Museum Games

I have recently been playing (and enjoying) the new release of Two Point Museum. It’s the latest in the series of ‘Two Point’ Management simulator games that are the spiritual successors to the venerable Theme Hospital. It’s a great game, but it’s not really a game about museums, or even a game of a museum. 

This is something of a trend if you look at ‘Museum Games’ they are largely just other types of games with a museum themed wrapper. They are point and click, puzzle games, or even a card battler set in museums that use the display cases and exhibits as props. This isn’t per se a bad thing, but it is something that’s worth noting, and I think we can do more.

What a museum game can offer

Digital collections are now a normal part of almost any major museum. They offer constant access and enough space to offer basically whatever you want next to them.

As with most things, a proper examination of digital collections is more than a topic in its own right. But despite the near endless possibilities in my experience the general public isn’t so keen on them. For most a near endless catalogue of items just isn’t all that interesting.

The idea of using a ‘game’ then is that we can grab people's attention and meet them where they are. A place that they already want to be and have interest in, and there are a few different ways to go about this.

VR Museums

The most obvious solution is to simply make a museum that is wholly within a digital environment. There are plenty of people out there who have done this and you can access them today, either through your computer or even a VR headset. Things like Occupy White Walls, Infinite Art Museum, or The VR Museum of Fine Art. This is not a modern phenomenon however, I have distinct memories of having a virtual museum you could walk around some time in the early 2000’s and some quick googling shows a variety of computer programs even earlier than that.

A delightfully retro Virtual Gallery ‘Relocating the Remains’ (Image from Tate)

You will note rather quickly however that many of these digital spaces act mostly as art galleries or contain rather basic amounts of click boxes that act as labels. This I fear rather misses the point of having a virtual museum. In a real museum you are limited by space, having multiple visitors trying to interact with the exhibits, and of course being financially limited.

Whilst developing a virtual museum is by no means free its is much cheaper and it makes things like walking through a hall and turning into a room to be confronted with a 100 ft tall Buddha Statue on a snowy plain (as happens in The VR Museum of Fine Art) the same price as having a much smaller version sat on a plinth in the middle of another muted room.

One of the few virtual museums that I'm aware of that has a more proactive approach is the Museum of Other Realities. Whilst far from what I might expect to be possible it plays around with being able to jump into scenes, taking advantage of volumetric sounds and allowing you to directly interact with exhibits.

Screenshot of the Digital Art Museum Museum of Other Realities (Image from Museum of Other Realities)

The collection is once again largely artistic rather than trying to emulate an actual museum and teach about a subject but it goes some way into showing the kind of things that can be achieved with the technology.

Playable Digital Archives

Another obvious way to do it is creating a game out of digital elements, the kind of thing that wouldn’t work all that well in a real location. Things like Museum of Mechanics: Lockpicking which focuses on presenting an archive of the lockpicking mechanics from a host of different games. You can walk around the admittedly rather lo-fi museum floor and try out different mechanics seeing how they have evolved over time and across different genres.

Screenshots of the Museum and some of the lockpicking activities from other games (Image from Museum of Mechanics Lockpicking)

More common however is a kind of mini library of an older series which includes multiple games you can play through as well as a variety of other related materials such as development discussions, concept art, and even adverts.

Taking this to an extreme the PAC-MAN MUSEUM+ even makes this something of a game in itself where playing various iterations of PAC-MAN franchise gives you coins that you can use to deck out your own virtual museum.

Screenshot of A Player Made PAC-MAN Museum (Image from PAC-MAN MUSEUM+)

Assassin’s Creed Museums

The most groundbreaking and best example (in my opinion) of what can be done are the Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours. Available either as standalone products or as part of the games they’re based on, you can explore 425 BC Greece, 40BC Egypt, and 873 Viking Britain (with 1580’s Japan presumably coming soon).

This presumably came from the idea that in building respectively Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Origins, and Valhalla the team put huge amounts of work into researching the worlds to make them as authentic as they could reasonably get. So they decided to show off all of that research as a kind of explorable museum.

