{"id":4002,"date":"2013-08-14T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=4002"},"modified":"2013-09-25T09:37:30","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T13:37:30","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=4002","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Name?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a mostly serious and occasionally tongue-in-cheek open response to Kevin Bacon’s (@fauxtoegrafik<\/a>) thoughtful and honest blog post “Nameless Gameless<\/a>.” I’m hoping it will spark some open dialogue between a variety of folks interested in cultural heritage and meaningful play (and of course, those tricky\u00a0games<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Bacon, the\u00a0Digital Development Officer for the\u00a0Royal Pavilion and Museums<\/a>, has a position that I covet but a responsibility that I don’t necessarily envy: creating fun and educational experiences for visitors that help interpret their “accidental jumble of collections bound by time, place and ambitions of permanence.” It’s certainly not an easy task, and he expounds the reasons why on his personal blog. He’s noticed a trend in his work: when he has the opportunity to create a game for the Royal Pavilion and Museums, he creates something else. He provides some (admittedly) lukewarm possibilities: “gamish,” “non-games<\/a>,” “ungames,” and even “post-games,” to describe what I’ll call playful learning experiences (could we call them “PL\u0112S,” please?). He’s even worked on quite a few of these “non-games,” including the beautifully simple crowdsourcing project\u00a0Map the Museum<\/a>, an alternate reality scavenger hunt\u00a0Story Drop<\/a>, and the point-and-click mystery (un)game\u00a0Murder in the Manor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I won’t insult his or our readers’ intelligence by summarizing everything he writes (and I encourage you to read his original post<\/a> – really, go!), but instead will respond to the practical and conceptual problems he has run into while developing video games for museums\u00a0with some partially-developed ideas of my own:<\/p>\n

1. Video games are expensive!<\/strong> Apart from traditional means of securing funds, there are some ways to lower the costs of development while creating interesting and creative games. Hosting a game jam around a topic or theme at your museum (or perhaps suggesting participants to choose an artifact!) could help secure funding for future projects and provide you with the opportunity to see game designers in differing stages of their careers in action. Prudential sponsored a game jam<\/a>\u00a0at the New York University Game Center<\/a> and was transparent about the possibility of game designers being hired to work on concepts generated during the jam.
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2. There’s too much competition.\u00a0<\/strong>This is certainly a tough one, but assuming that the game (or “gamish”) is a fun, good one, there are two options to consider. One is exclusivity in space and time, like how indie arcade Babycastles<\/a>‘ Space Cruiser<\/a> was featured during an opening exhibition party called “Cosmic Cocktails and Space Arcade” at the American Museum of Natural History<\/a>. Another is extreme accessibility, like how the Wellcome Collection<\/a>\u00a0allowed their game High Tea<\/a> to be pirated (with Google Analytics embedded<\/a>, of course).
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3. History and games don’t naturally (i.e. procedurally) mix.\u00a0<\/strong>We’ve struggled a bit with this concept here on Play the Past as well. While simple machines and physics<\/a> seem to easily translate into game form, historical narratives and processes don’t! Ron Morris of Ball State University suggests that<\/a>\u00a0games and historians need to focus on good processes that privilege meaningful decisions over narratives, and Trevor Owens<\/a> agrees<\/a>.
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4. Collections and\/or\/versus subject.\u00a0<\/strong>I’m a big fan of museum games highlighting artifacts and documents in the museums’ collections, and failing to do so was one of my only criticisms<\/a> of Wellcome Collection’s game High Tea. Why not have artifacts play a central role in the game experience (Murder in the Manor does this, and players must consult a historical document for information in Jamestown Adventure<\/a>) and in establishing the historical context (maps, clothes, coins, etc.)? Just be careful with image rights if borrowing, in case there is the remote possibility of putting the games online someday.
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5. Creating a bad game is a big risk and possibility<\/strong>. To this I reply with the glib mantra “there is no great reward without great risk.” But seriously, study and emulate best practices, collaborate with talented game designers<\/a> who “get” museums, practice iterative design<\/a>, cross your fingers, and good luck!<\/p>\n

In conclusion,\u00a0if we’re creating meaningful playful learning experiences for others that meet our institutions’ goals, shouldn’t we be pleased with that? Bacon seems to think so (and I agree!), and hopefully this post will spark some discussion as to how we (as museum professionals and interested persons) can\u00a0both\u00a0<\/em>create games and<\/em> meaningful playful learning experiences.<\/p>\n

Image credit: “Minecraft Rose” by ~Fluffgar, DeviantART<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a mostly serious and occasionally tongue-in-cheek open response to Kevin Bacon’s (@fauxtoegrafik) thoughtful and honest blog post “Nameless Gameless.” I’m hoping it will spark some open dialogue between a variety of folks interested in cultural heritage and meaningful play (and of course, those tricky\u00a0games). Bacon, the\u00a0Digital Development OfficerContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":4003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[28,51,125,117,35,18,88,314],"coauthors":[201],"class_list":["entry","author-mir","post-4002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-articles","tag-game-mechanics","tag-games","tag-museums","tag-narrative","tag-playful-historical-thinking","tag-stories","tag-teaching","tag-ungames"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/minecraftrose.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4002"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4149,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions\/4149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4002"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=4002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}