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"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."
Jamin Warren founded Killscreen as well as Gameplayarts, an organization dedicated to the education and practice of game-based arts and culture. He has produced events such as the Versions conference for VR arts and creativity, in partnership with NEW INC. Warren also programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kill Screen Festival, which Mashable called "the TED of videogames." Additionally, he has served as an advisor for the Museum of Modern Art's design department, acted as cluster chair for the Gaming category for the Webbys, and hosted Game/Show for PBS Digital Studios.
Jamin Warren: 00:00
Okay. All right. Great, great, great. Um. All right. After a— Hello?
Florence Nichols Smith: 00:34
Yeah.
Jamin Warren: 00:35
All right, cool. I think I'm good now. All right. Let me get my notes and everything. How are you doing? Thanks for meeting with me at the end of your day.
Florence Nichols Smith: 00:46
Oh yeah, no, no worries. No, I'm doing pretty well. Um, I actually just came back from a LARP in Poland, so, um, a couple of days ago. So I've been a bit, um, yeah, just kind of recovering from that. But otherwise, no, I'm pretty good. How about you?
Jamin Warren: 01:03
I'm doing pretty good. Uh, it's been, um—we have a three-and-a-half-year-old, so we've been doing a lot of school visits, which is, um... Yeah, just like LAUSD—we live in Los Angeles and, um, like LAUSD, it's a big school system and, um, there's all these weird, like, extra choices and stuff. You can send your kids to a neighborhood school or, like, there's other schools... There's this weird thing in Los Angeles where, like... Because in the US, uh, public schools, their funding comes from like the total number of kids, but it also comes from, um, from taxes. And so there's a lot of variance—I don't know how it works in, like, Europe for example—but like, um, there's a lot of variance between the, you know, the the the... the schools are not... they don't receive the same amount of money. They don't have the same amount of resources. And then some schools have these like booster programs where parents basically raise money for the schools and obviously those are bet— So you have this weird dynamic where like these high-performing public schools are in these very wealthy neighborhoods, but the wealthy families don't send their kids there because they send their kids to private school. So... so like, after all that, they're like driving getting kids from like the neighborhood schools and whatnot. So it means that there are spots that are open, you have to go visit, and it's just more complicated than I—I um... personally I think we should abolish private school, but that's my my personal, my personal feeling. So, anyway, that's that's what we've been, uh... That's what we've been dealing with.
Florence Nichols Smith: 02:32
Oh man, that sounds super stressful.
Jamin Warren: 02:34
Yeah, it only happens—you only have to deal with it like basically one time and then after after that, like your kid's in your school and... Um, we do have, which is nice, we do have, um... um... Sorry, my computer fell asleep here. Um, we do have, um, dual immersion programs here in Los Angeles, which is like pretty unusual, um, for Spanish and then Spanish and then some schools have like Mandarin and, uh, at a very, at a very, very young age, which I know that's how it's done in other countries if you want kids to speak more than one language. It has to start like pretty young, like not when you're in high school. So... yeah. Anyway, um, but that's what's—that's what's top of—clearly that's what's top of mind for me right now. But, um... Yeah. Um, cool. Well, let's get started. Um, I have some questions for you. Um, this is like a, um, this is a like a general—like this is for like a like a general audience that like knows games, um, because it'll be it'll be for for Kill Screen. So it's an audience that knows games, but um, you know, I would just ask like, um, like when talking about specific games, like we'll talk about Elden Ring for example, um, I wouldn't presume—I mean, you know, it's what's weird about games is like even though everybody plays them, it's really fragmented. And so like, like, you know, I've played some Elden Ring, but I haven't gone, you know, I haven't done like 600 hours.
Florence Nichols Smith: 03:50
It's like, "But how does that work?" Yeah. And then you have to explain that it's unclear.
Jamin Warren: 03:55
Right. So you don't have to say like, you know, "Elden Ring, a, you know, fantasy role-playing game and fantasy role-playing..." So, but, uh, I think when talking about some of the specific like archaeol—like some of the specific like archaeological work that you've done over the years, you can be just a little bit more, um... um, but yeah. Cool. Well, I think to get started, um, you know, you spent, you know—I understand that you spent seven years, you know, working as a professional archaeologist? Is that right? Before making your way like into games? What what led you to like archaeology as a as a profession?
Florence Nichols Smith: 04:26
Yeah, that's a really good question. So, I think it's because like, back at like secondary school, um, I studied what was called like Classical Civilization as an A-level. Um, I'm trying to think what the equivalent to that would be in the US actually. But it's between—it was, um, between the ages of 16 and 18. So like before going off to university and I really enjoyed that because it gave like a general kind of, um... or it was an A-level where you were looking at like archaeology, history, um, all these kind of things to do with like the classical world. And then I kind of realized, okay, I want to kind of look at classical archaeology specifically. Um, so did that at university, um, came out, but then, um, needed to get a job and, um, got a job as a field archaeologist, um, in London. Um, so kind of did that for several years and that was really, um, uh, kind of like working on construction sites, um, uh, pla—areas that were going to be kind of like developed, um, kind of uh, yeah, doing various bits of field work on those kind of sites. And then I was a heritage consultant, also in London, kind of like doing sort of like, um, reports on, uh, the archaeological potential of, yeah, um, sites in the kind of planning process in London. Um, so kind of like gauging, okay, what kind of work—archaeological, um, work needs to be done here, um, in advance or during kind of specific developments depending on what the archaeological potential was.
