Peter
Färberböck

I am a historian and computer scientist researching medievalisms: the images of the Middle Ages that digital games in particular create and keep renegotiating. I see historical game studies as part of the digital humanities and digital games as their sources.

My dissertation examines blood magic in digital games: where it comes from and which power relations it opens up. “Historical accuracy” is never the yardstick. I have published on, among other things, Viking myths in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, magic as a basis for heroisation, religion and renegade magic, plague games as well as National Socialism and memory culture in digital games.

As Senior Scientist at the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (IMAREAL) at the University of Salzburg, I am responsible for the digital humanities. I model historical data as graphs and work on projects such as ITEM and Discovery of Things, which bring together data and sources on material culture. Before that, I worked on the relaunch of the Middle High German Term Database (MHDBDB).

At the University of Salzburg I teach on medievalisms in games, materiality and AI in medieval studies. I sit on the steering committee of the working group Humanities and Digital Games (AKGWDS) and have been the volunteer editor-in-chief of AdventureCorner.de since 2012.

As a Dungeon Master, I also spend time at the gaming table away from my research. A D&D campaign of our own led to the 2024 seminar “Würfel, Tisch und Drachen”, which I taught with Linda Beutel-Thurow and which we also discussed on Welle 1.