“unStuck” is an analog, but at the same time digital game which explores the relationship between food and faith. By plugging different tokens or combinations into a control panel, the player discovers what foods and beverages are allowed and what not.

A monitor shows additional information about the products and the traditional religious rules about cooking and combining them.

The game differentiates between religions (Jews and Muslims) by using dynamic lights and colors, also highlighting the progress of the game.
The interactive game is exhibited in the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The Apple iPad ushers in a new era of computing that leaves the world of offices behind, a profound paradigm shift that is difficult to appreciate until one has had the opportunity to live, play, work and learn with one. Graham Brown-Martin, founder of Learning Without Frontiers, explains why he thinks this is the most exciting development since the original Mac and why the education sector should take note.

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[...] Games have long been offered by museums inside the galleries, usually targeting youth with old-fashioned scavenger hunts or even interactive digital games on computer kiosks. In our posting on mobile experiences, we mentioned that games are now being incorporated into cell phone audio tours as well. But with the popularization of the Internet and the development of Web 2.0 technologies that facilitate participation and collaboration, museums began to incorporate games into their Web sites, again targeting youth (also through parents and educators). Another reason for museums to engage online games is to compete with the torrent of highly visual entertainment activities now readily available such as console games, reality television, anime, virtual reality, and interactive computer games such as MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). Museums utilize games in the service of education. These entertainment-based learning tools – infotainment or edutainment – offer an important opportunity for learning that is social and fun, both integral to how youth experience art.

As part of the American Association of Museum’s (AAM) new Center for the Future of Museums, Jane McGonigal (Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA) gave a talk last year entitled Gaming the Future of Museums (the event in Washington, DC was later presented as a free webcast by the AAM). Her basic premise is that games make people happy, which is why they are so successful (as well as the fact that they provide clear instructions, feedback, and goals). She believes that museums should incorporate games because they should strive to make people happy, calling on museums to “create sustainable world-changing happiness as its primary mission.” McGonigal believes that games do all the things we need to be happy: satisfying work, the experience of being good a t something, time spent with people we like, and the chance to be a part of something bigger. She states, “We have all this pent-up knowledge in museums, all this pent-up expertise, and all these collections designed to inspire and bring people together. I think the museum community has a kind of ethical responsibility to unleash it.” Elizabeth Merritt, head of the center, believes that in the future, the best museums will be as interactive and fun as alternate reality games, both for kids and adults.

While scavenger hunts continue to be utilized for kids inside the galleries, they are also popular with adults, especially the new multimedia version that utilizes third-party sites and mobile technologies. The best example of this is the well-known Ghost of a Chance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (July 8 – October 25, 2008), the first alternate reality game (ARG) hosted by a museum. Over 6,000 players participated online and 244 people came for the final onsite event at the museum. Multimedia platforms included Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, the museum’s blog Eye Level, text messaging on mobile phones, as well as exploration of the physical museum. In the museum’s final report and a subsequent presentation at this year’s Museum and the Web conference, Georgina Bath Goodlander (Interpretive Programs manager for the Smithsonian’s Luce Foundation Center) states that the museum was successful in achieving two of its goals: “to get people talking about our museum, to get our name out there” and “to encourage discovery.” The third goal, “to bring a new audience into the museum,” was only partially achieved. The museum did not experience many new visitors to their physical museum, but interestingly it did occur online, with increased traffic driven to their Web sites.

McGonigal states that 91% of youth under the age of 18 play games on the Internet today. Some examples of online games aimed at younger audiences include Getty Games at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Match Madness, Detail Detective, Switch, Jigsaw Puzzles), Matisse for Kids at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Waltee’s Quest: The Case of the Lost Art at the Walters Art Museum, SchoolhouseMeet Me at Midnight at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The educational value of many of these games is not always clear, but what is clear is that kids are becoming more familiar with works of art, they are learning to look and think critically about art, and they are associating museums and art with fun. at the Yale University Art Gallery (Match Game, Art Detective), and

