Project SAGA: Towards Bridging the Gap between Serious and Entertainment Games

Abstract

We present the ''SAGA'' project, a concept for an entertainment game that is currently in development, which is based on historical and archaeological research and set in the mythology of the Vo?luspá. SAGA bridges the gap between Serious and Entertainment games by neither forsaking history and facts for entertainment, nor compromising on playability for historical accuracy. Reusing development work from the archaeological visualisation of a real world location on the island of Orust in Sweden, and transposing historical elements from other Viking age sites into the world of the game, the aim of SAGA is to convey the intangible heritage and history of Viking age society and beliefs to the game's players. In this paper we describe the game concept, discuss its development from an archaeological visualisation for use in a museum context and provide an outlook on the next steps in the game's development.