Jamin Warren: 06:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you say "classical archaeology," for someone who does—knows a little bit about archaeology—what does that—does that mean, does that refer to like the method or the time period or or both?
Florence Nichols Smith: 06:25
Yeah, so that was, um, more kind of like, uh, the time period. So kind of like classics as a whole. So like, um, very broadly that would be like, um, ancient Greek and ancient Roman kind of, uh, periods. But I was really interested in, um, Bronze Age—Bronze Age Greece specifically. I had a very specific interest, um, which is, uh, let's say from around roughly 3000 BC to like 1100 BC. It's bad because, you know, I specialized in this a while ago so like I'm always like thinking, okay, I need to remember the dates for these things. It's not what I'm thinking about now these days. But anyway, just to put it I guess in context. Um, so I was quite interested in actually like the pre-classical Greece actually weirdly enough, like kind of, um... Uh, yeah.
Jamin Warren: 07:23
Got it, got it, got it. And and you—I suspect that this is, uh... and you mentioned the like the work that you're doing, like developers would call someone like you when they're—or the city. And in part that is I'm sure a function of like, um, living—like in the United States, like, um, you know, the the classical work we have is like mostly like indigenous, like there's indigenous artifacts, but like in terms of, um, like certainly in the last like 300 years in terms of like, uh, like urbanization, there were not, um... Like the cities that we have, the ancient cities that we have in the United States, do not map directly on the like where ancient cities were—ancient ancient cities like are today in terms of like like size and scale. Unlike say like a like a Mexico City or something like that. Um, the United States doesn't have as as much of that. I think the, it was like one of the largest, one of the largest indigenous cities I believe it's like in the center center of the country, it's like in Indiana or Ohio. And huge city, but there's not like, um, Chicago is not built on top of it, right? So... um, um... but you know, I suspect that are some of these like issue—more issues with, um, like European cities where there's less ma—you know, there's less space, people have been building on top of certain areas like for dec—you know, for a long, long time as opposed to maybe places in the Americas where there might be more space for people to like move around and you see less of these kind of like continued development, like, you know, the Roman—the Roman Lasagna thing. Every tour guide in, you know, Rome always tells you, "Rome's like a la—it's like a lasagna! You can't—it's very hard to build here. There's always something. There's always something to dig up." But, um...
Florence Nichols Smith: 08:37
Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. The different layers. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, that's totally true.
Jamin Warren: 08:50
Um, did... So when you made the like the the transition—when you started thinking about, um, like engaging with games, like did your colleagues in archaeology, did they like understand what you were thinking about? Or like were you having dialogue with them like, "Hey, I'm thinking about like moving in this particular direction?" Were they open—open for you moving from like a physical world like into a into a digital one?
Florence Nichols Smith: 09:16
Okay. So. Yeah, I guess to give context. I kind of discovered video games archaeology or archaeogaming as a thing, I guess, I want to say in the mid-2010s on Twitter. Like Twitter was where it was like... that was, you know... when it was Twitter and when Twitter was a, you know... I mean still toxic in some ways, but like not what it is currently. So, um, it was very much like, um, in a way like an online community. There were like a few archaeologists here and there that were very interested in this area. Um, so that's how I first came across it. And in terms of like my day-to-day work who I was working with, I think those people, you know, had never heard of this, not surprisingly. And when I'd kind of bring up—I was doing sort of my own independent research on the side and I think some people were just a little bit kind of, I don't know what the right word would be... maybe just a bit confused or kind of like, "Okay, like, why are you doing this?" Like, I guess it just didn't seem relevant to them. But having said that, I think there were people who were curious about it, um, and maybe could see where like the applications were. And I think over time it has become more like more and more people kind of I guess in the archaeological community, um, do see kind of I guess the relevance or value in it. But it's definitely, I feel like, yeah, especially in the mid kind of 2010s and onwards, yeah, people were very confused. It's a very like niche little thing, which yeah, does make sense.
Jamin Warren: 10:48
I guess that's true. I mean, I think with games sometimes there is like a... there's a perception I think for people coming from outside or in academia—I mean I guess it goes obviously like very serious serious silos... siloing that happens inside the academy. People like to have their thing. And when you start thinking in an interdisciplinary way, it's kind of you're sort of stuck between these like... stuck between worlds. And I think that the study of games, it's been very challenging because like the application of it is really spread across like, you know, there's obviously the engineering and technical side, but you know you can look at games as literature. You can look at as poetry. You can look at it as—you can look at the the visual the visual elements. There's like the interactive systems like... if there's—it's almost like games as a medium are almost so rich it becomes like very hard sometimes, uh, to when you just want to focus on one specific thing, sometimes the the place that you're coming from may not recognize where it is that you are, uh, that you're trying that you're trying to go.
