\n
![](\"https:\/\/readwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Media_1081084_smxx.webp\")
<\/p>\n [ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
Scotland\u2019s landmark St. Giles Cathedral of Edinburgh, completed almost 900 years ago, is the subject of a free interactive work<\/a> developed by the University of Glasgow and its Games and Gaming Lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n Playable in web browsers, as well as in kiosks at the cathedral itself (which receives more than 1.4 million visitors annually) the game isn\u2019t necessarily a \u201cgame\u201d or an adventure but an exploration of the historic structure and its cultural impact. The University of Glasgow\u2019s Games Lab teamed up with the development studio Education Evolved to produce to the work for Project HeritAIge.<\/p>\n St. Giles\u2019 Cathedral was consecrated in 1243 and is a significant institution in both Scottish history and the history of the Church of Scotland, the later-reformed Protestant church that gave rise to Presbyterianism there as well as in the United States.<\/p>\n The cathedral underwent alterations and a restoration in the middle-to-late 19th century with the ambition of making it a \u201cWestminster Abbey for Scotland,\u201d in the words of the Scottish statesman William Chambers. This video game traces the church\u2019s architectural origins and inspiration.<\/p>\n Though a game dedicated to a single church, however old, might seem esoteric, there is actually a history more than a decade old of presenting such buildings in video games, mainly through the Assassin\u2019s Creed series developed by Ubisoft. When that series turned to the European Renaissance with 2009\u2019s Assassin\u2019s Creed II, landmarks like Brunelleschi\u2019s Florence Cathedral were recreated in the game.<\/p>\n 2014\u2019s Assassin\u2019s Creed Unity, set during the French Revolution, went one further with a scale reproduction of Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. When that landmark burned in 2019, Ubisoft \u2014 a French publisher \u2014 pledged \u20ac500,000 to help with its restoration<\/a>. Just saying, there\u2019s a history here.<\/p>\n Ubisoft and its Assassin\u2019s Creed franchise have also set a path for the educational use of historical fiction in video games with \u201cdiscovery modes\u201d for both 2017\u2019s Assassin\u2019s Creed Origins and 2018\u2019s Assassin\u2019s Creed Odyssey, set in ancient Egypt and Greece, respectively. Both modes were edited to remove objectionable content and designed so that educators could use them in schools to tour ancient Alexandria and the Greek islands of antiquity.<\/p>\n All of this is to say, the Glasgow Games Lab\u2019s efforts belong to a strong tradition of historical preservation. So, good on them.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nVideo games love historical settings<\/strong><\/h2>\n