On Screen · Classical antiquity · Greco-Roman world, Mediterranean
Oxford conference asks how East Asian video games reimagine ancient Greece and Rome
A call for papers cites Honkai: Star Rail, a Chinese mobile game that took its 5 million players into a Greco-Roman fantasy world in January 2025.
Official announcement
Greco-Roman world, Mediterranean Graduate researchers at the University of Oxford are organising a conference on how video games present the classical world. It will focus on games made outside Europe and North America. The call for papers, published by the Classical Association, invites abstracts until 20 March.
The conference is called Antiquity in Simulation: Global Receptions of the Classical World in Video Games. It will take place at the Ioannou Centre of Oxford's Classics Faculty. The published call does not give the date of the event.
The organisers are Clare Chang of Lincoln College and Sarah Marshall of St Hugh's College. Both are DPhil students in Classical Language and Literature. They are working with the Bristol Digital Game Lab and the APGRD. The Classical Association notes that this is not one of its own events.
A gap in the research
The call argues that scholarship so far has mostly studied games from major Western developers. It names Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey, God of War II and III, Rome: Total War and Hades. According to the organisers, such titles have introduced millions of players worldwide to the Greco-Roman world, in many cases for the first time.
The organisers describe the scholarship on the subject as limited but fruitful. The call lists edited volumes by Thorsen (2012), Rollinger (2020), Draycott and Cook (2022) and Sanz (2025). It also cites monographs by André (2016), Clare (2021) and Vandewalle (2026). It mentions a Bristol conference in June 2024 and a panel on teaching with games at the 2026 SCS Conference.
Studios in East Asia have received little attention, the organisers write. Their representative example is Honkai: Star Rail, a mobile game from the Chinese developer Hoyoverse. In January 2025 its update, Version 3.0 Paean of Era Nova, took the game's 5 million players worldwide into Amphoreus, a Greco-Roman fantasy world.
The call says the game's monthly revenue was estimated at $100 million in April 2025. The organisers give this figure as an estimate and do not name its source.
Japanese games and Egypt for the keynotes
Two keynote speakers are confirmed. Dunstan Lowe of the University of Kent will speak on "Journeys to the West: Mediterranean Antiquity in Japanese Video Games". Jennifer Cromwell of Manchester Metropolitan University will speak on "(Re)constructing Ancient Egypt in non-Western Video Games".
The organisers name other non-Western titles as possible subjects, such as Elden Ring and Final Fantasy. They also mention the mobile games Fate/Grand Order and Reverse:1999. They want papers on two kinds of reception. One is how these studios use antiquity; the other is how classically inspired games are received in the non-Western world.
Questions in the call include how Eastern and Western versions of the classical world differ. Others ask how ancient material is monetised inside games and how sounds and images of antiquity are created. The organisers also ask how interactivity shapes the player's experience and how that experience is "embodied".
The Western games the call names cover very different pasts. Assassin's Creed Origins is set in Ptolemaic Egypt, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey in Greece during the Peloponnesian War of the 5th century BC. God of War and Hades draw on Greek myth. The call itself does not judge the accuracy of any game.
Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, for 20-minute papers. In-person presentations are strongly preferred. Virtual presentation is possible only in extraordinary circumstances. The organisers will send responses by the end of March.
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