Florence Nichols Smith: 11:45
Yes. Yeah, definitely. And because like even though, I don't know, I always think like, "Well, surely we're past that at this stage," but honestly like even now, like all the time, I think I will talk to people and they don't understand games as being something beyond something very specific for them. Like they have these very entrenched ideas of what they are and who they're for and what they can be. And like, it—I know that also is a thing in games discourse and people in the industry who always feel like, you know, they want to be taken as seriously as film or something, you know. But like I mean it's true. People don't—I've met people who are like, "Oh, you could do game studies? Like film studies?" It's like, "Well, of course, yeah!" But to them that just doesn't make sense. So it's interesting that that is still a prevailing kind of, I don't know, misconception.
Jamin Warren: 12:30
I mean, I think that's true. I'm sure it was true for film studies. I'm sure, you know... move from epic poetry to lyric poetry. Like, "I can't believe that you're focused on..." Like, you know, it's just sort of part and... We just don't—we just don't... I guess the difference is like we're not like privy—there's not as maybe as much... oh, I mean I suppose there's some... I maybe it's because we're living through it and so it feels very like present to kind of like see this like sea change, but I suspect that there was just as much skepticism around like film, um, film as a medium in the early days. Um, but I don't know. Maybe not. People—it was like pretty magical, so. That's a good... um. Um, so you you have hands-on excavation experience, so, you know, processing finds, um, dealing—writing planning assessments, like that kind of stuff that you do in like field archaeology. How how has some of those like the tactical elements of being a field archaeologist, how has that maybe, um, shaped how you approach like game analysis? Like, has it shaped the way you look at questions you ask? Um, yeah, if you can see a direct line between that hands-on approach and the the the the work that you would be doing as a, you know, in archaeogaming.
Florence Nichols Smith: 13:36
Mm. Yeah, it's a really interesting question because I think there is like, um... I guess one of the ways in which people immediately have a disconnect between this idea of like archaeology and video games is that, yeah, archaeology is very much about materiality, like you're saying. Like that is kind of like the focus of the field. And also if you are a field archaeologist, yeah, it is literally like that, um, embodied experience, you know, of being in on a site even apart from like, yeah, even just like touching soil and like, you know, that's a way of like gauging different contexts and things like that. So when you're like thinking about digital space, that can be I guess in some ways that can be challenging because by definition you're thinking about an immaterial space in a way. However, I suppose the way that it has influenced me is to try and think about, um, the experience of play as not just being like what is happening on the screen. Even though I have been studying that, you know, but it's also like, um, you know, like play always has a context. There's always kind of a, you know, a person or people—um, they may not always be in the same room, that's true, but like who are physically, you know, playing with hardware. Um, and so I think like thinking about the specific context in which people access and play these games... What is the materiality of that play even if it's still very much an immaterial experience in some ways? Um, there's a... uh, an article by T.L. Taylor which is called "The Assemblage of Play," which was very influential for me, um, because, um, she really talks about this idea of like, yeah, when we play there's always an assemblage of the player, the hardware, the software. But also like thinking about, well what time of day are they playing? Like, you know, is someone playing on their phone? Like, you know, like on the... Yeah, like what else do they have going on in their life at the same time? Like how does it like form part of the routine of their life? Um, or how is it influenced by other things that are going on? Um, so I think that that's something I try and think about a lot or or it's always kind of in the back of my mind.
Jamin Warren: 15:56
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like it works the other way? That maybe like the work that you've been doing in gaming could in theory inform, like go the other direction? That maybe informs the way... maybe asks some questions that are not being asked in... not being asked in... not being asked in, um, archaeology. Yeah.
Florence Nichols Smith: 16:11
Mm. I think, um... I think there's definitely some applications in terms of kind of like this wider idea of like public archaeology and how we sort of think about engaging the public with, um, archaeology. I mean, there's kind of perhaps more obvious ways of like discussing that in terms of okay, like, how is like for example, I don't know, um, ancient Greece depicted in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which is, you know, is an important question. [Laughs] I don't feel like the way I'm saying this, like... coming out a bit strange. But I guess what I mean is like, um, thinking about, um, I suppose... I've lost my train of thought as I'm talking. So I feel like I've gone off on a bit of a tangent. But, no, something I'm really interested in in games is, um, environmental storytelling and how I think that, um, kind of like encourages players in a way to be archaeologists because they're interpreting the material culture in this world. And so, um, I feel that games kind of maybe suggest ways in which we can maybe engage people in kind of archaeological interpretation in these very kind of playful ways. I feel that, um, it is this field that, you know, its thing is about materiality, how we interpret it, and... I don't know, I guess it's kind of a a general kind of rambling answer, but maybe I feel like there's just something there about like... Yeah, yeah.
Jamin Warren: 17:49
Do you feel like there was a a moment where your training as a field archaeologist, like kind of a, like something during a process of looking at a game that you're like, "Oh, this is an appro—" like you could sort of in your mind be like, "Oh, this connects directly to my previous training. I'm looking at a game in a way or something in a game that maybe only my eyes with my previous training could, uh, could see?"
