Tyler Kynn

Was told ANAMED will release a recording on YouTube later on fyi

For anyone in Istanbul - the discussion on "Video Games and Imagining the Ottoman Past" is at ANAMED today at 17:00, please stop by if you are able to! Special thanks to Emir Alışık for helping to organize! #ottoman #gamedev

If anyone is around Sabancı today please note that - my talk "Pixels and Ottomans: Developing Video Games about the Ottoman World" is at Sabancı University today at 16:00. All thanks to Tommaso Stefini for the wonderful organizing and hosting efforts! #ottoman #gamedev

Excited to be doing two talks this week in Istanbul on the Ottoman game projects I have worked on! Thanks to Tommaso Stefini for helping to organize the talk at Sabancı Uni. (Tuesday) and Emir Alışık for helping to organize the conversation and Q and A at ANAMED (Thursday) #gamedev #ottoman

Dragoman: The English in the Ottoman World by ccsugmst An Educational Game produced by CCSU students in collaboration with Yale's Lewis Walpole Library

Proud of my students who put together this game (ccsugmst.itch.io/dragoman-the...) in coordination between two of my CCSU classes and Yale's Lewis Walpole Library this term. A blog post from the students will be coming out which summarizes the project and the documents examined. #GameDev

In DC at the Middle East Studies Association conference this weekend, if anyone wants to grab a coffee feel free to reach out!

(2/2)
If any one would be willing to write a letter of support explaining the value of these educational tools - I would very much appreciate it and would add it to my tenure packet. Reach out to me in a message if you are able to help with this!

(1/2) Hi folks, haven't posted in a bit as things have been a bit fast paced this term.

However, I have a favor to ask - I am going up for Tenure at CCSU this year and I know over the years that many people have used The Hajj Trail (or even the Seyahat Demo) in their courses...

www.seyahatgame.com

Put together a website for Seyahat with suggested assignments to make with the game and also a non-Steam place to post updates. #gtp #gamedev

Link below:

Gaming the haj, from the comfort of home A role-play game allows everyone to imagine one of the world’s great journeys

A journalist from the Economist did a short article on the game three years ago: www.economist.com/culture/2022...

Someone caught the Economist referencing my game The Hajj Trail in their world in brief Newsletter yesterday!

My article "A Digital Ottoman Road to Mecca: Time, Distance, and Game Design" - on game design and my two projects - the hajj trail and Seyahat - is now out in the special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture! intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca on Steam Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca is a unique free-to-play 2D RPG which is designed as an educational tool to help players and students to engage with the cultural history of the seventeenth-century Ottoman...

store.steampowered.com/app/3306180/...

Working on my book draft this month - but plan to see after that some updates this summer on Seyahat! If you have not tried the game yet (free on Steam) you can check it out in the link below.

I also hope to add a website by the end of the summer with example lesson plans. #gtp #Ottoman #gamedev

Reviving the historic Andalusian route to Hajj on horseback Three friends set out on a Hajj journey on horseback, going from Spain to Saudi Arabia, to bring back a route used by Andalusian Muslims more than 500 years ago

www.newarab.com/features/rev...

Was interviewed for this great article (in comments) on Spanish Muslims doing the hajj by horseback. Check it out if you have the time - they actually go along the historical route in Hajj Trail and parts that will be in Seyahat.

Another screenshot from Seyahat - based on the language your character chooses at the start of the game as their 2nd language (Arabic, Persian, Greek, Ladino) it unlocks special interactions - here in Sarajevo you can run into this Persian musician who gives you a mission to go to Sofia

Another screenshot from Seyahat - this is from the Sarajevo scene and your character has the choice to talk to the people in both of the windows there and help either one of them in a dispute over the inheritance of a house - story based an Ottoman court case

If you have the time - check out the hour demo of my educational game on the early modern Ottoman world - Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca - free on Steam for PC and Mac. If you want to help out with the project you can join the discord linked on the steam page. #gtp #gamedev #digitalhistory #Ottoman

It could be more inspired from a book-the demo will have an example of a story taken from Bandits and Bureaucrats by Barkey/Or it could be something inspired from court records - a dispute your character is tasked to solve through multiple dialogues(a # of these are in the demo)

4)Event Story Arc - this is more of an actual quest or event - 2 to 3 dialogue scripts - in the demo one of these is the mission to escort the Ottoman salary payments to a garrison and protect it from bandits which it taken from Osman Agha's Prisoner of the Infidels...

This is a way to highlight any intellectual history or important works you would like to present to a student. This event would be two different dialogue scripts and likely within 1 scene or split between two scenes (say, Sarajevo given book, and in Yeni Pazar the bookseller)

3)Manuscript mission - player is given a famous early modern Ottoman manuscript to deliver to a bookseller - is given a summary of what it is about and then once they reach the bookseller later in the game they are asked a series of questions to summarize the book...

2)Court Record or Mühimme or Fetva entry retold as a problem to the player with some terms defined and the player is to offer a suggestion for a solution and gets rewarded in the game if they suggest what the original document suggested.
-This would also be a standalone dialogue script

Some examples of types of contributions one could make:
1) Evliya Çelebi story or Shahname story retold in a coffeehouse by a storyteller and the player has to remember key details to get a reward
-This is just a standalone dialogue script

Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca on Steam Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca is a unique free-to-play 2D RPG which is designed as an educational tool to help players and students to engage with the cultural history of the seventeenth-century Ottoman...

store.steampowered.com/app/3306180/...

[2/2]The Seyahat project is unfunded, but I can provide contribution credit with the game. This would be similar to how academic blogs or podcasts provide some CV credits to contributors. I want to use this to open the opportunity to collaborate with any other Ottomanist who is interested. #Ottoman

[1/2] CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS: If any Academic or Grad Student who works on the Ottoman Empire would like to contribute to the Seyahat game project by providing individual story arcs from their research or general knowledge to be added to the game -pls feel free to reach out to tkynn@ccsu.edu

Can't wait to use this with one of my classes, I have a whole Mongol unit in my Animals and World History course!