In Conclusion

Here we are, a semester later, and all the wiser for it. Did we learn? Sure. Did we embrace a greater understanding of the bias of media? Certainly. Did a great deal of time get wasted playing these games for research purposes? Probably. Did we enjoy the process? Yes.

Turns out this is just the hedgehog's dream. Real
archaeologists don't find troves like this. The games
lied to him!

So here we are, achieving more or less what we intended. We set out without much more of an edict than, "Go forth and analyze ye how stuff is portrayed in terms of archaeology". We did. And here's what we noticed. First, games and toys love treasure. They love it. The ultimate goal of most games seemed to be to get the treasure, and toys also came with shiny things. We considered it a win when the artifacts weren't gold or jewels. Second, everyone loves Egypt. Based off how often it showed up, one would presume that at least half of the world's archaeology occurs around Giza. Sure, Egypt is steeped in thousands of years of history, but it's not the only place out there. Third, as often as not, archaeology was simply used as gimmick to catch consumers' attention without being actually related to archaeology. We're looking at you, video games. Developers needed a theme, and since everyone loves treasure (see Point #1), just have your player be an archaeologist doing totally non-archaeological things to get it. It works, but is it really needed?

It's all fairly forgivable, though, we decided. The point of games and toys is to be fun, not accurate. Even the ones that are supposed to be educational have to find a balance between the two, although arguably many weren't really trying anyways. There were more than a couple games that we came across that had the information but were so dry that they weren't even worth writing about. Meanwhile, dressing up as Indiana Jones may be fun, but Indy was never known for being particularly good at the non-Nazi-shooting part of his job. But I digress. The point was that most things we looked at had their merits, either to be fun or accurate, and it was the ones that caught the best balance that won.

History may not have actually been this epic, but
with a couple toys, you can pretend it was.

On this last note we leave you: It's hard to get it right, but mostly, any exposure seemed to be good. If kids can get interested, there's hope that they'll, oh, I don't know, maybe go pick up a book and do their own research.