Teaching mythology with video games: two workshops for secondary education

Abstract There is a long history of integrating games in classical pedagogy, although most of these studies have focused on history teaching or Latin and Greek language acquisition. In this article, I extend prior research on antiquity game-based learning to illustrate how video games can also be used for mythology education, or the familiarity with particular stories and characters which have inspired artworks, political movements, and other cultural phenomena throughout history. After outlining the different ways in which video games present Greco-Roman myth, I present two workshops which I have hosted at various Flemish secondary schools (student ages 13–18). The first is based on the Smite series (2014–present, Titan Forge Games) and lets students design a creative blueprint for a video game version of a Greco-Roman mythological character. The second utilises the Story Creator web application for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018, Ubisoft Quebec), where I have written several mythologically inspired quest lines that each explore a different modality of mythology, from epic poetry to rationalisation or feminist revisionism. This article seeks to offer insight into the diversity of mythological engagements in games, as well as clear instructions for how to organise such a workshop, from best practices, technological information, to potential pitfalls.