Florence Nichols Smith: 18:11
Mm. That's a really good question. Hmm. Hmm. I suppose that I think, um... I think that like having experience in like, um, archaeological excavation and kind of like I guess like being trained to do it in a kind of quite structured and meticulous way, that, um, kind of led me to be able to sort of develop, um, certain methodologies in games. Like with the Elden Ring work, um, there was so much about thinking about how can you, um, kind of, uh, record, um, let's say messages for example in the game, um, but do so in a way that means that, um, let's say if someone comes back later on, they can maybe reconstruct what you saw. Um, or kind of thinking about, um, I guess basically in thinking about data collection in a way. Um, and thinking about kind of because I was very much trained to—when you're a field archaeologist, you know, you kind of, um, you excavate something, you fill in context sheets, but you also, uh, take photographs, um, and draw plans. So it's almost like there's this a level of like, um, how would you put it? Like, redundancy? Is that the right way of thinking about it? Like right, you have these like multiple kind of types of record that are all kind of referencing each other. Um, and I think that that's... as I'm thinking it through, like that's something that I was then when I was thinking about games and how, you know, we were saying earlier they are these very complex like pieces of media. And I think that's why trying to record them in any way is like very also very complicated. And actually ideally you would have these different types of records, I think, of the experience. Though even as I say that, you know, there's lots of different ways you could take that.
Jamin Warren: 20:18
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, well let's talk about the Elden Ring paper. Tell me a bit about like, uh, what led you to Elden Ring. Um, you know, you described it as, um, you know, being the first formal archaeological survey of a, you know, mostly single-player game. And, um, that's a big deal. Uh, obviously. Um, tell me a bit about what led you to Elden Ring, what the work entailed, and that process of developing develop developing, uh, developing that paper.
Florence Nichols Smith: 20:44
Yeah. So, um, the reason why I chose Elden Ring is actually a funny reason...
Jamin Warren: 20:50
Extreme difficulty. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Florence Nichols Smith: 20:52
Well, so I never played any of the other FromSoftware games and they actually... Yeah, yeah. They really scared me actually. I was—I found these games very intimidating as someone who doesn't necessarily see themselves as a gamer, so to speak, right? And so I think this isn't the only reason obviously, because there were... there were things about the game that meant that it was interesting to study in this way, but...
Jamin Warren: 21:18
It's become a bit like a, like, um, you know, like spicy ones or like hot peppers, you know, where it's like, "Well, this is extremely spicy. The Scoville units are off the charts. I don't think it's for me, but I do need to... maybe I should maybe I should try it. I'm not going to enjoy it." Uh...
Florence Nichols Smith: 21:34
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's just something about... Yeah. And I think that maybe that in a strange way made me think, "Okay, I'm going to try and study this game because..." I guess it was a challenge to myself, um, and I I was I was very curious about it. Um, and I understood I think that already that there was this kind of, um, kind of, uh, what they some—sometimes call asynchronous multiplayer features, uh, like messages that you can see, um, and also player bloodstains. Um, so even though it is like predominantly a single-player game, there are these kind of like traces that other players leave behind in the landscape. And that already kind of suggested an archaeological approach and thinking about, "Okay, well this is like, um, these yeah, traces of people's activity in this virtual landscape. How can we record them? What can we learn from that?" Right, right, right. Um, in—which I think in some ways in my work is probably the clearest like, um, translation of like thinking about archaeological methodologies, um, and transferring that to digital space.
Jamin Warren: 22:48
Right, right, right. And these bloodstains, these these are messages that players can leave at any moment. You... they're accessible to all players in the world and they have a variety of... just it's a mixture of humor, it's a mixture... I mean, I guess like any notes left in a in a in a real world, it's uh... on a bathroom wall, it's a mixture of... It is...
Florence Nichols Smith: 23:05
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why it's so... It is. It is exactly like that, I think. Yeah. And like, um, but with the messages it's interesting because the server will kind of like give you sort of a, what seems to be—I mean we don't know—a random selection of them, um, in any given location. And they load in and out. Um, and so when you're doing an archaeology of the player messages and also the bloodstains, um, because they also kind of load in and out as well. You're also kind of doing an archaeology of the server. So again, it's this thing of like there are almost different levels to that because as you're kind of like observing this and they're kind of loading in and out, I'm like kind of thinking, "Well, how how is the... how is the algorithm for this game—which presumably there is one—deciding on what it shows you and at what point?" And actually as far as I know that there is no data about that or we don't know how that works. Um, only FromSoftware knows for sure I think. People have tried to hack it, but even then I think you can see there's like a recency bias maybe in terms of like when messages were posted, but other than that I don't think we have like, anyway yeah, a full understanding of how that works.
Jamin Warren: 24:21
That, um, that makes that makes sense. So you collected a... so you over time—now did you do this like... you did this manually, I'm guessing? Did you go through and kind of... oh my gosh.
Florence Nichols Smith: 24:29
Yeah. Yeah. This is it I guess. This is the interesting thing about it.
Jamin Warren: 24:34
Is that—I wonder if that is a—do you feel like that is a a skill set for being an archaeologist? Like, uh, I feel like there there is some... yeah, I mean I guess doing things manually that is like a part of the process.
