What happens when you apply the "steely, assertive mind" of a professional archaeologist to the shifting digital landscapes of video games? In this episode, we sit down with Florence Smith Nicholls to discuss her transition from excavating Bronze Age Greece to conducting the first formal archaeological survey of Elden Ring.

We explore the concept of inside-out research —diving deep into the "innards" of a game's server to map player traces—and discuss why the ephemeral nature of digital play requires a new movement called anticipatory archaeology.

Key Discussion Points

• From Fieldwork to Digital Spaces: Florence describes her journey from working on London construction sites as a heritage consultant to discovering the "archaeogaming" community on the Internet.
• The Elden Ring Survey: A deep dive into Florence’s "laborious" process of mapping the Church of Elleh using the player’s foot as a unit of measurement.
• Deciphering Player Traces: How bloodstains and messages left by "people who play videogames"  serve as digital artifacts of human activity and server algorithms.
• Generative Archaeology Games: An exploration of procedural generation and games like Blue Prince and Outer Wilds that encourage players to role-play as interpreters of material culture.
• The Ethics of Recording: Why we must treat the "assemblage of play" (the player, hardware, and software) as a significant cultural form  before it disappears into the ether.

Mentioned in this Episode

• Elden Ring (FromSoftware)
• Nothing Beside Remains (Florence Smith Nicholls)
• Blue Prince (Dogubomb)
• Curse of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope)
• The Assemblage of Play by T.L. Taylor

Notable Quotes

"I’m fascinated by how players can come up with emergent storytelling... mapping the digital landscape is a way to understand why these experiences were so important to us."

Music by Nick Sylvester. Hosted by Jamin Warren.

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