{"id":2515,"date":"2015-02-07T20:09:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T20:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memetechnology.org\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2015-02-07T20:09:27","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T20:09:27","slug":"versailles-1685","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2015\/02\/07\/versailles-1685\/","title":{"rendered":"Versailles 1685"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ran a session for a group of Masters’\u00a0students yesterday, part of the\u00a03D Recording, Modelling and Interpretation module. It was a great afternoon, with a really responsive group of students, who ended up planning \u00a0a game around the Mayan city state of Tulum.<\/p>\n

I talked for about an hour, beforehand. Riffing off Red Dead Redemption (of course) to discuss\u00a0Tynan Sylvester’s Engines of Emotion, and look in more detail at Game Narratives, finishing of with the idea of Kernels and Satellites.<\/p>\n

On the way, I mentioned Versailles 1685<\/em><\/a>, which I suddenly recalled while pulling my notes together. Twenty years ago, at University, one of my final year projects was a proposal for House of Delight, a game exploring the social and sexual mores of late seventeenth century England. It didn’t get anywhere – well, it got me an interview with a video games company, but not a job. So I was very jealous when this game came out, but never got a chance to play it. That said, the company that didn’t give me a job did go bust a short while afterwards, and the interview led (in a round about way) to meeting my wife, so maybe its all good.<\/p>\n

Versailles 1685<\/em>, also known as A Game of Intrigue<\/em>, was one of the first games commissioned by a museum authority, in this case Reunion des Musees Nationaux<\/a>, for the purpose of heritage interpretation. Created in 1996, it sold itself with:<\/p>\n