OFabulis and Versailles 1685: A Comparative Study of the Creation Process Behind Video Games on Historical Monuments

This paper by Edwige Lelièvre compares the creation processes of two point-and-click investigation games set in historical monuments: Versailles 1685, released by Cryo Interactive in 1996, and OFabulis, a free experimental multiplayer game released online in 2014 covering nineteen monuments managed by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux. Drawing on interviews, work documents, and the author's own log books, the study argues that games of this type share three inherent characteristics: cultural institutions take part in design from the outset, the scenario is driven by a plot that must negotiate a compromise between history and fiction, and multimedia systems are built around limited gameplay and realistic rendering suited to showcasing monuments.

The analysis traces how both projects originated in partnerships between heritage bodies and production teams, and how each faced technical constraints. Versailles 1685 relied on the Omni 3D system to let players look around fully rendered reconstructions of 1685 Versailles, while OFabulis combined photographs, 3D avatars, and filmed agents into "mixed spaces" that could run on modest hardware. Both teams selected only portions of their monuments to model, guided by historical importance and technical feasibility. The paper also examines how the scenarios balanced documented history with invented material, with OFabulis introducing imaginary legendary worlds to separate fiction from documentary content.

The author acknowledges that a comparison of two titles cannot establish general design rules, and calls for further studies of other projects in this category. The study is qualitative in nature, relying on the perspectives of its designers and on limited sales data, and it is presented as a contribution to the emerging scholarship on games that address cultural heritage.