XIGamifying Online Museum Experiences

  • Megan Nguyễn, The George Washington University

Online experiences under the new museology framework

As 21st century museums attempt to shift into a more collaborative, inclusive, and socially responsible role, they must find creative storytelling techniques to connect and engage with diverse communities of visitors. Under the new museology framework, museums should transform their environments into spaces of encounter and experience using alternative learning pathways. Socialization, gamification, and virtualization have contributed to the new goal of museums as, “no longer just to build a large collection, but above all to formulate a story in collaboration with visitors and communities, moving away from exhibitions as collections of objects to a focus on the discourse constructed between exhibits, the museum space, and the visiting public".1 Within an era of increased access to internet and internet consumption, many current online museum experiences are underwhelming in comparison to the experiences of the physical visit. The lack of immersive content points to the common conception that digital experiences are secondary to experiences from a physical visit. Though it is not necessary to replicate the physical experience in a digital format, museums must consider their virtual community with equal rigor and provide other opportunities of engagement that are just as educational, entertaining, and memorable.

In her TEDx Talk presentation, social analyst Ashley Fell revealed the key to understanding effective communication is in the understanding of how the brain works, more specifically how the brain responds to visuals. Fell believes that good stories are inherently visual because even without the use of pictures, our brain reconstructs a mental image when it has a narrative. Video games provide immediate visuals that encourage experiential learning through play. As education and programming shifts within the new museology framework, unconventional modes of learning continue to be introduced, one of which is gamification. Learning through games has proven to be an effective way of gaining knowledge and helps individuals develop problem-solving and decision-making skills.

This paper emphasizes the need for more immersive and engaging virtual content by 1) examining games as an alternative mode of learning and 2) exploring digital reality technologies to analyze how museums use video game design to increase user engagement within the digital environment. Additionally, a review of the Google Institute’s Google Arts and Culture, along with my personal reflections, will be introduced to provide a case study on the gamification of virtual content in the cultural heritage sector.

While there are a variety of new digital technologies, Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D virtual environments are key innovations in video game development. Virtual Reality is defined as “an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (such as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one’s actions partially determine what happens in the environment”.2 In their book reviewing the potential of immersive technologies in educational, artistic, and museum environments, Guazzaroni and Pillai offer these general conclusions on the use of VR in learning environments; “virtual reality (i) supports peer cooperative learning, (ii) develops the ability of learners to solve problems and discover new concepts, (iii) increases student motivation, (iv) offers a high level of interaction, (v) enables learners to gain knowledge with less effort than traditional learning environments and (vi) virtual reality makes teaching processes more realistic and secure”.3 As museums move forward, visitor experience, for both physical and virtual patrons, must be realigned and repositioned at the forefront of museums.

Learning through games

The traditional in-person, lecturer-to-lectured method of communication and dissemination of information is no longer reflective of current societal needs. Nowadays, people depend on digital technology to provide them instant access to information yet even then, the content must be captivating or controversial enough to warrant persistent attention, priority, or commitment. The survival of museums and cultural heritage institutions in the postmodern era is dependent on various factors – one of which includes finding alternative ways to offer opportunities for connection, engagement, and continued learning for visitors who may never step foot into the physical walls of an institution. As cultural interpreters and facilitators of knowledge, museums are charged with providing enriching virtual experiences in innovative ways such as through games.

Gamification involves incorporating user interaction and user interface with the language and dynamics a game.4 The Smithsonian Science Education Center offers two ways in which gamification can be defined. The first defines gamification as, “adopting the act of playing a video game into everyday use” whereas the other defines gamification as, “the act of using game elements to make non-games more enjoyable”. 5 The definition of gamification within this study aligns more closely with the first definition, as it explores how video game design can be used to improve online content in education, art, and museum settings. Through the gamification of digital technologies, museums can offer experiential learning in more personalized ways.

Game-based learning influences many of the innate motivational aspects of play with common components of games; such as: rules, narrative, challenge, and interaction, for the purposes of formal and informal learning.6 Game-based learning also includes instructional components like learning objectives and outcomes to offer guidance to users in easily readable formats. The motivation for creating a game classifies video games into three categories: pure entertainment, games for learning, or serious games.7 Participation in serious games has been shown to help change attitudes and affect players' actions in the real-world.8 Museums can look to use these categories to develop games and manipulate the designs and content to coincide with their specific goals for the intended user – to teach, to entertain, or both. Research from Camps-Orteuta, Escolar, and López on how videogames can impact motivate visitor experience and improve visitor learning skills found that “visitor interest increases where museums provide gaming experiences” and, conversely, that people appreciate the inclusion of games in museum exhibits.9

Video games are a powerful and creative tool for storytelling that can help museum professionals connect with users far beyond their institutions’ physical walls. They are naturally designed to be interactive thus “multiplying the possibilities of learning and exercising a potential of immersivity and attraction that other media just don’t”.10 Because “the video game universe is not dictated by the laws of physics”, they provide unlimited possibilities for visual storytelling.11 Video games are traditionally seen “as a passive escape from the surrounding reality and an entertainment that alienates the player making him forget the real world” when, in reality, they offer alternative ways to learn through experience without the innate fear of failing or ‘losing’.12 Games are used to “increase the engagement through the use of a laboratory part… making learning less stressful and notional creating an atmosphere full of emotion thanks to a wise interweaving of actions, visual environments and sounds”.13 Studies show that games have positively changed our vision and approach to the world “favouring a greater understanding of the other and stimulating the imagination”.14 Games can transport the user into an environment “that is not dictated by the rules of society and physics but dictated by a specific sphere of rules”, allowing museums to develop limitless worlds that encourage different connections and interpretations.15

Since its creation in 2011, Minecraft, the sandbox game which uses blocks of differing colors and textures to allow players to build anything to their desire, has gained increasing popularity, especially among museums and art galleries.16 In the article How Museums Are Using Minecraft to Gamify Learning Experiences, Manuel Charr asserts that by introducing user agency and enjoyment into the learning process, “museums can create a virtual world in which some of their key subject areas become explorable in way that is not possible in a bricks and mortar exhibition”.17 The article introduces The Tate Gallery as an early advocate for Minecraft and presents Tate Worlds, an application that “provided ‘maps’ that presented virtual environments inspired by artworks from Tate’s collection” to enable players to enjoy artwork in new and more entertaining ways”.18 In this experiment, the “gamification of the user experience helped to ensure that Tate Worlds was no mere virtual gallery” but a space that could be used to “explore how some of the most significant artworks in their collection were made, what inspired the artists concerned and to understand some of the stories behind them”.19 Tate Worlds combined art appreciation and art history with the fun of free-roaming and exploration, which serves as just one example of how effective gamifying digital experiences can be for cultural heritage institutions and visitors. In order to support continued and advanced learning through games, museums must remain updated on emerging digital media tools and, more importantly, adopt them early on in order to simultaneously evolve with these technologies.

Emerging digital media technologies and review of current content

Emerging digital media tools, such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, 3D technologies, Artificial Intelligence and GPS tracking systems, provide new ways for museums to display exhibits and interact with physical and virtual audiences. The increase in implementation of multimedia and interactive techniques within physical exhibitions show that museums see value in digital media technology as a medium for storytelling. Why, then, are these applications less prevalent or severely limited within online spaces? Virtual exhibitions could easily serve as extensions or independent components of physical exhibitions; however, most of the content that’s currently available appears like the traditional museum ‘tombstone’ text, offering little to no engagement beyond the basic and static information. In their discussion on the application of virtual reality technology in the Han Dynasty Haihunhou Ruins Museum, Liu Han and Yang Cui recount on how traditional museum displays are “mostly in the form of written materials and pictures, and later in the form of documentaries” to emphasize that these long-established exhibition practices do not allow visitors to become fully immersed in the history nor “experience the stories behind cultural relics, or gain immersive feelings” from their visits.20 Storytelling through video games is a way to respond to the lack of current online experiences and the oversaturation of information.

Perhaps the best example of both gamification and the use of VR and 3D technologies within a digital cultural heritage environment is Google Arts and Culture, a product of the Google Cultural Institute. The Google Cultural Institute prides itself in “building free tools and technologies for cultural organizations to showcase and share their cultural treasures and stories with a global audience online”.21 Google Arts and Culture operates as a non-profit initiative working in open collaboration with worldwide cultural institutions and artists with a mission “to preserve and bring the world’s art and culture online so it’s accessible to anyone, anywhere”.22 This platform exists as a mobile app and website, accessible to any user with a Google account. It currently supports “over 1,400 cultural institutions in 70 countries, more than 200,000 high-resolution digital images of original artworks, 7 million archival artifacts, over 1,800 Street View museum captures, and more than 3,000 online exhibitions curated by experts”, all existing under one website domain for “a single unified experience”.23 Google Arts and Culture has partnered with a few notable museum and cultural heritage institutions, including The Met, MoMA, National Museum – New Dehli, The British Museum, Rijksmuseum, Tate Britain, and National Palace Museum, to provide interactive online experiences. The 1,611 experiences include projects that “push the boundaries of art, technology, design and culture”.24 The platform provides a variety of readily made chrome extensions, camera filters, and audio modifiers that use Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence technologies. The variety of options allow users to choose from an assortment of immersive project based on their motives.

The separate section dedicated to Games demonstrates Google’s recognition of play as a legitimate mode of learning. ‘Learn Through Play’ encourages learning the world of art and culture by providing user-friendly, noncompetitive short games ranging from virtual crossword puzzles and coloring books to trivia contests. The games are simplistic in nature, as they are, primarily, used to encourage engagement with art and culture while requiring little to no commitment, experience, or preexisting knowledge. For example, “What Came First” is a fine arts trivia game which prompts players to select between two artworks, or actual artists, that existed first while providing only generic details. The game rewards players for selecting the correct option with a point system that is based on not just accuracy but also how long the response time – the faster you answer, the more points you get. If players select the incorrect option, they do not receive any points and additionally lose one of the three ‘hearts’, which are assumed to represent a chance, also commonly referred to as ‘life’, in games. Once the game ends, either from the player correctly answering all questions or losing all their allowed attempts, a ‘Game Timeline’ consisting of all the artworks from the game is presented. Players have the option to exit the game or remain on the site and select any piece to learn even more. The art pieces are linked to Google Arts and Culture’s comprehensive collections database which provides the bibliography of the artwork along with additional features such as Augmented Reality and Street View viewing. The added section of the timeline provides learning opportunities that continue outside of the game with a more catered focus on the experiences of the virtual visitor.

Since my introduction to this platform in 2019, I have yet to interact with all the experiences and games provided through the application. One of my first experiences using the app was to virtually visit museums that were too far from my physical reaches. As COVID-19 abruptly shifted our daily lives, this platform quickly took over as my only means of visiting museums and consuming cultural material. During my stay-home quarantine adventures, I explored additional experiences on the site and tested different games, virtual exhibitions, and 3D immersive galleries. Google Arts and Culture is a prime example of how digital technologies and video game design can be utilized to provide more immersive digital cultural heritage experiences. The uniqueness of the platform comes from its usability, not to mention that it also operates as a tool with readily available educational content for teachers to use inside and outside of their classrooms. These services allow and encourage creative freedom, unlocking an unlimited range of possibilities for producing and providing more engaging virtual content. As a user, I enjoy having control over my virtual experience based on my personal motives or interests. While not every experience from Google Arts and Culture includes a game or game objective, most incorporate some element of video game design like short tutorials, reward systems, and user customization. Google’s gamification of online experiences, combined with the sheer absence of comparative online museum experiences, reiterates the importance of creative storytelling in digital environments.

Gamifying digital content for museums

While museums of the past have been able to get away with targeting only the physical visitor, current and future institutions must start considering virtual members in equal breadth. The traditional way of exhibitions is “not conducive to the long-term cultural inheritance and modern development needs” in an era of rapid development and information technology.25 The gamification of online museum content brings heritage closer to people “so that they can feel involved in a comfortable environment in order to exploit the potential of the place to stimulate a deeper cultural learning”.26 Customary exhibition methods must be updated to accurately reflect the current state of digital technology and to provide more personal engagement between the museum and visitor. Without effective story-telling techniques, online experiences are limited to only virtual tours and collections databases. Museums of today must reexamine their services and ask themselves whether they are fulfilling their newly adopted roles within the new museology framework if they are failing to provide diverse methods for learning and interpretation.