Florence Nichols Smith: 24:44
Yeah. And I guess kind of... It was a very laborious process, I will say that. And get into the nitty gritty of it so... very laborious. Got, uh, chose two sites which weren't too big, um, but they were kind of self-contained in a way. So one of them is the Church of Elleh, which is a very early game location where there's a Site of Grace, so that's a kind of a place where you can save your game and, um, stuff like that. And then there's also a merchant and I think, um, somewhere you can upgrade weapons. But it's like the first... it's an interesting area because it's like the first area of this kind you encounter as a player and it feels like sort of a little mini hub, you know, and kind of inside this church. Um, so chose that. And then chose like an area inside some catacombs, uh, just like a corridor, kind of like underground because that felt very contrasting and there were some enemies like, um, kind of like immediately before and after you'd get to this corridor. So it felt like a much more intense space. So we were trying to look at, you know, having sampling two areas that were quite different. Um, but also as part of this, um, I drew a to-scale plan of each location. Um, [Laughs] and, um, this was, um, pretty interesting. So we... this was done like right around the time when the game first was released, so I want to say March 2022. Um, didn't use any mods or anything for this, which people have asked me about that and I guess that would have potentially made it a lot easier. But then there's problems with like using mods and being in the online mode and like getting banned and all this kind of stuff. So... And also I just wanted to see if I could do it. So I—the way I figured out how you could do that is by using the player's foot as a unit of measurement. Which meant like—yeah. I mean it just kind of made sense. Yeah. But that meant it was quite laborious to draw, you know, it all out. Um, but even doing going through that process was really interesting because it made me have to be in that space in a very particular way and even think about well, how is like this church, you know, like what assets is it being constructed from? Where have they kind of like I guess duplicated something here? And so it was a very fine-grained I guess sampling of these two—which is like looking at a grain of sand in terms of like Elden Ring as a whole, right? So of course it's always very limited, but it was always supposed to be like, you know, a proof of concept and a sample of the game especially at that particular time when it had just come out. Um, and then, um, so yeah, within these plans kind of drew, um, where we saw messages and bloodstains and then also had spreadsheets kind of, um, transcribing the contents of the messages, how many times they were praised so people can kind of upvote things in a way in the game. Um, so how many appraisals they get, um, any kind of like associated assets, and then also screenshots. So like I said earlier kind of thinking about these different ways of recording something, um, and kind of having that... those things will all kind of, um, inter-reference each other in some way, um, kind of or support each other, you know, as a later archive.
Jamin Warren: 27:50
Yeah, yeah. Were there, um, were there moments where like your appro—cause I mean part of... I mean I guess part of the—and correct me if I'm wrong, but like, you know, from your previous training as a classical archaeologist, I'm sure part of the the comfort there is that there's a tradition that you don't just like show up on the site and have to invent all these methods when you show up to a show up to a site. Whereas something like this, it's like, okay, no one's doing this. There's not an approach. Yeah. There are some, um, some some severe constraints in terms of like access to the code and, um, you know, you're not doing this with, you know, you're not doing this with, um, with FromSoft as a as a company. Right? So there's some limitations there. And so you have to like do this focused as a player, but like also, um, as an academic. Were were there moments where like the methodology, there was something that you wanted to do but like, or your methodology maybe was not working the way that you wanted to? Because there's so much blank space that you were trying to like fill in with like methods on top of trying to figure out like what are the implications of your implications of the research. Yeah.
Florence Nichols Smith: 28:56
Yeah, no that's a good question. So an interesting thing happened in the process, is that, um... So in archaeology there's this concept of context. Um, to try and give an example, let's say, um, in the real world... If you were digging and you found like someone had dug a pit, um, that would have its own context. You know, it's like it's filled, if it was filled up... you give it a context number, you know, so there's a reference number. Um, and the reason why we have this is because then you will build kind of like this idea of stratigraphical layers. So generally speaking something that's further down is older, higher up is... but, um, younger, more recent. I mean of course it gets more complicated than that, but that's like the general kind of idea. But of course if—with thinking about digital space and context and especially Elden—Elden Ring in this example, it was like, well what does context even mean like in this space? Like is that a useful thing? But I was interested in not just where we were finding these messages and bloodstains, but even how we were experiencing them as players slash researchers, I guess. Cause as we were doing this, we were still players, right? And that's the interesting I guess kind of tension in doing this work is that you are also thinking about, well... you know, you're almost sampling your own experience as a player as well. And I was thinking well like how... yeah. At what point are we seeing these messages and bloodstains kind of like filter in and out, if that makes sense? Um, because I quickly realized that like actually the bloodstains would like appear and disappear very rapidly. So it's almost very difficult to record them because they would just be like going in and out. And it was like, okay we gotta like rapidly kind of like record these as a group. Um, and so ended up coming up with like context numbers which were, um, based on kind of the date in which we'd done that specific survey, but then also the number of times that we could observe that there was sort of like a... what I would call—don't know if that's really the right way to refer to it—but almost like a server refresh or just like an update in the landscape in that specific area. So if like we'd seen that like, "Oh, several more messages had loaded in at this point." And if they loaded in together then that would be a separate context. So it was trying to I guess adapt the methodology to actually what what it is that we are experiencing in the game in a way that made sense. Um, so yeah that was definitely very challenging. And even then I think that there's always this feeling, right, of, you know, maybe we could adapt that methodology and certainly it would need to be adapted to different games.