Incorporating games – and much more – is Whyville.net, an educational virtual world for teens and pre-teens. It was launched in 1999 by Numedeon Inc. (neuroscientist Dr. James Bower while at Caltech), and now has a player base of over five million worldwide. Its Web site states that, “Whyville has its own newspaper, its own Senators, its own beach, museum, City Hall and town square, its own suburbia, and even its own economy – citizens earn “clams” by playing educational games.” In 2005, the Getty Museum became the first cultural organization to partner with Whyville, adding their arts content to the site (other museums have since joined, including the Field Museum of Chicago). In a 2005 Getty press release, Peggy Fogelman, assistant director and head of education and interpretive programs at the museum stated, “At the virtual Getty Museum, kids can explore our collections on their own terms. By making art fun and familiar, we hope that Whyvillians will venture beyond their computer monitors into art galleries and museums in their hometowns, and to the Getty Center when they visit Los Angeles. We want them to make art a part of their virtual as well as real lives.” The Getty Museum in Whyville, located in the town square, offers games such as Art Treasure Hunt, and ArtSets Gallery, and Art Hour conversations which is like a chat room for Whyvilleans. A 2006 assessment conducted by the Getty’s Susan Edwards showed some interesting results. The majority of “citizens” interviewed (ages 8 to 15) said the experience made them like art more, and they like games that challenge them. However, most said that the experience didn’t necessarily make them want to visit the physical museum more, but it did generate visits to the Getty Web site (links provided on Whyville). In general, the report stated that Whyville is a “cost-effective word-of-mouth marketing to the youth audience.”

(…) Last year the American Association of Museums created a new group, the Center for the Future of Museums. “The average museum director and curator don’t have time to read about economic theory, climatic theory, biosciences,” says director Elizabeth Merritt. “There are experts who spend all their time thinking about these things, but they don’t usually talk to museums. We want to be the ambassadors.”

The first lecturer Merritt hired was futurist forecaster and game designer Jane McGonigal, who describes how museums might tap into the collective energy and creativity of the hundreds of millions of people playing computer games. She cites the “science of happiness,” a new field of psychology that focuses on behaviors and strategies that can increase one’s sense of well-being. Museums, she explains, can create experiences using the same tactics games do to produce a sense of fulfillment: provide clear goals, feedback, a feeling of success, and social interaction. “How many people come back from museums feeling they’re stupid?” asks Merritt. “With games, we give instructions, say, ‘Here’s something specific you can do.’ And they go away feeling good. That’s a thing game designers are doing all the time.”

Art museums are beginning to listen. The Smithsonian American Art Museum was the first to offer an alternate-reality game, Ghosts of a Chance, which was played on Facebook, on Google, on phones, and in the museum itself. At the North Carolina Museum of Art, education director Susan Glasser is harnessing play theory to turn viewers into participants rather than passive observers in a game called The Grand Tour. Visitors will receive a “travel portfolio” with a profile of their travel companion, a historical figure. In the gallery of Italian painting, for example, they’ll get four types of currency—esthetic, monetary, personal, and historical—with which they may purchase a “souvenir” from the collection. Information about the artworks and their value is on the back of the card. The scenario brings visitors to authentic works of art, Glasser notes, using “the make-believe of games that people find so compelling.”

These are free/open source (FOSS) software gaming development packages .

Games

Adventure games

3D Adventure Studio – Create basic adventure games.
Adventure Builder – A basic DOS/WIN text adventure creator.
Adventure Game Engine – A nice adventure game engine for creating first-person adventure games in the style of Myst.
Adventure Game Studio – Another quality point-and-click adventure game creator.
Adventure Maker – The most notable feature of this toolkit is its ability to create games for the PSP and iPhone.
ADePT – A fairly old adventure game designer.
ALAN – A neat little program for creating interactive fiction.
Aiee! – A simple interface for designing and playing text adventures.
Wintermute Engine – A very feature rich graphical adventure game creator.
ADRIFT – A simple interactive fiction toolkit which allows you to create and run text games.
InterAx – Create first-person adventure games with no scripting.
SLUDGE – A simple scripting language for creating adventure games. It isn’t the most intuitive option, but it is definitely functional.

RPGs

RPG Maker 2003 – A classic, easy-to-use RPG designer.
RPG Toolkit Development System – A free, open source system for creating RPGs.
Sphere – Sphere requires quite a bit of scripting, but with that comes a lot of flexibility.
Official Hamster Republic RPG Construction Engine – This one has been around for ages, and for good reason – it’s a great option and has maintained an active community of developers for years.

