It's 2099, and you and your heist team are about to case an unnamed high-security museum in Europe. One of the targets: the Kabwe skull, a roughly 300,000-year-old early human skull found in present-day Zambia in 1921. This is Relooted, a new video game from South African game studio Nyamakop, where your job is to steal back looted artifacts by mapping entrances and exits, positioning your crew, and making it past robot security using your parkour skills. Several things about this are unrealistic. For one, the actual Kabwe skull, currently on display in the Natural History Museum in London, might not need such an elaborate plan. But there is a damningly realistic fact at the heart of the game: every single one of the roughly 70 objects you steal was taken from the African continent and currently sits in a Western museum or private collection. And the way museums in the game wiggle out of a fictional treaty to return stolen artifacts doesn't sound fictional at all. It mirrors the real-world tactics that have kept the Kabwe skull in London for over a century, despite Zambia's repeated requests for its return. In this episode, Ben Myers, CEO and creative director at Nyamakop, and Mohale Mashigo, the studio's narrative director, talk about why heists are the perfect genre for a game about repatriation, what they found when they visited the real artifacts in person, and why their video game often does a much better job telling the story of these objects than the museums that hold them. Image: The Kabwe skull as it appears in a Relooted heist briefing. Topics and Notes 00:00 Welcome to Museum Archipelago 00:15 Relooted 01:30 "We overstated the security capabilities on museums" 01:45 Meet Ben Myers 02:50 Meet Mohale Mashigo 03:04 The Kabwe Skull 04:45 Labels and Missing Context in Museums 06:08 A Digital Museum 06:53 Treaties and Red Tape 09:37 Prosperous Future Africa 12:05 Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum on Episode 39 12:16 Museum of Black Civilizations 14:50 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show. 🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us. ✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 112. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript It's the year 2099 and you and your heist team are about to case an unnamed high security museum to steal the Kabwe skull. This moment occurs halfway through Relooted, a new video game from South African game studio Nyamakop. Your job is to map all the entrances and exits, position your crew members strategically, use cybersecurity techniques to break open the door, steal this artifact, and make it out of the museum past the robot security force using parkour, which fortunately, you're quite skilled at. “Video game excerpt: " Please look out for the Kabwe skull. For many years, the Zambian government tried to have the skull repatriated back from the United Kingdom. What's the security situation? Nothing you haven't experienced before. Robot guards, lasers, security shutters, pressure plates, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Several things about this moment in the game are unrealistic. For one, the actual skull, which is currently on display in the Natural History Museum in London, might actually be easier to steal. Ben Myres: I've seen a couple of the ones in our game, in person now, and the first thing I noticed, is the Kabwe skull or broken Hillman in the Natural History Museum. That'd be very easy to steal. We've very overstated the security capabilities on museums. I have a video of, it's only 20 seconds long of the distance from the skull to the exit. I'm like, wow. Okay. That wouldn’t be very fun. This is Ben Myers, the CEO and creative director at Nyamakop, and one of the developers of Relooted. Ben Myres: Hello, I'm Ben Myers, CEO, and creative director at Nyamakop. I like to be known for making cool video games. But there is a very realistic -- damningly realistic -- fact at the heart of the game. The Kabwe skull is just one of about 70 real-world objects you heist during the game. And every single one of them was taken from the African continent and currently sits in a Western Museum or private collection. Ben Myres: I think there was a French government report that came out in maybe 2018 and that estimated that 90 to 95% of all African cultural heritage is kept in museums off the continent. So the scale of it is like really absurd. I mean, it's hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of pieces. In like Western museums. So the, the major problem was like not, you know, finding artifacts, but which ones? Mohale Mashingo: There were so many artifacts, really. So many, but we couldn't put them all in the game. Otherwise, this would be the world's longest game. This is Mohale Mashigo, narrative director at Nyamakop and one of the developers of Relooted. Mohale Mashigo: Hi, my name is Mohale Mashigo. I'm the narrative director at Nyamakop, and I like to be known for telling great stories, living in a fishing village and having a cute dog. The Kabwe skull was discovered in 1921 by miners in the Kabwe mine in Zambia, then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia. The skull is roughly 300,000 years old, predating modern humans, and was promptly shipped to the Natural History Museum in London, which at the time was a department of the British Museum. About ten years after Zambia became independent from colonial rule, in the early 1970s, the National Monuments Commission formally requested the skull from the museum. That hasn’t happened, and the museum's own display undermines its case for keeping the original. Ben Myres: So the Kabwe skull is interesting because Zambia has been asking back that back for quite a long time. And what was interesting about the Kabwe skull is it's surrounded by replicas. Like it's this sort of history of, you know, humanity from all these fossils and like skulls. But most of the skulls they have in that exhibition aren't. Real. So it just speaks to how like it's completely unnecessary for them to have that exact skull. When all the other ones surrounding them aren't real either. And most of the people going to the museum aren't gonna notice that anyway. Mohale Mashigo: I've been to a lot of museums in Europe and have sort of seen these things, but they feel so out of context. You know, it's kind of like, this is the name of the thing, A very small writeup that it doesn't feel humanizing or it doesn't feel human. And then actually working on them in the game is, oh my goodness, this is, this is a big deal to a community of people and how it's taken is also a big deal. So being in a museum, and I love going to museums, it felt so disconnected, seeing it, but actually. Writing about it and learning about it was something entirely different. The Kabwe skull is one of the higher-profile repatriation cases, but many of the 70 artifacts in Relooted don't have that kind of visibility. When Ben visited the British Museum, he noticed how the quality of wall labels depends on how much public pressure a museum is under to return those artifacts. Ben Myers: I think the captioning around the Benin Bronzes is actually pretty good. They use the word looting, they speak about where it happened, how they got hold of it. But I think what's interesting is when there isn't that external pressure or awareness, the way museums talk about artifacts in the collection is not as great. In the far corner, away from the Benin Bronzes in the British Museum, there is a display of something called an Ndome shield Mohale Mashigo: Yeah, Ndome shield from Kenya. Ben Myers: From the Kikuyu people in Kenya. We learned — we have one of them in the game — and when I was reading about the research, it became clear that these are passed down from father to son as an initiation ritual. It's a deeply personal familial object and none of that is really mentioned in the caption. It's either consciously or unconsciously getting away from the question of why do you have this and why is this here? Because if you understand that it's this deeply personal familial object, you might be a little unsettled about it being there and being displayed in the way it's displayed Both the Benin Bronzes and Ndome shield are artifacts you can steal back in the game. Before every heist, you and your team hold a briefing. Mohale and Ben built the game's artifact displays and dialogue to detail information about the object. Mohale Mashigo: We made a very conscious effort to say, this is what's so important about this artifact. How it was taken and the repercussions of it having been removed from where it's from. So in many ways yes, it's like a digital museum. And the fact that a heist briefing inside a video game does a better job at contextualizing these objects than the museums that currently hold them is another damning detail that the game designers didn't have to invent. In Relooted, you play as Nomali, a young woman in 2099 Johannesburg whose grandmother, Professor Grace, spent years trying to get stolen artifacts returned through official channels, and got sto