Jamin Warren: 31:42
Right. Right. And I think... Yeah. Right, right, right. It would be different for every game.
Florence Nichols Smith: 31:47
Which is its own comp—complexity. Yeah.
Jamin Warren: 31:51
Yeah. I mean I suspect like with archaeology, like the difference between like doing a like doing a site in Fiji... like I guess maybe there may be some more... Yeah, I mean I guess there there are differences, right? Like there there might be elements of like dealing, um, dealing with like local communities and considerations there, dealing with whatever like local government resource constraints, like sourcing teams, like getting getting the size of the thing that you're trying... I like I suspect they're just different. I guess I suspect that there's just like a—it's just a different type of, um, improvisation for, uh, for this type of work. Um, and that way maybe, you know, it is it is similar to archaeology in some ways. It's always gonna be... it's never just as easy as, you know, just showing up and doing your thing.
Florence Nichols Smith: 32:32
Yeah. True.
Jamin Warren: 32:37
Um, you you talked about like this idea of, um, like "generative archaeology games." Um, can you tell me a little bit about that concept and walk through like what makes a game specifically that versus games that like... like Assassin's Creed or, you know, other games that maybe or, um, I'm trying to think of like Minecraft or something like that that has like archaeological elements in them? Can you tell me about that distinction there with a game like Elden Ring that separates it in terms of its relationship to archaeology compared to like other games that might have a more passing more passing relationship?
Florence Nichols Smith: 33:14
Right. Yeah. Um, so this is an interesting one in that I think I used the term "generative archaeology games" more at the beginning of my PhD and then the reason for that in that... What happened is... at some point I realized everyone thought I was talking about Generative AI.
Jamin Warren: 33:30
Oh, okay. All right, got it.
Florence Nichols Smith: 33:32
So this, yeah, this is a real problem for me actually. I was like, I have to not talk about it like that anymore because people were really confused and I think they thought I was talking about using Generative AI. And it's like, I mean actually I'm talking about procedural generation in some cases, but...
Jamin Warren: 33:45
Yeah, right. Right, right, right.
Florence Nichols Smith: 33:48
So in terms of what I originally meant by that, um, it was specific—I think like right at the beginning I was more specifically looking at, um, games with procedure—procedurally generated content. So algorithmically generated content. Um, and I was interested in the idea of games that would, um, encourage the player to interpret environmental storytelling. Kind of mentioned that earlier, but also to kind of record what they encountered in the game. So it's kind of—yeah, again coming back to this idea of like games that encourage players to, I would argue, role-play as an archaeologist. Even if they're not being told that they're role-playing as an archaeologist specifically.
Jamin Warren: 34:33
Right, right, right. Okay.
Florence Nichols Smith: 34:36
If that makes sense. But it's like, um, they are interpreting the environment and what happened there in the past or trying to figure out things based on material culture and then being encouraged to maybe take notes or, um, make records of what they found, which in a way is also a record of their own gameplay. Um, and this relates to some research I did on a game that I co-developed with my supervisor, which is called Nothing Beside Remains. Um, and it's this very small abstract game. It has a procedurally generated ruined village in it. So the idea is, um, every time you open up the game it will kind of like go through this two kind of layer of simulation where first of all, um, it kind of like simulates... it's almost like it's rolling—the system is rolling the dice a few times. It's like, oh, there could be this amount of like houses, this amount of, you know, of, uh, other types of structures with like this amount of chairs in. So in some ways it's quite simple, um, but then it kind of simulates oh there's three different endings to this village, um, and then kind of like you will get sort of, um, this very, uh, kind of simple like 2D, um, kind of like ASCII style map. So kind of in the style of like the kind of 80s, um, roguelikes, I believe. So like you're just a little, um, "@" symbol on the screen kind of like exploring this village, right? Um, yeah, and the main kind of... like the main mechanic really is to just like bump into objects and things, read a description of what it is, and implicitly you're kind of being invited to interpret, well what happened to this place based on what is left behind. Um, and we did a player study in which we had this online survey. We asked people to play the game and then asked them, yeah, what is your interpretation of what happened to this place? And, um, also how would you record your gameplay if you wanted to? So kind of like... yeah, coming back to this those ideas I had with the notion of a generative archaeology game. And that was really, really—it was, um, absolutely fascinating the fac—the responses we got to this. Even just this, you know, like very limited abstract game. People would come up with wild theories for things. But it was interesting in how they were tying it back to what they were seeing in the landscape. Um, so I'm just fascinated by how players, you know, can come up with these emergent story—emergent storytelling in general is super interesting. Um, but also people would respond and say, "Well actually, yeah, I did draw a map and that was really helpful for me to try and understand the space," or "Oh, I took notes like this," or "Oh, I wouldn't take notes because I wasn't interested." Which is also very valid, you know. Um, but I think a good kind of current example of a game that I would say is, you know, a generative archaeology game maybe—or at least in my opinion it would be, but I guess other people would see it as like a certain kind of puzzle game that I think is becoming quite popular or people are interested in it—is, um, Blue Prince is a game that has kind of, um, you exploring this house with, um, uh, different rooms, uh, different like, uh... there's different rooms each time that you're exploring through. And it actually, um, explicitly asks you—or not asks—explicitly encourages you to take notes while you play it. Which I feel like, um... it's funny, it's not like actually a part of the game itself in a... directly, if that makes sense, but the fact that the developers put that in and that is so much a part of people's experience of that game is their own note-taking process of trying to figure out well what what's going on in this space. Um, what are the different environmental clues and what do they mean? Um, and I think that, um, there is, yeah, this kind of emerging genre of games which people aren't really sure how to refer to them. They're kind of puzzle games or...
