Introduction
My interest in play, games, and cultural heritage is longstanding. Longtime readers of this blog will remember a series of posts I wrote about gamification and my discomfort with the way it is applied to museum experiences. More recently, Peabody Essex Museum has been developing the PlayTime exhibition, an exploration of the role of play in contemporary art.
Working on that has provided amazing opportunities to meet game developers, theorists, and experience designers of all stripes. I wrote an article for the UX Blog called Being Teachable that detailed some of the learnings I took away from attending Alibis for Interaction in Malmö and Clash of Realities 2016 in Köln. The companion digital publication for PlayTime contains dozens of essays, interviews, videos, and games that expand on the themes of the exhibition.
Gamification and Iceland
It is therefore really exciting to have been invited to give the keynote at a seminar next month in Reykjavik called “Let’s Play With Heritage – Seminar & Think Tank on Gamification and Heritage”. It is part of the Connected Culture and Natural Heritage in a Northern Environment (CINE) project, a collaborative digital heritage project between 9 partners and 10 associated partners from Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland. CINE aims to transform people’s experiences of outdoor heritage sites through technology, building on the idea of “museums without walls”.
A really interesting project, and a whole new group of colleagues to meet!
My talk, “The Future of Playing with the Past: New Opportunities in Interpreting Cultural Heritage” will draw on examples from across the cultural heritage sector to explore what online games, live action role play, and immersive theater have to offer heritage professionals looking to engage 21st century audiences.
In the course of working on my slides, I’ve been re-reading older works, and reading everything new I can get my hands on that touches on the subjects. This post will be the repository for the raw materials for the talk. If you’re interested in gaming, play, and museums, you might some useful links. If you have any that I haven’t listed here, let me know! Ditto for examples of useful cultural heritage experiences that are play-based, gameful, or even…gamified.
My posts on games, play, and gamification
What can museums learn about immersive theater?
On immersion, theatre, and museums
Australia: Game Masters review and DAM: Melbourne
Gaming the museum – separating fad from function – Part four of four!
Gaming the museum – separating fad from function – Part three of ?
Gaming the museum – separating fad from function – Part two of ?
Gaming the museum – separating fad from function – Part one of ?
Case studies
National Museum of Finland Offers Virtual Time Travel
Visitors can step into the world of Finland in 1863 with the power of virtual reality. With the opening of the new VR exhibit, visitors to the museum will be able to step back in time to the year 1863 by donning a VR headset and walking inside R. W. Ekman’s painting ‘The Opening of he Diet 1863 by Alexander II’.
Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt Q&A
Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt as a free title update for Assassin’s Creed Origins. The Discovery Tour is an educational experience that allows players to free-roam Ancient Egypt to learn more about its history. We sat down with the developers of this unique experience to answer frequently asked questions.
Gamifying the Museum with NYU Game Center Graduate Students
This Spring, the American Museum of Natural History and the NYU Game Center partnered to create a classroom-in-residence at the Museum for a course entitled “Designing for Museums.”
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is essentially an Elder Scrolls-style RPG made “realistic.” Abandoning the fantasy lands of most sword-and-board stories, Kingdom Come instead builds a tale around Bohemia, the region of modern-day Czech Republic and, as of the 1400s, the Kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire.
What am I missing…?
References
Bogost, I. (2011). Persuasive Games : Exploitationware. Retrieved from https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134735/persuasive_games_exploitationware.php
Brumann, C. (2014). Heritage agnosticism: A third path for the study of cultural heritage. Social Anthropology, 22(2), 173–188.
Bujari, A., Ciman, M., Gaggi, O., & Palazzi, C. E. (2017). Using gamification to discover cultural heritage locations from geo-tagged photos. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 21(2), 235–252.
Deterding, S. (2017). Outside the Box: Toward an Ecology of Gaming Enjoyment. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/dings/outside-the-box-toward-an-ecology-of-gaming-enjoyment
Deterding, S. (2017). Alibis for Adult Play: A Goffmanian Account of Escaping Embarrassment in Adult Play. Games and Culture, 1–20.
Deterding, S. (2010). Pawned. Gamification and its Discontents. In Playful 2010. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/dings/pawned-gamification-and-its-discontents
Deterding, S. (2011). Meaningful Play. Getting “Gamification” Right. In Google Tech Talk, January 24, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/dings/meaningful-play-getting-gamification-right
Deterding, S. (2011). Don’t Play Games With Me! Promises and Pitfalls of Gameful Design. In webdirections @media, London, May 27, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/dings/dont-play-games-with-me-promises-and-pitfalls-of-gameful-design
Findlay, K., & Alberts, K. (2011). Gamification: What It Is and What It’s Not. In ESOMAR 2011, Amsterdam. Amsterdam.
Flagg, B. N., & Holland, I. (2013). Summative Evaluation of PlanetMania Mobile App in Maryland Science Center’ s Life Beyond Earth Exhibit
Gregory, J. (2015). Connecting with the past through social media: The Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost Facebook group. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(1), 22–45.
Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work? – A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. In Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 3025–3034).
Iyadurai, L., Blackwell, S. E., Meiser-Stedman, R., et al (2017). Preventing intrusive memories after trauma via a brief intervention involving Tetris computer game play in the emergency department: a proof-of-concept randomized controlled trial. Molecular Psychiatry, 23 (3), 674-682
Juul, J. (2016). Sailing the Endless River of Games: The case for Historical Design Patterns. Proceedings of 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG, (Gualeni 2015), 1–15. Retrieved from http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/endlessriverofgames/
Juul, J. (2005). Half-Real. Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional. MIT Press.
