Analysing Cultural Heritage and Its Representation in Video Games

This paper examines how cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, is represented in video games, using a framework built on those two dimensions and applying it through close-reading case studies of Assassin's Creed I and Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta. Its central premise is that greater cultural awareness among developers leads to greater consideration of cultural authenticity in game design. The analysis is interpretive rather than quantitative, and it builds on earlier work by El-Nasr et al. (2008) on multicultural readings of Assassin's Creed I and Sisler (2008), whose study of 90 Western and 15 Arab-produced games addressed Arab and Muslim representation.

The Assassin's Creed I analysis, set in twelfth-century Middle East, finds strong architectural and historical fidelity alongside notable misrepresentations. These include mismatched minaret styles and calligraphy, misplaced artefacts, a westernised protagonist design, and offensive dialogue shaped by Western influences. The analysis of Unearthed, a Saudi-developed game tracing a fourteenth-century journey, concludes that its architecture is grounded in real sites but that commercial conventions and artistic licence, sometimes described as "Hollywoodisation," take priority over realism, with cultural sites clustered for gameplay convenience.

Across both cases, the authors identify a consistent pattern: commercial pressures, aesthetic beautification, selective inclusion of artefacts, and game-mechanic demands frequently reduce cultural accuracy. Examples include a Roman-style fountain placed in an Egyptian temple and a protagonist modelled on a familiar Western action hero. The authors conclude that representation is shaped by multiple overlapping design constraints rather than by any single cause. Their proposed next step is interviews with seven game designers, with the aim of fostering cultural awareness in production rather than demanding strict realism.