Jamin Warren: 38:30
Right. Deduction.
Florence Nichols Smith: 38:31
Deduction games or something like that. But there's like, um, Outer Wilds, Curse of the Obra Dinn are often like brought up in, yeah, the conversation. Those kind of games, yeah. So I think that those are definitely relevant.
Jamin Warren: 38:43
Yeah. I mean part of what's interesting like for for you—I've been thinking a lot about this question about like how we understand like the history of games. And, um, you know, the the work that you're doing, it feels like maybe some of the bottom-up histories that you see, so things like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and, um, or these like, you know, examples like looking at like slave quarters in, you know, Monticello or African Burial Grounds or looking at some of these like approaches to capture the way that we understand like what games are to the people who played them at that moment in time, but told from the perspective of told from the perspective of players. And that's, um, that's so important because I I just feel like, um, you know that that's sometimes like harder to do. I think about like, um, you know like the Criterion Collection for example, does like a really good job of, you know, restoring movies. Some of these like they do a good job of like kind of—but they always ask academics, right? It's always like asking an academic how you think about it, or a writer or a critic or it's a director. But they're not doing like point-in-time interviews with someone walking out of the theater and asking them like how did they think about that. And because that's also import—that reception piece of it is is like a is is a an important and often, um, unexplored and poorly understood, uh, element of how we think about games and the importance the importance to, um, importance to players. It's not purely like top-down or asking the designer what they meant to do or whatever. To your point, like these games were not designed to be archaeology games in that way, but they are generating these responses that are archaeological in nature as understood by someone who is an archaeologist, even if that wasn't the, uh, that wasn't the intent. So, um, I don't know. I just I just think that aspect of the work is is like super is super is super interesting. And it's it's different than just like asking players about like, "Did you like the game? Did you not like the game?" It is like creating this like spatial representation of the the the thing that they were doing at that at that time.
Florence Nichols Smith: 40:32
Mm.
Jamin Warren: 40:34
The, uh, the other thing I wanted to ask about was, you know, you've connected, um, like Queer Gaming to some like to some of your work as well. How do you see like—how did you like, um, how did you approach that as like a as a topic looking at like Bo... uh, Bo Ruberg's work and how did you approach coming to coming to that to that work, um, the the the Queer Gaming aspect of it as a part of your practice?
Florence Nichols Smith: 40:57
Yeah, so I think that, um, what I found really interesting is I felt like there were kind of these parallels between archaeogaming and queer gaming in that, um, both of these fields like are kind of covering a lot of different stuff, if that makes sense, but like under different umbrellas, which is really cool and interesting. But I guess like I wanted to... I wrote an article, it was like called "Permalife of the Archive" or something, was about like trying to, yeah, I guess draw these parallels between these two areas, um, which I'm super interested in because like sometimes they can focus or, um, maybe more traditionally they would focus on aspects of like representation. So like, how is like I said before like Egypt represented in Assassin's Creed Odyssey or how are queer people represented in, you know, these video games. Um, but then at the same time they're also looking at kind of these ideas of maybe queer game mechanics. What does that mean for, uh, a game to be queer on that level? Or, um, again like thinking about like what does it mean for a game to, I guess yeah, invite you to be an archaeologist or to play in an archaeological way. So I think I just kind of wanted to sort of like tease those out and also think about again, um, thinking about queer design, archaeological design, the people who make these things themselves as well, and that's also a part of it. Um, but I think... Yeah, also kind of I was thinking about what you just said and I think yeah the other part of that as well of course is like how how the players themselves are also interpreting and bringing their own, you know, life experiences or what are their stories as well. Um, so I think it's just two kind of areas that I was super interested in and, um, wanted to think about. Maybe because I guess at least for me personally, I had like some frustrations about like, um, archaeogaming being very much focused on these matters of like reception studies, I guess, which is not to say that that isn't important, but I wanted to kind of like see more of this stuff where we were kind of looking at, um, looking beyond that, I suppose. So maybe that was where like the initial—or at least one of the initial motivations for that was. Yeah.
