Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2012

What can you do with a degree in archaeology? For University of Evansville alumni, the answers include working in fields as diverse as historic preservation, museum curatorship, and academia — and now, video game production.

Today, 2009 graduate Lierin Holly-Falzoni and her husband, Marco Falzoni, will preview their new mobile game app, “Archaeology!,” and publicly pledge to donate part of the proceeds to UE’s Browning-Miller Advancement of Archaeology Endowment. The game demo and signing of a memorandum of understanding will take place at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, November 29 in Room 71 of the Schroeder Family School of Business Administration Building.

Holly-Falzoni and her husband run Zombie Cricket Studios, a Bloomington, Indiana-based video game company currently focused on game applications for Apple and Android mobile devices. The company is wrapping production on “Archaeology!,” its first full-sized game app, with an expected completion date of early 2013. Five percent of profits from the game will benefit the Browning-Miller Endowment, which provides funds for UE archaeology students to participate in fieldwork, internships, or other educational experiences around the world.

The inspiration for the game began when Holly-Falzoni took a job at the Mackinac State Historic Parks in Michigan, spending the summers of 2008 and 2009 as an archaeologist on a dig that was open to the public. Every day, she fielded questions from hundreds of visitors who were intrigued by the thought of finding artifacts, but knew little about the archaeological process. 

The experience inspired Holly-Falzoni to answer those questions through a game that is “fun, interactive, and will captivate a much larger audience in today’s tech-driven world,” she said. “If our game is played by even a tiny percent of the app market subscribers, and if a tiny percent of those people become interested enough to read up on the archaeological process or go visit a dig, then I will consider our game a success. The whole goal is to demystify archaeology to as many people as possible.”

“I came out of my time at UE with a deeply instilled drive to educate the public about archaeology,” Holly-Falzoni added. “There was a constant focus through all of our classes on how to write dig proposals, funding proposals, and papers for people outside of our field. While most students agree that this is not necessarily the ‘fun’ or ‘glamorous’ aspect of archaeology, it is by far the most essential.”

For more information on Zombie Cricket Studios, please find them on Facebook.

Share this article: