Steve Mayer: museums should not be 'where objects go to die'...

Steve Mayer gave one of the closing talks at ichim05 -- at the Bibliotheque nationale de France -- on "integrating museum and videogame sensibilities, or museums should not be 'where objects go to die'..."

He began with the observation that "going to a museum is like having a wonderful meal without having time to digest it". Steve then spent an engaging hour exploring a question he's been thinking about a lot  lately: "How do we integrate the interactivity of the game and the public / social space of the museum  when the cultures are so different, and the attitudes to time and experience are often opposing"

It's worth remembering as Ted Nelson said in his paper just yesterday, that videogames are so much fun because they were designed by people who love games. Everyone through the creation, production and distribution fits the same profile and demographics. This commonality -- an esprit de corps -- mainfested itself at Atari  when things "just gelled". What can we learn about this in the world of museums?

These are my rough notes from what he said:

Steve put it this way:

Games = creative / museums = re-creative

museums vs games

accurate vs close enough

scholarship with testing at end vs continuous development and iterative testing

education and conservation vs entertainment and $

history an assett vs history a liability --> what is the value of newness? the present vs the future+the past

multicultural vs mono-cultural

but, both in the 'travel business' ... imagination is the vehicle and engagement is the goal

jt->suspension of disbelief is key to the success and satisfaction of the gaming experience, while museums are trying to communicate beliefs.

both struggle with the pace of technological developments and share the same community of visitors (with rising expectations and need for free choice)

games place more of an emphasis on visitors than museums do (personal experience only goal, whereas museum wants to communicate something as well).

games attract demographic that is missing in museums (teenagers, young males)

blockbusters crowd out the creativity and experimentation, and therefore alter institutions in the process

production values in situ are very high for museums, but not online. games go to the visitor in high quality. The dependence on location differs dramatically.

joseph pine  grid exploring the economy of experience

player-centric design with 'attract' mode. museum experience is veiled and requires trust [little signage and pre-clusion]

useful lessons from games

-  instructions when and where needed

- reflexive and responsive

- levels of difficulty reflecting real progressions

- mission or task driven

- narrative progression and story

- multi-modal experience

- scores, ways to measure progression

- cookies, prizes, discoveries, juxtapositions that are found over time

tension (narrative vs exploration)

blended realities

social connectivity

Cassandra Report (cool kids) 'expect to be listened to'

aquarium objects that reveal themselves through exploration, learning (longbeach aquarium)

model: ipod integration of object, experience, communication, integration across various modes of interaction and being.