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Museums are evolving from static spaces where information is simply presented into dynamic environments that engage visitors in meaningful and even transformative ways. Transformative Game Design plays an important role in this evolution, turning museum visits into immersive, interactive experiences that not only educate but also inspire visitors to take action based on their new insights.

This approach leverages game mechanics to create compelling narratives/adventures and challenges that resonate with visitors on a personal level. This then encourages them to reflect on and change their behavior outside the museum. This concept is called “transfer” and is considered the pinnacle of education. But this process is entirely dependent upon the type of experience the visitor has, how they feel about it (because emotion inspires action), and whether or not they know what their next step is for acting on this new perspective.

To help illustrate this, we’ve come up with nine example interactions that are broken out into the type of Exhibit, the Design of the interaction, and the Action that this inspires in the visitor.

1. Climate Action Simulation

  • Exhibit: Climate Crisis Interactive
  • Design: Visitors participate in a role-playing game where they act as leaders of different countries tasked with negotiating a global climate deal. The game uses real data to show the impact of their decisions on global emissions and climate change.
  • Action: Participants are encouraged to commit to personal or community actions to reduce carbon footprints, with resources (based on their locale) provided to help them implement these changes.

2. Historical Immersion LARP

  • Exhibit: The Underground Railroad Experience
  • Design: A live-action role-playing (LARP) game that recreates scenarios from the Underground Railroad. Visitors assume the roles of various historical figures, making critical decisions that affect their journey to freedom.
  • Action: This exhibit prompts visitors to engage with modern issues of justice and equality, directing them to volunteer opportunities with local civil rights organizations.

3. Economic Decision-Making Game

  • Exhibit: Trade and Commerce in the Ancient World
  • Design: An interactive board game where players trade goods along historical trade routes, facing challenges like pirates and storms. The game highlights the economic principles and the impact of trade policies.
  • Action: Players learn about fair trade and are provided with information on how to support ethical consumer practices.

4. Public Health Interactive Challenge

  • Exhibit: Outbreak!
  • Design: A digital interactive experience where visitors work together to stop a spreading infectious disease by making public health decisions and allocating resources effectively.
  • Action: The game encourages visitors to participate in health initiatives and educates them on ways to prevent disease spread in their communities.

5. Art Conservation Puzzle

  • Exhibit: Art in Peril
  • Design: Visitors solve puzzles that simulate the challenges of art conservation, understanding the chemistry and artistry behind preservation techniques.
  • Action: Inspired by the exhibit, visitors can donate to art preservation funds or participate in local art restoration projects.

6. Wildlife Conservation Strategy Game

  • Exhibit: Endangered Ecosystems
  • Design: A strategy game where visitors manage a wildlife reserve, making decisions about habitat protection and species conservation.
  • Action: This game inspires visitors to support or volunteer for wildlife conservation efforts and provides information on adopting endangered animals.

7. Archaeological Dig Simulation

  • Exhibit: Digging Into the Past
  • Design: A hands-on exhibit where visitors participate in a simulated archaeological dig, uncovering replicas of artifacts and learning about the scientific methods used in archaeology.
  • Action: Participants are encouraged to support archaeological research through educational programs or become amateur archaeologists… even what local colleges offer archeology as a course.

8. Space Exploration Interactive Lab

  • Exhibit: Mission to Mars
  • Design: An interactive lab where visitors plan a mission to Mars, involving challenges like spacecraft design, navigation, and life support systems.
  • Action: This interaction promotes interest in STEM fields and offers links to space camps and science education initiatives.

9. Sustainable Living Workshop

  • Exhibit: Future Cities
  • Design: This interactive model city allows visitors to be involved in urban planning and sustainability decision-making. As they make choices about infrastructure, energy sources, and public spaces, they see the real-time impact of their decisions on the city’s development.
  • Action: Visitors leave equipped with a “sustainable living toolkit” that includes practical tips and resources for reducing energy consumption and waste in their own homes, encouraging them to make environmentally friendly choices daily.

We hope you found inspiration in the above examples transformative game design that can make museum exhibits more than just informative—they can become catalysts for personal and social change. By adding interactive and actionable elements into your museum experience, your visitors are not only educated but also motivated to apply their new knowledge in meaningful ways. And isn’t that the best outcome for education?


 

Guardian Adventures provides transformative game consulting and program development for museum and science centerssummer campsamusement & attraction industries, and more.


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By Meghan Gardner, Cultura Connector, and Claudia A. Fox Tree, Cultura Connector

When game developers and filmmakers dive into cultures as their inspiration for their next big project—be it a video game, a role-playing game (RPG), live-action role-play (LARP), or a film or TV series—Indigenous cultures often provide a tempting source of material. However, incorporating these elements without a deep understanding and respect for their significance can lead to a host of issues, from cultural appropriation to the reinforcement of outdated stereotypes, affecting both the representation of and the real-life conditions for Indigenous communities. 

