09/25/2022 Project
A Serious Game will be added to the foundation’s digital proposals. This two year project is coordinated by Markus Bassermann.
As part of the serious game project "True Crime: The children of Bullenhuser Damm", funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, a new format is being added to the Foundation's digital proposals: In the digital game developed for schoolchildren, the former school at Bullenhuser Damm is to be explored from the perspective of a school class of the late 1970s, uncovering their story of remembrance. During the course of the game, the complexity of remembrance practices and commemoration will be addressed. The process of "remembering" will be experienced as a subjective, personal perspective that only becomes a socially established "culture of remembrance" through lengthy and often contradictory processes. The project is therefore not intended to duplicate the existing (digital) content of the memorial in a new medium, but to expand it with a new, unique approach by making use of the interactive possibilities. In light of this, exchange and networking with other, similar projects, are an integral part of this very much new project in Germany, and will also continue to make an impact beyond its conclusion.
Markus Bassermann is the project manager and coordinator of this two-year project. After completing his Master's degree in History at the University of Hamburg, he has been working on, amongst other things, the overlap between digital games and history as part of the History and Digital Games workgroup, as well as the Games and Memory Culture database. He is particularly interested in using the potential of such media through a strong integration of game mechanics and narrative. In addition to his work as a historian, Markus Bassermann also has experience in programming and is particularly looking forward to having the opportunity to expand his theoretical reflections in a practical way within the framework of the project. In addition to this, he works at the Hamburg Cooperative Museum and is involved with the digital history magazine Hamburgische Geschichten.