RTS Games

Pure power Tactical Engine – PPTactical is an engine for real-time strategy (RTS) and real-time tactics (RTT) games. The engine supports SDL and DirectX, has editors for maps and resources, scripted behaviour for units, battlegroups, missions, etc. Windows, Linux and Solaris are supported.

General 2D

Chipmunk Physics Engine – The Chipmunk SDK is a portable open-source 2D physics engine written in C99 by Scott Lembcke and published under the MIT license.
Clean Game Library – Clean is a programming language/compiler, not a simple “point-and-click” game creation system.
CONSTRUCT – Construct is a free, DirectX 9 game creator for Windows, designed for 2D games.
Game Maker 8 – A very clean, full featured 2D game development platform.
Golden T – Golden T Game Engine is a 2D game engine written in Java.
Multimedia Fusion – A very feature rich, but pricey, toolkit for developing interactive applications.
Scrolling Game Development Kit – A complex but learnable toolset for the creation of side-scrolling games.
SXDL – SxDL is a powerful and an easy to use 2D and 3D Game Development Framework for MS Windows and MS DirectX.

General 3D

3DCakeWalk – A 3D game engine with lots of prewritten code, as well as the option to write your own scripts in Python. (might be going offline soon)
The 3D Game Maker – This is so point-and-click simple that it’s more of a game itself than a game creation toolkit.
3D Rad – 3D Rad is a functional, if somewhat simplistic, 3D game engine and creation toolkit.
Blender – Free, open source, and amazing. Blender is a professional quality 3D modeling, animation, and game building toolkit.
Antiryad Gx – A solid, free 3D game engine.
DarkBASIC – A reasonably priced engine which utilizes a modified, easy-to-learn version of the BASIC programming language.
Delta3d – Delta3D is a full-function game engine appropriate for a wide variety of modeling & simulation applications.
FPS Creator – Easy to use package but a bit simplistic.
Game Studio – The programming language – Lite-C – was designed to be quick and easy, and the system can produce some very nice-looking games.
jMonkeyEngine – jME is an Open Source Java-based 3D Game Engine able to run state-of-the-art graphics.
Ogre3D – open-source 3D graphics rendering engine
Openscenegraph – The OpenSceneGraph is an open source high performance 3D graphics toolkit, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modelling. Written entirely in Standard C++ and OpenGL it runs on all Windows platforms, OSX, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-Ux, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems.
Panda3D – Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs.
Irrlicht Engine – The Irrlicht Engine is an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written and usable in C++ and also available for .NET languages. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer.
Reality Factory – Several applications aimed at creatives who don’t want to touch a line of code.
SDK – SDK Source Engine from Valve.
Silent Walk FPS Creator – A clean, simple, and overall very nice FPS development kit. The download link is at the bottom of the page.
Unity – Unity, a subset of the commercial game development tool Unity Pro, is available for use to developers subject to certain conditions
Unreal 3D Development Kit – Features all the tools you need to create great games, advanced visualizations and detailed 3D simulations.
XNA – Microsoft XNA, through its XNA Creators Club Online offers you as student, hobbyist or small game studio the ability to create games using XNA Game Studio Express, DirectX, and other XNA gaming tools and technologies.

Online

Arianne – An open source multiplayer online role playing framework.
Byond – A simple scripting language which allows you to create multiplayer online games, which are played through the Byond software.
Croquet – Croquet is a powerful open source software technology that, in the form of the Croquet Software Developer’s Kit (Croquet SDK), can be used by experienced software developers to create and deploy deeply collaborative multi-user online virtual world applications on and across multiple operating systems and devices.
Multiverse – A development tool for creating web-based games and 3D virtual worlds.
Open Metaverse – The Open Metaverse Foundation is a non-profit organization founded with the mandate of developing open technologies and open-source software related to the metaverse and virtual worlds.
Open Simulator – OpenSimulator is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols.
PIVOTE – PIVOTE is a virtual learning authoring system for virtual worlds. It was developed as part of the JISC funded PREVIEW project, where it was used to develop training material for Paramedic students at St George’s Hospital and Kingston University.
Realm Crafter – Realm Crafter is actually a large set of tools meant to ease the difficulty of building an MMO.

Recommended by Philippe Geril in Serious Games Research the list originates from EUROSIS website which also covers Simulation and Modeling software.

