The Heritage Game

This conference paper, presented at CILRAID 2025 in Opole, examines how gamification can deepen community involvement in cultural-heritage work, with particular attention to craft and craftsmanship traditions. Building on the Heritage Game project's Bulgarian best practices, the authors identify a set of mechanisms — co-creation workshops, badge/quest progression, participatory storytelling — that translate well between heritage settings and small-scale, locally rooted economies.

The contribution argues that gamification is most powerful when designed alongside the communities it serves, and offers concrete recommendations for heritage organisations, municipalities and craft networks willing to adopt these techniques.