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Loading... The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association
Ubisoft's Notre-Dame: Digital Gaming for Material Heritage's Sake
Key insights
7 takeaways- 01Video games serve as effective tools for heritage preservation by creating 'narrative gardens' that allow users to interact with and experience cultural sites, such as Ubisoft’s digital reconstruction of Notre-Dame in Assassin's Creed: Unity.See it on page 2
- 02The collaboration between the gaming industry and heritage management presents a conflict between public cultural preservation and the intrinsic capitalist agendas of corporations, which often seek to drive revenue and improve brand image through these projects.See it on page 2
- 03Following the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame, Ubisoft utilized the cathedral's digital model in Assassin's Creed: Unity to foster public connection, offering the game for free for one week and pledging 500,000€ toward restoration efforts.See it on page 14
- 04The 2014 game Never Alone, developed by Upper One Games in collaboration with the Iñupiaq community, demonstrates that digital games can be used for the intentional preservation of intangible heritage, such as indigenous stories and language.See it on page 5
- 05While digital models offer high-fidelity representations, they often prioritize artistic interpretation over scientific accuracy; for instance, the virtual Notre-Dame in Unity was scaled down to maintain gameplay consistency.See it on page 4
- 06The increasing digitization of heritage raises significant ethical and legal concerns regarding the potential privatization of public cultural assets and the long-term challenges of archiving and curating game-based historical records.See it on page 11
- 07Successful heritage-gaming projects rely on the involvement of subject-matter experts—such as historians for Ubisoft or cultural ambassadors for E-Line—to ensure the digital content serves as a legitimate carrier of cultural legacy.See it on page 8
Summary
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