This is part of a new RIT research program to study and develop gaming and interactive media for cultural institutions. The RIT students want to explore how web-delivered content can influence viewer attitudes toward museum collections. Can an on-line game change viewer attitudes towards a museum and increase attendance? Can on-line interactive media build context that improves a viewer’s connection to objects in the collection? The project’s initial focus will be collections of modern and contemporary art (often considered the least accessible to casual visitors.)

According to the Museum Games & Technology Initiative a  facebook-based game is being developed in conjunction with the Smithsonian Museum of American Art “helping to connect museums with the target demographic of teens and young adults”. Until a beta version is released keep following the tweets.

The Computer Game Museum (1997)

Berlin. Germany

In 1997, the Computer Game Museum Berlin opened the first permanent exhibition of digital interactive entertainment culture in the world. Since that date, it has been responsible for 30 national and international exhibition projects, both autonomously and in co-operations. The Museum has received the German children’s culture award 2002 (Deutscher Kinderkulturpreis, special award of the Bundesministerium für Familie) and hosts Europe’s largest collection of entertainment software and hardware. On that basis it plans to reopen its permanent exhibition, which was closed near the end of 2000, seeking partnerships with anyone who would like to act for this cultural concern.

International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) (march 2009)

New York. USA.

The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) collects, studies, and interprets electronic games and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and connect with each other, including across boundaries of culture and geography. It’s set inside the Strong National Museum of Play.

Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines (2009)

Arcade Games were a part of childhood and youth of soviet people. They were made at the secret military factories from the seventies up to the Perestroika. Forgotten and broken down Soviet-era arcade games are being restored for Moscow’s newest museum and now it is possible to play and feel atmosphere of the passed epoch.

Around 20 of the 37 different kinds of machines are now in working order. They operate with old Soviet 15 kopek coins, the hammer-and-sickle emblem of which itself conjures up a bygone time. Visitors can try their luck with games like «Sea Battle», where the player looks through a periscope and pretends to be a submarine commander, attempting to torpedo passing ships. In «Tankodrom» the player tries to knock out rocket launchers and jeeps with a small plastic tank. The museum also features Soviet pinball tables, ice-hockey games for two and four players, a target shooting game called «Sniper» and early video games with titles like «Gorodki» and «Skachki» («Horse race»).

The National Coin-Op and Video Game Museum (CLOSED in 1999)

St. Louis, Missouri

in memoriam..

Musée du Jeu Vidéo (April 14, 2010)

The Musée du Jeu Vidéo, opening next April 14 in Paris, is a joint proposal from  Le Toit de la Grande Arche de la Défense and the communication agency Alerte Orage, being the first french museum entirely dedicated to video games.

The museum will follow the history of video games, illustrated by the most emblematic consoles, and by less popular machines. Over 200 pieces will be presented to visitors as well as portraits of famous game developers and Game Culture icons to better understand the cultural phenomenon.

With the support of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and within the framework of the 2010 call for projects on innovative digital cultural services by Cap Digital, NRJ, Game One and many other partners, the Musée du Jeu Vidéo will find its place next to the Musée de l’Informatique (the computer science museum) and will be open every day of the week. in Capdigital

Archivo Videoludico della CinetecaBologna

Cineteca di Bologna is the second largest film archive in Italy and hosts one of the two existing italian festivals on silent cinema, “Il Cinema Ritrovato”, where archivists, professors, students, researchers and amateurs from all over the world gather each summer.

The project has originated from Cineteca di Bologna, but found the prompt support of the Communication Sciences Department and the Drama and Music Studies Department, University of Bologna, and AESVI (Italian Videogame Software Publishers Association). The publishers themselves decided to join the project. The archive is first of all an area of preservation and free fruition, focused on PC and console software and hardware, but also on books, magazines and movies. Ten different stations are available to the users to explore the fund. The Archivio Videoludico aims also at supporting research, exploring the cross-references among different media, arts and disciplines, promoting meetings and events, and encouraging the involvement of young people and school staff for educational purposes. in IGDA wiki

ViGaMus.Video Game Museum. (-2010?)

ViGaMus (Video Game Museum), il primo Museo permanente europeo del Videogioco, nascerà a Roma nel 2010 e sarà parte integrante del centro studi e ricerche sul videogioco di AIOMI, l’Associazione Italiana Opere Multimediali Interattive – Movimento per la Cultura del Videogioco.

