292) from the European Research Council. |  |