A Player Getting a guided tour of the Theatre of Dionysus (Image from Assassin's Creed Odyssey)

The discovery tours allow you to freely explore the entire worlds of the games without any of the story, quests, or combat. Instead a mixture of audio tours, tool tips, and even acted scenes to describe a historical setting.

This is the kind of thing that living museums wish they could be. Huge reconstructions of different areas filled with hundreds of costumed people going about some facsimile of daily life. The ability to listen to a tour, wander off for something that grabs your attention and then come back with hardly a break in the stride is ideal.

I can heartily recommend that you give one of these a go as they really open your eyes to what could be possible. And by being couched in the language of games and linked to such a huge franchise they generate immediate interest.

Being part of a huge franchise is also the only way that this kind of thing could currently get realistically made. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla made over $1 billion which gives the wiggle room for the kind of value-added prestige product like the Discovery Tours to be made. The amount of development work that would be required to make something like this without the original game would be prohibitive. Still, I think it shows a real potential and I hope that more people can do something similar in the future.

How to Visit 10+ Museums a Day

When people ask me about my holidaying and I say that I can visit upwards of 10 museums/historical sites in a day (my record thus far is 16) they are often shocked and ask some mixture of how and why. So I thought that I would share the secrets here. 

Wear Sensible Shoes and Trousers

This is one that it took me far longer to learn than it really should have done. In a day I'm usually out of the hotel around 08:30 to get to the first place and depending on how things go I might not be back until gone 18:00.

This generally means that you're looking at something like 8-10 hours of near constant standing and or walking. Either going round galleries or wandering the city between them. So what you're going to want is decent quality and comfortable walking gear. This is in many ways a walking holiday and should be treated as such. 

Plan Your Route

This is probably one of the biggest things. You need to have an idea of where it is that you're going, as well as if and when things will be open. You want to be at the earliest thing to open and then have your route finishing with whatever closes latest (within reason). 

When planning a holiday I first make a spreadsheet of all of the different museums, points of interest, and attractions (you can find my Amsterdam one here). This lets me consider how much I want to see particular things and also get an idea for what things might be more restricted in their visiting. 

At the same time I make a map of all of these places (my Amsterdam one is here). This lets me then group nearby places together and see if there's anything that's really far away. 

Once I've got these I typically pick the key places that I definitely want to visit and then either pick out routes to or from them. I tend to group these in broad directions such as ‘south of hotel’

Map of Various Museums and Points of Interest in Berlin Grouped into Various (Own Image)

Linger Only on the Things that Interest You

It’s important to make sure that this is a fun experience. I do this for the love of seeing different museums and the way they tell stories (one particular example is the very different interpretation of the ‘Sale of New York’ as shown in both the Museum of the City of New York and the National Museum of the American Indian). This means that there should be no ‘set time’ that you should spend in a given place.

It's important that you don't feel like you're trying to ‘get your money's worth on the ticket price. If a big and expensive museum sparks no joy then it’s totally fine to just have a quick browse. But equally if one museum draws you in then there’s nothing wrong with spending hours in it. Visiting so many museums is not a challenge or a goal so it’s totally fine for plans to change depending on what you are or are not enjoying.

Have Lunch, But Don't Make a Meal of it

Many times I've looked at the time and realised that it’s long past midday and I haven't eaten. However, when I finally do stop and have something I suddenly realise how much I needed it.

That said, midday is a prime time for visiting places. When on holiday my family often luxuriates over long lunches spending maybe a couple of hours really soaking in the ambience. However, not wanting to miss out on crucial visiting time when it’s just me I tend to keep an eye out and find a nice looking place between museums and grab something quick and ideally hot.

Once again, I don’t set limits on this. If I feel the need to sit around for a while longer or get a bigger meal then that’s totally fine. But usually it’s a quick half an hour and then off again.

Public Transport can be a Trap

By and large when visiting these cities I don’t often take public transport unless the thing I want to visit is particularly far away. Even then I might take public transport to the furthest out point and then walk my way back visiting other things along the way.

This is for two main reasons. Firstly, I tend to find that public transport may not actually be that fast. Whilst Metros are usually pretty good, buses are often slow and you may be stood around at the bus stop for a while. This twinned with a carefully planned out route means that often it’s simply quicker to walk to the next place.