Addressing the question “Can anyone else think of museums in computer games? “I’m adding a few more titles to the list, highlighting how museums are depicted in those games and its (un)existing relation with real counterparts.

Alice: Interactive Museum (1991)

The museum mentioned in this game title is completely fictional.

“The stage upon which this drama unfolds is a house of twelve rooms that include a gallery, an atelier, a wine cellar and a photo studio, each connected to others by corridors, doors and even secret passages. The persistent player will find as well a single exit that opens to the outside world.” (game’ box)

Alice: Interactive Museum (1991) is a point-and-click adventure game inspired by Lewis Carrol’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Created by the game designer Haruhiko Shono, in a artistic collaboration with composer Kazuhiko Kato and artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko, the game is set as a hunt for 53 playing cards hidden in 12 thematic rooms in an mansion/museum.

In 1991, the game was awarded a Minister of International Trade and Industry’s AVA Multimedia Grand Prix Award. To know more on this game read the following review.

Roberta Williams’ Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992)

Set in the fictinal “Leyendecker Museum”. An highly detailed description of the museum’s mission and it’s museological program is available in the game manual. The game’s visual art is based in the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker. The exterior of the “Leyendecker Museum” of the game is based on the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

The Dagger of Amon Ra is an adventure game set in 1926 and the player takes the role of Laura Bow, a reporter that investigates the “theft of an ancient artifact that subsequently leads to several murders inside a museum“.

Mystery at the Museums (1993)

The game setting are the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC. Mystery at the Museums it’s a puzzle game where, acompanied by the little Edison character, the player has to recover 4 objects missing from the Smithsonian museums exhibitions, just before the museum opens, at 10h00. In order to do so, each museums building has it’s own associated mini game that must be solved before the digital timer runs down to zero.
The game offers several customizable options, such as changing the visual art colors of the Edison NPC, creating a custom board or selecting a range of age-based levels. The first option also allows the player to assign a specific challenge to each map location/place.

You can play this game online at dosdose.com.

Museum Madness (1994)

Set in the fictional National Museum Interactive Service System. Developed by Novotrade for MECC, Museum Madness it’s an DOS adventure-puzzle game, educationally-based, where the player takes the role of a teenage boy that has to save the museum from a computer virus that has brought exhibits to life, turning them into a mess. Through the gameplay the player has to visit the 25 exibits in the museum, “solving mysteries and puzzles by talking to the historical characters, rearranging objects, trading objects with characters, and generally putting things back the way they were“. The learning is fullfilled reading “museum-like information cards placed throughout the exhibits, as well as (…) from solving the problems in the exhibits themselves.” in wikipedia.

You can play this game online at dosdose.com.

Versailles – A game of intrigue at the Court of Louis XIV (1996)

It’s not set in the contemporary Versailles palace museum, rather it recreates the17th century Versailles to detail, with historical accurate validation, something only possible through the historical expertise and vast iconographic resources brought into the project by the cultural heritage partner.

“Versailles, intrigue at the Court of Louis XIVI” is a first-person adventure game that trust the player into the role of a ‘Garçon Bleu’ caught up in a conspiracy for the destruction of the Chateau of Versailles, in 1685, during the Reign of Louis XIV.

While trying to solve the plot, the player experiences the social life at the court, interacting with historical characters, collecting objects and puzzle solving, immersed in a full 360 degree panorama that recreates the17th century Versailles down to the smallest detail, with historical accurate validation.

The game as unique features in the palace reconstruction and daily life reenactment, based on a set of historical specifications defined by Beatrix Seulle , at the time chief curator of Versailles:

Each piece of the palace is modeled in 3D based on this period’s maps and engravings.

The game maps and textures are produced from a photographic survey at the place and decorative fabrics are selected amongst the archives of the Musée des Tissus de Lyon.

Both fictional and historical characters are made according to portraits from Great Masters of the Royal Court.

Louvre : L’Ultime Malédiction / Louvre,  The Last Curse  / Messenger (2000)

The game title key features is that game fiction is placed in four different time periods of the Louvre building, in a 3D model reconstruction: from the medieval fortress of the 14th century, the King’s Palace of the Renaissance and French Revolution to the Louvre Museum, at present time.

