Edutainment games-Homo Culturalis vs. Homo Ludens
by
Kalina Sotirova
Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Acad. G. Bonchev str., bl. 8, Sofia 1113, Bulgaria

Ancients remind to those who often forget 'Know who you are'. Cultural heritage has to be preserved for the future generations. This often repeated need is obvious for every educated and self-respected citizen of our unifying world. The question in front of the educational institutions and cultural heritage holders is how more efficiently the historical heritage of human thought to be made known to the young people. Because knowing what cultural heritage you 'bring' will help you 'to be' now.

Edutainment games, which have been becoming popular in Europe, could be helpful in achieving the good goal of preserving and widening the access to the written cultural heritage. These games were born in big competition with most popular 'fun and cruel' games. They combine two functions: entertainment and education, what gives them the definition 'edutainment games'. Through this good combination IT strikes the mass culture of illiteration and serves for popularization of collections of libraries, archives and museums. Edutainment games are 'the fruit' of scientific and industrial search for bigger patterns of understanding, so that one can 'see' and use all the benefits games are proposing to Homo Sapiens-Ludens.

Ludology (from "ludus", the Latin word for "game") is a new discipline that studies games in general and computer games in particular. But the truth is that a 'unified theory of game play' does not exist yet. The existing historical, psychological, and anthropological studies on games, and even mathematical 'game theory' are limited because of their narrow focus on specific parts of the puzzle we call 'game'. To some extent ludology could be thought as a synonim of "game studies", but it necessarilly has interdisciplinary character.

Appearance of ludology in educational, industrial and research areas showed the important fact that digital culture is not a strange phenomenon already. It became part of curriculums on different university subjects: Computer Science, History and Theory of Culture, Psychology, Library science, Multimedia, Artifical Inteligence and even Management and Marketing. Ludology has been developing in three main axes: curriculum, theory and research&application. Since the first two have to be covered on University level, this paper puts the accent on the third one: research and practical application in the field of culture.

This paper will try to answer to the following questions: (1) What are computer games (modus vivendi of XXIc. as Huizinga predicted) and how they differ from other types of art and entertainment in the past? 'Game' is everything from Monopoly to Metroid, things that are completely plotless like toys (Tetris) and things that barely allow any user participation at all (Squaresoft's Bouncer). There are different definitions of what a game is, but here we use one that is fairly suitable for the scope of this article: 'game is a form of computer art in which participants(players), put up with specific rules, make decisions in the pursuit of a goal.

(2) How people play computer games and which type of games are prefered? Edutainment games as an alternative to all 'let make fun' mass game types. Examples (Versailles I and II, Encarta Encyclopedia, Reneisance - Virtual Renaissance Court (a project of IST Programme of EC), etc.).

(3) How answers of (1) and (2) could be used in favour of contemporary attempts of preserving cultural heritage. Brief SWOT analysis will be given.

Instead of classical conclusion one specimen of homo ludens, the author of the paper, will try to 'play' a overwhelming game, based on the rich Bulgarian mediaeval culture, including the audience as participant. Unfortunately the model of this game (presenting the oldest Bulgarian manuscript written in Cyrillic from 11c., the Enina apostle) exists only in the mind reality.

At the present.

Date received: May 14, 2003