Secondly I think it also helps me get a much better idea of the city i’m visiting. I see far more than I would on a bus, I might see interesting places to take diversions into. Admittedly this has led me to wander through some more ‘interesting’ places where people who are not large 6’3” men may not feel comfortable being. But some of the more interesting places I find on a trip can often come from just walking about.

You Probably Shouldn't 

I feel I should finish this all off by saying that this almost certainly isn’t something that you should do. This is a highly specific way of holidaying that appeals exactly to me and works entirely off my own whims.

It is certainly not a relaxing way to spend a week though I do believe it is a good way to really get a feel for a place, its history, and its people. But maybe that’s just me.

Museums and a Sense of Space

I have had to write this blog post several times. At one point it was a 12 page essay that frankly nobody should ever have to read. So today I will try and keep it short and sweet. The problem is that for me, a sense of space is an intuitive idea, one that is easier to feel than it is to understand. So you must forgive me if everything that comes next is total nonsense.

What is a Sense of Space?

When visiting a museum I always ask the question, would this topic be better taught with a documentary or a book? Sadly, for many the real answer is perhaps a yes. So instead we need to ask the question: What is the advantage of this being a museum? 

For me then the inherent advantage is that a museum is located is a place that you must go to (digital collections and virtual museums are a discussion for another time). It is a good idea then to use the experience of being in a physical space to your advantage. This is what a refer to as a sense of space, a leveraging of the physical surroundings.

How to Build a Sense of Space

This sense of space can mean many different things to many different museums. For a science centre it can be about having bright colourful artwork, high tech displays and the booming sound of science experiments. For a historical collection it could be that it is set in an ancient castle where the rooms are set up as they would have been at the time.

Some places come with an inherent sense of space, such as the Intrepid Museum being contained within an old Aircraft Carrier. Others have to build it through careful use of displays, scenery, and even a little lighting and sound design such as my top rated museum of Berlin, Samurai Museum Berlin.

Image of the Outside of the Intrepid Museum (Image from the Intrepid Museum)

Whatever you do it comes down to an idea of making sure that when the person is in the space physically, they are also there mentally. It’s about making it more than just a collection but a whole experience surrounding that.

Not Just Immersion

An experience being ‘Immersive’ is one of those terms being bandied about a lot at the moment to the point where it doesn’t really mean anything anymore. There is also a potential accusation that what I'm advocating for is the dressing up of a museum to be a theme park. Something that focuses on style over substance. 

This is categorically not what I'm recommending, but that’s not to say that we can’t learn and take things from theme parks. Consider for example the difference that could be made (especially for child audiences) by having museum staff in some basic costuming that makes them look like adventurers or scientists. How far even a small amount of scenery can really enhance the feeling of a space. Or just how items can be displayed in a cabinet that’s a bit more interesting than another plain white background.

This is something that display boards, audio guides, tours, lightning, and every single other part of the design of the space could be used to help with. It shouldn’t be the sole goal of an exhibit but with some mindful consideration it can really help bring a space to life.

Image from the British Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination Exhibit that uses moody lighting and some Theatre style scenery to help build a sense of space (Image from the Urban Explorer)

A Feeling

As mentioned I have tried to pour out the words to describe exactly what I mean but I have failed time and time again. It’s one of those ‘I know it when I see it’ type things and hard to discuss in the abstract. This is highly annoying for perhaps one of my most foundational tenets of museum design, but I hope that in this brief consideration that it has given you some idea. I am always open to discussing it further especially in relation to something specific.

A Tale of Two Polish LEGO Museums

I am, of course, a big lover of museums but I'm also a big fan of the building brick toy LEGO. So when I saw that Krakow contained not one, but two different museums about LEGO I was pretty excited.

However, my experiences at the two could hardly have been different and one of them was a great delight while the other was only mildly interesting. And I think the reasons why exposed a larger problem with museums generally but also Polish museums specifically.

The two museums were The World of Little Technicians and Brick and Figs both of which boasted large collections of LEGO sets that were fully built and set in display cases along with labels telling you what they were, how many pieces, and the year they were released.

