Cultural Prototypes: Games through & for Culture presents the more than 100 EPIC-WE Cultural Game Prototype you can scroll down and browse through below.
Here you can explore and learn from early-stage games that were developed in intense, supported co-creation processes where young game-makers work side by side with professional game companies, cultural partners, educators, and researchers.
The prototypes were created through its 12 Cultural Game Jams by more than 450 youth, with each game card linking to its individual prototype page.
The Cultural Prototypes section invites visitors to try games created with cultural heritage and values.
EPIC-WE uses two closely related ideas:
Games through Culture are games made through direct engagement with culture and cultural heritage: collections, places,
stories, practices,
and cultural materials become the creative and primary game-making material and inspiration.
They foreground tangible cultural heritage as playable resources, transforming museum objects, nature, archives, buildings, or other
cultural artefacts or sites into interactive systems that reinterpret, remix, and materialize culture as new aesthetic and experiential
forms.
Games for Culture are made with a cultural purpose and use games to create cultural dialogue, reflection, and participation, so the game itself becomes part of culture. Games for culture use game-making as a deliberate practice to explore, critique, and shape cultural values, social norms, identities, and civic imaginaries. They prioritize societal transformation, cultural dialogue, and empowerment, inviting players and creators to reflect on belonging, citizenship, and collective futures.
This is what EPIC-WE means by game-making as culture-making. When young people design game worlds, rules, and stories with heritage and values in mind, they are also exploring how cultural heritage matters, whose perspectives are heard, and how culture can be shared, questioned, and reimagined.
- Want to engage game-making as culture-making or host a Cultural Game Jam to create Games through & for Culture? Go get the Cultural Game Jam Kits!
- Want to know how it looks when young people engage cultural heritage and values through game-making and learn more about the ideas behind some of the Games through & for Culture? Read the stories about the games created by youth in Aarhus, Hilversum (), and Óbidos!
- Want to hear what some of the young game jammers think themselves? See their Expert Video Interviews!
- Want to get your hands on all of the research publications, design frameworks, practice results, impact analysis, and policy recommendations from EPIC-WE? They are all freely available at the EPIC-WE ‘Repository’!
