A Digital Ottoman Road to Mecca: Time, Distance, and Game Design

Abstract

This article will outline The Hajj Trail project, a digital educational text-based game that depicts the early modern Ottoman journey from Sarajevo to Mecca. The article walks the reader through the thought processes behind the core questions and the challenges confronted in the project. Games and the game design process have much to offer for our understanding of the Islamic built environment, as, unlike a strictly textual medium of analysis, they can allow the student to encounter spaces through the experiential context of time and distance. It is through the context of time and the traversal of digital space that a game can best reshape how both researchers and students imagine the early modern Islamic world and its historic spaces.