“Louvre: the Last Curse” is a first-person adventure game that trust players into the role of Secret Service Agent Morgane Sinclair who is tasked with breaking in to the Louvre Museum and finding and destroying the four Satan’s Keys, objects witch, when reunite, can provoke the Armageddon.

To achieve her mission, Morgane must travel through an ancient time portal and explore the Louvre in different time periods, as the Medieval Period, The Renaissance, The French Revolution and present time in a visual recreation with historical accuracy.

Room of Wonders (2006)

The museum is fictional, but showcases a collection of 25 objects from the collections of 18 FRAME museums.

Room of Wonder is a flash online puzzle, adventure game, for players between 8 and 12 years old, that reconstructs a fictionist curiosity cabinet, based on the collection of exotic objects from Monsieur de Robien, a French scholar that lived in Rennes, France, during the XVIII century.

Launched in 2006, this free online game is a production from the educational department of Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, with the support of FRAME – French Regional & American Museum Exchange and a grant from the Annenberg Foundation.

Discover Babylon (2008)

Set in the realistic environment of the Walter Art Museum, in Baltimore.

Is a single historical adventure, role-play game with historical validated content combined with elements of sci-fiction aim to promote a public awareness of Mesopotamia and it’s civilization legacy.

The game’s first level is set in present time, in the realistic setting of Walter Art Museum, where the player takes the role of an investigator that is introduced to the disappearance of the resident archaeologist Dexter and an ancient artifact that allows time travel, being given the mission to locate them and recover the artifact.

During gameplay he interacts with the museum curator and explores part of the museum public space and backstage, acquires historical information about several museum objects.

Discover Babylon is a a joint project of the Federation of American Scientists Learning Technologies Project, UCLA’s Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, Escape Hatch Entertainment, and the Walter Art Museum.

Condemned 2. Mission 06: City Museum (2008)

Set in a fictional City Museum. Although it incorporates items of cultural heritage in the game setting, like statues and weapon artifacts, they are uncontextualized ad treated as mere assets, so it’s not legitimate to speak of cultural heritage content on this game.

Condemned 2 is a first-person action game with adventure game elements in the forensic investigation of crime scenes.

In “Mission 06: City Museum” the player controls Ethan Thomas character and has to investigate a crime scene in the City Museum. The game portraits a gore and violent setting depicting a lot of graphic violence. The player has to go through the museum’s alleys and rooms, killing a lot of people and crossing a medieval wing with lots of display cases which he’ll have to brake in order to get the medieval weapons contained.

Besides the medieval artifacts on the museum display cabinets the game also showcases artistic statues that the player has to photograph in order to get pictures of hidden artifacts on them.

GTA IV: Museum Piece Mission (2008)

Set in a fictional “Libertonian Museum” that features historic collections and dinosaurs’ skeletons, the building is depicted in the game setting as “being under renovation and closed to the public”.

In this Grand Theft Auto IV mission, the character Niko Bellic, controlled by the player, is sent to a deal in the “Libertonian Museum” in order to sell diamonds to a buyer: he’s ambushed inside the building, having to kill his way through the museum to the outside (IGN).

Escape the Museum (2008)

Set in the fictional “National Museum of History”. No real cultural artifact of location is portrayed in the video game.

“Escape the Museum” is set in the fictional “National Museum of History”.and the player takes the role of Susan Anderson, a curator trapped inside the museum building after a large earthquake hits the city area. Using some objects available, Susan must find her way out through successive museum rooms and wings, recover valuable artifacts and reach her missing daughter Caitling.

The game features 37 levels mixing adventure-style puzzles with hidden object’s gameplay. The adventure puzzle solving is based on locating items in the scene, combine them in a correct order and/or use them on a appropriate area. The hunting scenes consist on finding a list of given objects, or 10 items alike in the scene.

As stated in the  Smithsonian Museums Blog, in a interview with George Donovan, President of Gogii Games, producers of “Escape the Museum” have  “created the Museum based on a number of periods in history and research, not necessarily a certain museum“. So, no real artifact or location is portrayed in the video game.

PICTUREKA! MUSEUM MAYHEM (2008)

It sets “museum” on the title, although the game’ iconography doesn’t follow a resemble any real collection.