They both seem to spring from a genuine love for the product and both seem to offer play areas for kids and all the usual museum trappings. On the face of it they are seemingly very similar places (albeit with Brick and Figs clearly having a bit more money behind it) but the experiences couldn’t have been more different

Image of the LEGO Technic Collection (Image from Swiat Malych Technikow)

The ‘Stuff’ Problem

I have often derided the idea of a ‘Stuff’ Museum. That is to say a place where lots of stuff is put on display and whilst it might be cool stuff there’s not much interest or context to it.

By and large what the actual items you have on display are rarely all that interesting in and of themselves. Outside of famous paintings, or obviously important things like spaceships the interest in anything a museum shows has to be in the story that is told about it. Some hypothetical document in a display case could be the missive that changed the course of a medieval war, or it might just be a request for more toilet paper to be ordered for the castle. If you don’t tell me then I don’t know.

This was endemic in the Polish museums that I visited. There was a lot of stuff but because there was very little information about that stuff I couldn’t exactly be all that interested.

The LEGO museums however have a bit of a leg up here. A LEGO set is probably, to the average person, more inherently interesting than an old roof tile. And it being in a dedicated museum is an interesting novelty which sparks a little more interest. However ultimately both of these museums were ‘Stuff Museums of the highest order’

Image of the Bricks and Figs Collection (Image from Bricks and Figs)

The collections, whilst both very expensive and impressive, were presented in display cases largely without comment. The World of Little Technicians had an advantage as it focused exclusively on LEGO Technic branded sets and displayed almost every single released set in broadly chronological order. The Bricks and Figs collection on the other hand was somewhat more haphazard, grouping similar sets or collections of minifigures from the same brands together but with no clear overall structure.

This is all well and good, great for a little browse. But then that’s all it’s good for. A quick 10-15 minutes wandering around looking at particularly interesting sets and trying to find sets that I own or did own as a kid.

The Personal Touch

It is here that the experience between the two differs wildly. At Bricks and Figs you were given nothing but the cabinets to wander around. There were QR codes on the wall and I had initially hoped this would be some kind of audio guide but all they seemed to lead to was a laggy website that allowed you to more closely examine the minifigs getting individual details on its name, price, and year of release.

At The World of Little Technicians however I got a tour from the owner Piotr Miedziński. He guided me through the collection, both his personal experience in his first sets as a child, the machines the sets are based on, and the progression of LEGO design over the years. Mixed in with some good humor his genuine love and passion for the LEGO shone through and I was with him for a good hour. We both would have happily continued for much longer had his (I assume) wife not come down several times to remind him he had other people waiting for a tour, and somebody else who was coming to pick up a set from their shop.

Pitor doing the grand opening of the museum (Image from Swiat Malych Technikow)

That tour transformed what could have been a short, mildly interesting, browse into one of the best experiences of my trip where I genuinely learnt more than I did in almost any other museum.

This experience reminds me of visiting Tallinn as a teenager and going to a tiny museum about coins (some googling suggests that it no longer exists) that consisted of just a single room with various drawers containing a variety of coins. The very definition of a ‘Stuff Museum’ except that the person on the front desk launched into various stories about some of the coins, what they were, what they represented and crucially why they were important enough to display in a museum.

You Can’t Give Everyone a Tour

The two LEGO museums I think sit at two points of a spectrum. A personal tour isn’t sustainable except for the smallest of museums with only a small footfall whereas the total lack of any kind of guidance leads to a short and unfulfilling experience.

The trick then is finding a balance between the two. There are lots of options from having actually useful labels and display boards, audio guides, or even dedicated tour guides. Tour guides as I discussed briefly in my blog about Auschwitz can be a double edged sword. Display Boards and Audio guides are also not free to produce and it can be a struggle to cover all of the items that you may want to display.

My solution to this is to largely bin the idea of a ‘Stuff Museum’ they certainly have their place and I can understand the desire to show off a vast and interesting collection but I think where a museum really shines is when the audience can understand what it is they are seeing which then allows them to appreciate it. And if you’ve got a lot of stuff like this, then you need somebody like Pitor to get you excited about it.