Preserving the Past through Play: The Cambodian Looting Epidemic, Conservation, Learning Games and the Looter! Project

LooterDesigned to teach both international tourists and local Khmer about the rampant looting of historic and prehistoric archeological sites plaguing Cambodia today, funding is sought to complete work on a educational (learning) computer game project entitled Looter!  Looter!’s premise is inspired by Wrath of the Phantom Army (a Heritage Watch sponsored comic book), which tells the story of Samnang, a Khmer youth, who is coerced into looting by a middleman, but who quickly comes to realize how difficult, unjust, and dangerous looting can be. The overall objective of the game is to expand this message into an immersive, memorable and interactive learning experience.  Through the use of text, imagery, music and sound, a ‘prequel’ will introduce the game by bringing players “back in time” to an Iron Age (c. 500AD) Khmer village to figuratively experience a ‘day in the life’ of the inhabitants, as revealed by discoveries at an in-game ‘excavation.’  The prequel ends with the revelation that a middle-man with a bad reputation has been looking on… 
     In the 1st level, one plays as a local youth looking to help support his family.  You work for Mr. Gark (the middleman), and through your looting, acquire artifacts (some of which you break), can get payed by Mr. Gark (always much less than you deserve), and can quickly damage the landscape.  However, with pin flags picked up from a nearby archaeologist’s field camp, you can choose to flag objects…which might just be in your best interest with authorities around.  There is always the risk that you will hit a skeleton itself, thereby breaking it and unleashing an angry ghost onto the landscape.  If so-game over! You may call upon a monk to banish the spirits, but since the artifacts in your loot sack reveal your illicit activities, he will only help you once!  If the player earns enough money, they will “win”, and be offered their own antiquities stall in Bangkok…only to be caught in a sting operation.  If too much damage is done to the site and the landscape, thereby causing your “care” and “respect” meters to drop too low, you are outcast from your community.  If, however, a player can excersize enough care in their looting to not destroy everything, as well as mark the occasional find, they will truly win.  The nearby archaeologists will notice your not-so-wholesale destruction, recognize your plight, and offer you a new job as an apprentice...and a 2nd level! 




Your new task will be to help your new bosses and local authorities stop looting at a new site.  The player will use a “pointing finger” cursor to direct a National Heritage Police avatar to a looter who is damaging a grave.  Once all looters are removed, the player is left with a collection of graves with various degrees of information still recoverable.  Instructions for the level will explain the various real-world techniques selectable by the player, represented by clickable icons on the bottom of the screen, and it is then up to the player to earn points by salvaging as much data as possible, storing usefull information as “field notes”, and negotiating with various stakeholders (i.e. tourists, museum officials, villagers).  Overall, the player will gain ever more knowledge about what the realities and benefits of fieldwork are and what developing and disseminating knowledge of the past really takes-the positive outcomes of stemming looting.  Immersive play will be enhanced by text, animation, drawings, photos, appropriate Khmer music, and sound effects; all programmed in Flash, utilizing an aerial viewpoint and a scrollable corner map.  In the end, credits will role and the game can be replayed.
 
"The looting of prehistoric sites across Cambodia has reached epic proportions..."
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LP and Frommers

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