The city’s burgh records are one of the best resources for exploring medieval life in Europe and the period has long influenced creative media, from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones. Now, researchers at the University of Aberdeen are looking at ways in which the detail contained within the pages of the records can provide the vision for new games both for fun and historical learning. The project ‘Playing in the Archives: Game Development with Aberdeen’s Medieval Records’ is funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Creative Economies Engagement Fellowship through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.
The earliest Aberdeen council registers cover a period from 1398 to 1511 and are one of the great reservoirs of historical knowledge on urban and regional life anywhere in northern Europe, earning them recognition from the UK national commission for UNESCO, a body of the United Nations responsible for the protection of the world’s cultural heritage. In 2013 they were inscribed on the Memory of the World Register.
Dr William Hepburn, a historian from the university, will spend the next nine months investigating the potential for creative development from the burgh records, working alongside experts from industry. Dr Hepburn will be engaging with the games industry to explore the creation of prototype games which can either be developed purely for fun or for specific historic attractions to help visitors explore the period. He will be supported by Dr Jackson Armstrong as academic mentor and by Steve Aitken, who is consultant director of Aberdeenbased Intelligent Plant Ltd, an IT and engineering company for the oil and gas sector, as industry mentor.