Serious Games and Archaeology: Rough Notes on Crafting Archaeological Data for Heritage Enhancement

In the last years, video games have proven to have a clear potential to support the experiencing of cultural heritage by the large public, complementing the current tools and practices based on tangible goods such as museums, exhibitions, archaeological sites. Serious games (SGs) – videogames designed for educational objectives – appear as a new tool to learn cultural content in an engaging way, to attract new publics and to enhance knowledge, awareness, and cultural tourism. This paper will provide a portrait of the current proposition of serious games in the archaeological sector in Italy, highlighting the educational objectives of serious games in this domain, and analysing the potentials of this tool. Later, an ongoing project concerning the presentation of the Poggio Imperiale Park in Poggibonsi (Siena, Tuscany) will be illustrated to underline how and why the design of a serious game for this specific site is to be considered as the last fragment of a very long and precise project aiming at enforcing a multi-level public outreach and heritage enhancement strategy.