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Archaeology doesn't get a very good treatment in popular media, and games are no different. The public image of archaeologists is dominated by pulp fantasy heroes, swinging and scrambling their way through trap-infested ancient ruins, one hand clutching a priceless treasure, the other punching a Nazi in the face. Of course, pulp heroics make for much more entertaining movies and games than Indiana Jones and the Afternoon of Context Sheets or Newly-Qualified Archaeology Student Lara Croft Spends Four Years Trying to Get a Stable Job. Even archaeologists grasp this, for all our protestations. Like lapsed Catholics who can't quite give up their patron saint, many of the archaeologists I've known would admit to Indiana Jones being a bit of a guilty role model. While writing this piece I tried to find a photo of my hard hat from my days as a field archaeologist, a promotional sticker from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull emblazoned across the back, but sadly, all record of this sartorial triumph seems lost.However, something's changed in video games in the last few years, something that I think does introduce a more authentic representation of archaeology into gaming. Games like Dark Souls and its stablemates have spearheaded a new kind of storytelling, one that eschews cutscenes and linear plot for a more ambient, interpretative experience where players are left to piece together a narrative from the environments and the objects they contain. Crucially, this is generally player-driven: it's there if people want to dive into it, but it's not usually essential if players just want to follow the main plot of the game, and there's no explicit correct interpretation. Fans can swap theories and build internally consistent backstories, but it's rare that either the games themselves or their creators will come out and say which are right and which wrong.
This kind of storytelling is democratising: it invites the player to share in the narrative process and become a researcher-cum-author themselves; it gives them agency rather than making them passive consumers of a pre-packaged narrative. It extends the game out from the time of actual play to the moments when we turn over the clues in our heads, wondering at the purpose of certain objects, or the act of swapping ideas in internet forums.
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