The combination of emerging technologies and the gamification of education challenges memory and cultural institutions alike to reexamine how they connect with their community, and what types of communities they are reaching. The global pandemic has shown that now, more than ever, museums must challenge themselves to faciliate more enriching online connections and experiences. Immersive and entertaining content allows museums to share knowledge in innovative and artistic ways while also competing with other entertainment industries in the fierce competition over consumer leisure time. Games and the gamification of digital content enables more interactive and entertaining experiences, that are a refreshing contrast to the static museum content that has long been a low priority to museum practitioners. Enhancing online content to provide immersive, self-motivated, and entertaining experiences increases a museum’s visibility, accessibility, and fosters a deeper and more personal connection with the virtual visitor.

Notes

  1. Irene Camps-Ortueta, Luis Deltell-Escolar, and María-Francisca Blasco-López, “New Technology in Museums: AR and VR Video Games Are Coming,” Communication & Society 34, no. 2 (2021): 94. ↩︎

  2. Anthony Scavarelli, Arya Ali, and Robert J Teather, “Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Social Learning Spaces: a Literature Review,” Virtual reality: the journal of the Virtual Reality Society 25, no. 1 (2020): 258. ↩︎

  3. Giuliana Guazzaroni and Anitha S. Pillai, Virtual and Augmented Reality in Education, Art, and Museums (Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 2020), 30-31. ↩︎

  4. Biancamaria Mori, “Gamification: To Engage Is to Learn”, in Giuliana Guazzaroni and Anitha S. Pillai, Virtual and Augmented Reality in Education, Art, and Museums, 82. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2020. ↩︎

  5. “5 Benefits of Gamification,” Smithsonian Science Education Center, Smithsonian Institution, published March 10, 2016, ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/5-benefits-gamification. ↩︎

  6. Michele D. Dickey, “Murder on Grimm Isle: The Impact of Game Narrative Design in an Educational Game-Based Learning Environment,” British journal of educational technology 42, no. 3 (2011): 456–469. ↩︎

  7. Camps-Ortueta, Deltell-Escolar, and Blasco-López, “New Technology in Museums,” 196. ↩︎

  8. Jane McGonigal, “Gaming can make a better world,” YouTube, May 17, 2010. Educational video, 20:31. ↩︎

  9. Camps-Ortueta et al, 206. ↩︎

  10. Mori, “Gamification,” 83 in Guazzaroni and Pillai, Virtual and Augmented Reality in Education, Art, and Museums, 2019. ↩︎

  11. Mori 83, in Guazzaroni & Pillai 2019. ↩︎

  12. Ibid. ↩︎

  13. Ibid. ↩︎

  14. Ibid. ↩︎

  15. Ibid. ↩︎

  16. Manuel Charr, “How Museums Are Using Minecraft to Gamify Learning Experiences,” MuseumNext, published July 17, 2021, www.museumnext.com/article/minecrafting-the-museum. ↩︎

  17. Charr, “Using Minecraft to Gamify Learning,” 2021. ↩︎

  18. Ibid. ↩︎

  19. Ibid. ↩︎

  20. Liu Han and Cui Yang, “The Application of Virtual Reality Technology in Museum Exhibition – Take the Han Dynasty Haihunhou Ruins Museum in Nanchang as an Example,” in E3S Web of Conferences, 236:4045–. EDP Sciences, 2021, 2. ↩︎

  21. “About the Google Cultural Institute,” Google, Cultural Institute Platform Help, accessed October 30, 2021, www.support.google.com/culturalinstitute/partners/answer/4395223?hl=en. ↩︎

  22. Google 2021. ↩︎

  23. Ibid. ↩︎

  24. Ibid. ↩︎

  25. Han and Cui 3, “The Application of Virtual Reality”, in E3S Web of Conferences 2021. ↩︎

  26. Mori 87, in Guazzaroni & Pillai 2019. ↩︎