Game On: Building Museum Games That Work
Fun is good. Play is good. They’re also good ways to engage and educate visitors, form and maintain communities, and keep exhibits relevant. So what is the psychology of fun and play, how does it work and how can we use it to breathe life into our museums? Will "fun" and “play” erode the integrity of our content? Is it possible for us to make our play engaging enough to compete with other, less edifying entertainments, and if so, how?
In this half day workshop, we will play. Then we'll take a look at what we played and figure out what made it tick. We'll dissect some successful games to identify what made them succeed. Then we'll launch a game to be played throughout the rest of the conference that will be informative, addictive, engaging and yes, fun. If you attend, you will emerge with some hands-on experience and a deeper understanding of what game design can do to motivate people, spark learning, build community and culture, and unleash creativity for museums.
Workshop Instructors
Ken Eklund
Ken says: I’m Writerguy, a freelance game designer and writer specializing in massively collaborative games and gamelike experiences that edify and build community. I have long been interested in the positive social effects of game-based experiences and open-ended, creative play, in settings that range from the intimate to the global. I am the creator of World Without Oil, a landmark collaborative alternate reality game for the social good sponsored by ITVS. Earlier this year I was community lead on EVOKE, a imaginative global educational pilot initiative or “crash course on changing the world” sponsored by the World Bank Institute. Last year I was an Instigator for Creativity Collaboration, an American Association of Museums creative retreat, and created Faces In A Crowd for all attendees to play. Currently I am developing a cellphone adventure for the Balboa Park Online Collaborative in San Diego, and partnering with Annette Mees in creating ZOROP, a collaborative, immersive and participatory experience for the 2010 01SJ Biennial, a pre-eminent digital media festival in Silicon Valley, as a commissioned work for Zer01. I have been known to say things such as “games and gamelike experiences are the ‘mirror neurons’ of our culture. Through them, people connect to ideas in natural, integrated ways.”
Kellian Adams
Kellian says: I'm an official "Museums Ninja" for SCVNGR and get to spend my days working with museums to produce and deploy custom treks on the SCVNGR gaming platform. In my pre-SCVNGR days, I worked with a Pearson online education program for ESL in China, and the became senior producer for an online game-based product for teaching children Chinese. Later, I began development and production on a (currently unfinished) story-based project connected to curriculum and intended to be an afterschool program to teach kids Chinese. I have my MA in teaching and taught middleschool for five years before defecting full-time to the world of games and museums. My goal for this workshop is to get museum educators to understand games as a teaching strategy and a bona fide field of behavioral psychology, and give them some strategies to use when building games.
