Page 165 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

Museums are not unaware of the possibilities of gamification either, and their recent efforts to update their offering include plenty of activities that feature play as a factor to surprise and reward visitors.
Dosdoce.com’s study on museums in the
digital age186 lists many experiences related to gamification in museums. According to this report, “the use of techniques derived from the gaming industry, such as challenges and prizes to transform everyday tasks into fun activities, can be very useful for attracting citizens’ attention to the activities of museums, culture centres and art galleries”.
One of the experiences cited in the report is Murder at the Met, an initiative of the Metro- politan Museum in New York that is designed to boost interest in the art world. Visitors are invited to solve a murder case related to one of the paintings in the collection. The players need to search for clues in other museum exhibits: paintings, sculptures and other objects.
The report also mentions the games in the PradoMedia section of the Museo del Prado
in Madrid, which invite visitors to discover details of the works in its collections. And lastly, it describes the video adventures devised by the education department at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza to arouse interest in art through a narrative plot based around the idea of gamification.
A similar case is the Dallas Museum of Art, where
Registered members or friends can swap the points they have accumulated for various prizes, use their membership card and enjoy additional advantages when they take part in the museum’s participatory actions. Users can utilise their smartphones to
earn badges which can be traded for prizes; also by creating their own collection with the selection of what they consider to be the museum’s best artworks.187
The above activities are all examples of muse- ums’ interest in enhancing visitors’ experience of their physical and virtual spaces by combining play and technology.
A further example of how the gaming industry can be an important ally of various cultural expressions and services is the experience of the performing arts.188 In this case we will report on a game based on Lope de Vega’s well-known play La dama boba. The experience, developed by engineers at the UCM, uses videogames to bring classical theatre to young people by adapting the language and rhythm of the play to schoolchil- dren at primary and secondary level.
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Readers in the digital age