It’s a puzzle, hidden object game for PC based on the original concept of the board game Pictureka.:

In Pictureka! Museum Mayhem, an “unknown culprit gets into the museum after hours and jumbles all of the exhibits. Dinosaur bones have traveled through time to the Space Age exhibit, precious stones are holding court among the fossils, and some priceless artifacts are missing. As the new museum curator, players must reestablish order as quickly as possible by searching for hidden objects that are listed on clue cards. Find all of the items listed in a category to clear the cards and help rebuild and re-organize the museum. It’s up to you to restore the museum before time is up and its reputation is ruined.”

Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (2009)

Set in a fictional museum.

The game has a level “An Evening with Infinity Ward” that takes place in a museum in Encino, California, and features exhibits representing every level in the Campaign. (…) The museum is split into three halls, two containing exhibits of characters and enemies from the game’s levels, and the third contains models of the game’s vehicles.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)

Features “realistic interpretation of the Smithsonian museums”, namely the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Castle, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Air and Space Museum. Besides the museum building the game also features trivia questions, in-game audio tours and factoids.

It’s an adventure game that follows the story of the released motion picture. The player is put in the role of Larry Daley, former night guard of New York’s American Museum of Natural History and has to explore and adventure into 14 levels that are inspired by actual Smithsonian museums and other Washington DC historical places, like the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Archives, and interacting with both fictional and historical characters such as Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, Amelia Earhart and Al Capone. The game’s progression is based on solving puzzles, finding artifacts, collecting items in a platform-like gameplay that also contains “mini-games as trivia questions, in-game audio-tours and factoids that relay historical facts about the exhibits”.

The museums’ game representation is based on schematics of its real counterparts, reinforced by the use of recognizable visual elements, a process that is extended to the creation of a fictional “composite art museum that is really an amalgam of the best parts of all art museums”, due to the variety and diversity of them, according to game developer Jeremy Mahler (Pipeworks).

The Saboteur (2009)

It’s a open-world action game set in a Nazzi-occupied Paris during WW2 having one mission set outside the Musée du Louvre: the character takes control of an unattended panzer tank and driving it around the museum building must destroy a transmission tower placed in the Louvre premises.

A multiplayer game that’s one part science and one part science fiction helps get visitors excited to learn more about the universe. As visitors command their own space ship and attempt to discover an extra-solar planet in the game “Beyond Our World,” they learn about the many elements of our complex universe.

With four stations (space ships) and a “big board” (scoreboard), this network-based board game lets visitors play against each other. The object of the game is simple: guide your ship out of the solar system to reach a new planet. Visitors rack up points along the way as they answer questions, make discoveries and avoid a series of hazards. The big board keeps track of the ships’ locations and lets everyone know how each ship is faring.

Ideum worked with Adventure Science Center to paper prototype the game long before we began to develop the software. The paper version of the game drove the development process. Once the paper version was structured properly, we could then focus on the software development and communications aspects of the game.

The Adobe Flash Media server powers the game and each client connects to the server as new games are initiated. 3D graphics with a retro twist were developed for the game, giving it a fun and inviting feel.

The Beyond Our World software was developed with Adobe Flash and uses an XML structure, making the all the content external to the application and easily changed. The game parameters are also externalized and can be changed to tweak game play.

Beyond Our World is part of the 2009 expansion of the Sky and Space Gallery at Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Tennessee. You can learn more on the Adventure Science Center website. in IDEUM

“Beyond our world” GAMEPLAY

The multiplayer game can support 2, 3, or 4 players. The Adobe Flash Media server powers the game and each client connects to the server as new games are initiated.

A view of the “Big Board” which is projected in the game space at the Adventure Science Center. This allows all of the players (and other visitors) to keep track of game play.

Visitors rack up points along the way as they answer questions, make discoveries and avoid a series of hazards.

“Discoveries” teach visitors about space science as they play and attempt to be the first to discover an extra-solar planet.

“Alerts!” move visitors ships forward or back in the game.

A view of the “Big Board” which is projected in the game space at the Adventure Science Center. This allows all of the players (and other visitors) to keep track of game play.

With four stations (space ships) and a “big board” (scoreboard), this network-based board game lets visitors play against each other.

The four space ships from the Beyond Our World multiplayer game.