Juul, J. (2017). The Art of Failure: an essay on the pain of playing video games. MIT Press.
Juul, J. (2003). The Game, the Player, the World. In Level Up. Utrecht. Retrieved from http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/gameplayerworld/
Karagiorgas, D. N., & Niemann, S. (2017). Gamification and Game-Based Learning. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 45(4), 499–519.
Koster, R. (2012). A Theory of Fun: 10 Years Later. Retrieved from https://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco12/Koster_Raph_Theory_Fun_10.pdf
Liarokapis, F., Petridis, P., Andrews, D., & de Freitas, S. (2017). Multimodal Serious Games Technologies for Cultural Heritage. In Mixed Reality and Gamification for Cultural Heritage (pp. 371–392).
Lovell, N. (2010). The Engagement Hierarchy. Retrieved from http://whatgamesare.com/2010/12/the-engagement-hierarchy.html
Mannion, S. (2014). Augmented encounters with heritage.Digital Humanities Fall School, Venice, October 2014. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/s.mannion/augmented-encounters-with-heritage
Mitchell, R., Schuster, L., & Drennan, J. (2017). Understanding how gamification influences behaviour in social marketing. Australasian Marketing Journal, 25(1), 12–19.
Mortara, M., Catalano, C. E., Bellotti, F., Fiucci, G., Houry-Panchetti, M., & Petridis, P. (2014). Learning cultural heritage by serious games. Journal of Cultural Heritage.
Nicholson, S. (2015). Peeking Behind the Locked Door: A Survey of Escape Room Facilities. Retrieved from http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/erfacwhite.pdf
Nielsen, J. K. (2015). The relevant museum: defining relevance in museological practices. Museum Management and Curatorship, 30(5), 364–378.
Norman, D., & Lefebvre, H. (n.d.). The Game Design of Everyday Things. Kill Screen Daily. Retrieved from http://killscreendaily.com/articles/game-design-everyday-things-everyday- gaming
Owens, T. (2013). Digital Cultural Heritage and the Crowd. Curator: The Museum Journal,
Ridge, M. (2011). Playing with difficult objects : game designs for crowdsourcing museum metadata. City University London.
Robertson, M. (2010). Can’t play, won’t play. Hide and Seek. Retrieved from http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/
Rockwell, G. M., & Kee, K. (2009). Game Studies. Retrieved from http://gamestudies.org/1102/articles/geoffrey_rockwell_kevin_kee
Sailer, M., Hense, J. U., Mayr, S. K., & Mandl, H. (2017). How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 371–380.
Stenros, J. (2015). Playfulness, Play, and Games. A Constructionist Ludology Approach.
Trammell, A., Torner, E., & Waldron, E. L. (2016). Analog Game Studies Volume 1. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press.
Tulloch, R. (2014). Reconceptualising Gamification : Play and Pedagogy. Digital Culture & Education, 6(December), 317–333.
Weiler, L. (2015). Bridging the Physical & Digital Worlds Explorations into the wilds of a Massive Online/Offline Collaboration — 12 things to consider when building collaborative spaces. Retrieved from http://www.digitalstorytellinglab.com/bridging-the-physical-digital-worlds/
Thinking about Museums 
Hi Ed – what a great set of references, and an exciting conference opportunity!
When I worked at the Australian National Maritime Museum we developed a game, The Voyage, which turned out to be a huge hit with students, teachers and everyone else in-between. It won several awards, including MAGNA and ATOM.
Here’s some blog posts about what we were up to:
* How do you create and build a game: https://musdigi.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/how-do-you-create-and-build-a-game/ (also has references to others posts about The Voyage and gaming in general, and the video on how to create a game is a good overview from developers, by developers)
* Gamifying the museum: https://anmm.blog/2014/10/01/gamifying-the-museum-the-voyage/ (include references to the work of Catherine Beavis, an Aussie academic who researches games and learning, and a download of our Museums and web Asia paper)
* Another gamifying museum – this time with a presso we gave at a school tech conference, with a focus on pedagogy: https://musdigi.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/gamifying-the-museum-educational-games-and-museum-pedagogy/
* The Voyage game one year on: https://anmm.blog/2016/11/30/the-voyage-game-one-year-on/ (includes feedback from students, details about awards etc
* This paper, Museums, games, and historical imagination: student responses to a games-based experience at the Australian National Maritime Museum, gives some further research into The Voyage from an academic perspective: http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30088456?_ga=2.85338841.176434195.1519597812-413860132.1516944650 The paper is also there for download
A few other things:
* Museums, Etc produced a book on museums and games (I couldn’t see that in your list?): https://museumsetc.com/products/museums-at-play-games-interaction-and-learning-ebook-edition
* Mahuki, Te Papa’s innovation hub, funded an organisation called GameLab who were in the process of developing a platform, Gamefroot, that could be easily re-purposed for games (with a STEM focus). I believe they ere in talks with museums in NY to expand but haven’t heard nay more – their website is here: http://gamelab.io/ and blog: http://gamelab.io/blog/ There are also some useful links on their curriculum page
* Barry Joseph’s Moosha Moosha Mooshme blog is also a useful resource on all things gaming generally and his experiments at the AMNH: http://www.mooshme.org/
* A post I did about Pokemon Go when it was all the rage, seems kinda relevant and there are some links there that may help: https://musdigi.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/pokemon-go-virtual-reality-and-museums/
Best of luck at the conference, be keen to hear how you go,
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Lynda! Thanks for the good wishes, and more grist for the mill! Love ’em. I’d completely forgotten about Katy Beale’s book!
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No worries. All part of the service 🙂
Lovin’your work!
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