Jamin Warren: 43:31
You mentioned, um, like playing as an archaeologist. Like what guidance would you give to players to... I—this is one of the things I'm like I am very interested in is that, um, a lot of the way that we understand games publicly, it's like it's pretty self-taught. It's not taught in schools, right? We mentioned film studies earlier in our conversations. I think one of the benefits of having, um, like studying, you know, in in, um, in the arts, like having taking an art history class or art appreciation, whether at the university or at like a local library, the importance is it helps connect the chain of this virtuous cycle where people come to new experiences with some understanding, some thinking of the good on top of their own like individual tastes and preferences. Um, but there's at least an expectation that they should at least like sort of think critically about the work whether it's like Love Island or whether it's like, you know, Love Island or The Brutalist or Sinners or whatever. I think there's an understanding by the public like, "Oh, I'm going to see a piece of media, I should think about that media." And that is reinforced by having stuff in aca—academics and public training. With games, there's like none none of that stuff. It all happens informally. It's on forums, it's in conversations, it's at cons, it's like it's not happening, um... Maybe you go into game studies someday, but like there's not a sense that you should be talking about, um, your work in that way. So I I guess that's a long way of asking, um, from your perspective, like what guidance would you give to someone who's looking to think about games in an archaeological manner? Um, what—yeah, how should you approach a game in a new way, um, with that as a as a lens?
Florence Nichols Smith: 45:00
Mm. That's such a good question. I think this is... uh. So. Hmm. I don't know if I'm exactly answering your question, but something I was thinking about recently... But so I was at, um, the Queer Games Conference in Montreal last month. Where are we? Yes, I think so, last month. Um, and I was talking about this idea of like anticipatory archaeology. Um, so the idea of like trying to record—like anticipating something that we might want to record in terms of player experiences and games or like, you know, community events, something like that. Like almost like I feel like there's this sense of like needing to already anticipate it, record it in the present for the future. Um, and I was talking about anticipatory grief actually, like this idea of like, um, anticipating that people in the future will grieve if they don't have these things recorded. And then someone kind of mentioned to me, um, how actually in some ways that was quite a hopeful kind of outlook, which I haven't really thought about. But their point was that actually you are anticipating that there will be a future where people are kind of like, you know, looking back and like valuing those things. And I guess that... it's kind of dark of me to say that I don't know what the future is gonna be even in like 50 years. Sometimes I think about this, um, you know, in terms of the work I do. Like, will there be people, um, in 50 years who are looking back and like, um, you know, value these things that have been recorded? But I guess that that is something that I do hope for. And I do feel that, um, you know, like any kind of art form, they are kind of reflexive of the time in which they were made. And we... given that we already kind of look back on games—even not even from that long ago, like even from a few years ago which we can no longer play, um, and kind of people want to understand how games were experienced in the 80s and things like that—I think and I kind of hope that any... the this kind of work will, um, give people a deeper understanding of why games were important to people in the future. And I don't know what games will look like in the future. That's also interesting. So I don't know where they will kind of like fit in, um, in whatever kind of media landscape will exist then. It's kind of hard to think about, but I hope that it would, um... I hope that it will, yeah... it's nice to think that people will understand why, um, games were so important, but also just how ephemeral and changing those experiences were. Um. Yeah.
Jamin Warren: 48:24
Yeah. No. I I really like that. I really like that idea of uh, yeah, anticipatory like anticipatory archaeology. Um, because you see that I think sometimes with people who keep like pretty laborious records and with a thought that like this might be useful to some—there's um... gosh, there's that story of—let me see if I can find it. I'll cut this out. Hold on. Uh. Ah, Mar—uh, it's this woman Marion Stokes. Do you do you know who this is?
Florence Nichols Smith: 48:58
It's not ringing a bell. Okay.
Jamin Warren: 48:59
Um, she was, um, uh, a television producer, uh, and, um, civil rights demonstrator, but like most importantly she was a like an archivist that kind of like... it bordered, uh, maybe bordered on like compulsion. But she recorded like... she just did this massive project where she just re—recorded the 24-hour like news cycle for like years and years. And just recorded like every—just recorded everything. And so for—and like the work was not—and then she just like I believe she gave it to the Internet Archive at the end of her life. But the archive grew to yeah, 70,000 70,000, um, 70,000 tapes. And, um, but it's uh, like for, um, for researchers, like for people doing like media archaeology, it's just like an amazing like uh just, um, just this like, you know, uh, this you get this this this slice of at any given moment you can kind of see at least what was being transmitted into like the public's consciousness because of one person who's like, "I'm gonna record literally like everything that's like on for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours." And like, it's just, um... You know, and it's interesting now because of things you, you know, like like Artificial Intelligence like there are more resources now to things like that. There are more resources now to be able to take that work of like anticipatory archaeology and turn it into something that can be queried and useful and, um, that maybe in a way... Um, I don't know. There's something like you s—I think that the idea that this is this is hopeful, that this is worth recording. Um, and even maybe even that the act of recording maybe changes the recorder in some in some in some way. It's transformational for them even if it's not... even if it's lost to the the sands of the sands of time someday or whatever. Um, yeah. When like, yeah, when YouTube doesn't pay their like server bill or whatever and everything everything like disappears into into the ether. Um, well thank you so much for taking time to talk with me. I I really enjoyed like talking through, um, talking through our work.
Florence Nichols Smith: 51:00
Yeah, thank you. It was really great questions. It was, yeah, actually really helpful for me cause I was like, "Oh yeah. Okay, thinking about it differently."
Jamin Warren: 51:09
Yeah. All right. Let me—I'm gonna hit stop here. One second. Um.
Florence Nichols Smith: 51:11
Yeah.