No Cheat Codes Needed: We Built a Digital Game for a Museum and You Can, Too!

Over the last decade, there has been increasing interest in how digital games can support learning goals within museums. These types of ‘serious games’ offer a unique, tactile and immersive form of education, which provides an alternative way for visitors to experience an exhibition, collection, or narrative. In November 2017, the George Eastman Museum launched its first digital game in conjunction with Abandoned and Rescued, and exhibition featuring materials and stories from the rescue of a collection of Indian films and ephemera. The goal of the digital game is to help visitors gain a first-hand appreciation for the circumstances under which these materials were rescued, understand the decisions made by the collections manager, and raise awareness of the historic value of these objects. This workshop shares the process of creating the game, including how we determined the educational goals, method of creating game mechanics that would match real-world decisions, and the iterative process of working with an exhibition and collection. During the workshop, participants will learn how to design their own game from the basic of the initial design to laying the foundations for their game in Construct 3. 

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