“Museums and Computer Games” by Roth

Museums are discovering that well-designed computer games that require active decision-making capture and keep children’s attention. This panel looks at how curators, writers, interactive designers, producers, and educators, each with different agendas, work together to create an entertaining learning environment for young museum visitors.

The panel focuses on multimedia productions created specifically for a museum environment using game design methods often reserved for entertainment titles. By combining the entertainment value of new media with specific educational goals, museum multimedia games are powerful learning tools in an exhibition environment. The production “Secrets of the Ancestors” is discussed by the curator, educator, interactive designer, and producer. This engaging computer game helps children decipher meaning in objects from around the world.

The production, part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition “Ancestors: Art and the Afterlife,” is played at two kiosks and in a new interactive theater for school groups in the museum’s experimental education gallery.

From multiple and sometimes conflicting points of view, the panel reviews the challenges and pitfalls of developing interactive game-based media for a museum environment.

Panelists:

Liz Caffry
Elisabeth Cameron
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Carla Roth
Think Jacobson & Roth

Bill Zullo
Z-Digital