Cultural Borrowing: More Than Just Aesthetic

It’s a common sight in games and on-screen: Indigenous symbols and practices used as shorthand for exoticism or mysticism. In an RPG, characters might wear tribal masks without context, or a LARP event might feature rituals stripped of their true cultural meaning. When used carelessly, these elements can reduce elaborate and long-standing traditions to mere costumes or backdrops, ignoring their deep roots and significance.

This casual use of cultural symbols undermines the complexity and richness of the cultures they come from and also risks perpetuating a distorted and superficial understanding among audiences. To address this, a more thoughtful approach is needed. Instead of directly lifting these elements, creators can engage in deep research to understand the broader cultural, historical, and social contexts of the symbols they wish to represent. This research can then inspire the creation of original content that echoes the thematic richness of real-world cultures without appropriating their specific sacred or culturally significant symbols.

Additionally, developers and creators can benefit from partnerships with cultural heritage organizations or directly involve Indigenous-identifying educators and advisors (specifically, active members of, and lived experience within, those cultures) who can provide guidance on cultural representation. These collaborations can help ensure that any cultural elements integrated into the narrative are done so with respect and accuracy, honoring the source rather than exploiting it. Such practices prevent cultural insensitivity and enrich the game or show’s world-building, offering players and viewers a more immersive and respectful experience.

Stereotypes That Stick

RPGs, LARPs, and fantasy media often lean on familiar archetypes: the wise sage, the fierce warrior, and the mysterious shaman. Yet, when these roles are designated to Indigenous characters, they frequently perpetuate outdated stereotypes that don’t capture the complexities and contemporaneity of Indigenous lives. These simplified portrayals can reinforce perceptions, portraying Indigenous cultures through a lens that’s both narrow and often romanticized.

As mentioned above, creators can start by involving Indigenous writers and cultural advisors in the development process, ensuring that characters and stories reflect a more accurate and nuanced view of Indigenous cultures. This inclusion helps to break down clichés and introduce a wider range of characters with diverse personalities, backgrounds, and stories that go beyond the traditional archetypes.

Another solution is to provide character development by focusing on individuality rather than ethnicity alone. This means creating Indigenous characters whose roles and identities aren’t defined solely by their cultural background but are integral to the narrative in ways that any character would be. By doing so, games, films, and series can offer a more genuine and respectful representation, highlighting Indigenous communities’ diversity.

The Ripple Effects on Real Communities

The way Indigenous cultures are depicted in games and media doesn’t just stay within the confines of those worlds. For example, when sacred items appear as game accessories, it often leads to mass production and commercial exploitation. This not only strips Indigenous communities of cultural respect but can also rob them of potential economic benefits, including compensation and possibly a share of profits if the culture is the major focus of the project. Additionally, these misrepresentations can distort public understanding of Indigenous issues, complicating efforts to address real-world concerns like sovereignty, return of ancestors (bones) and ceremonial items from museums, and cultural preservation, such as language reclamation, seriously.

To mitigate these negative impacts, creators can implement measures that respect and protect the integrity of Indigenous cultural elements. One approach might be offering licensing agreements that involve Indigenous communities in the profits derived from their cultural contributions (but only with their permission). This ensures that communities are compensated fairly and maintain control and final say over how their culture is represented and used.

Creators can also focus on educational outcomes by integrating accurate cultural histories and contemporary issues facing Indigenous communities into their narratives. As mentioned before (are you seeing a trend?), through collaborations with Indigenous historians and cultural experts, ensuring that the content not only entertains but also informs and educates audiences about the realities of Indigenous life today.

Distinguishing Fantasy from Reality in Game Design

In the realm of fantasy-based games, there’s a delicate line between crafting a rich, imaginative world and blurring the line of fantasy with the reality of existing cultures. Indigenous cultures are not relics of the past or mythical entities but are living, breathing communities that still thrive today. It’s crucial for game developers to recognize this distinction to avoid trivializing or mythologizing real-world cultures.

When developing fantasy games, the temptation might be strong to draw on Indigenous cultures’ visual or spiritual elements to add a layer of “authenticity” or mystique. However, this approach can inadvertently present these cultures as ancient or fantastical, rather than acknowledging their contemporary existence, let alone relevance. This distorts player perceptions of these cultures and contributes to broader misunderstandings and disrespect.

A more responsible approach involves creating entirely new, fictional cultures for fantasy settings, which can be inspired by a blend of many influences while carefully avoiding reinforcing stereotypes or direct appropriation of identifiable cultural symbols and practices. For example, a film that is about pirates and ghosts can be fantasy. Still, when it takes place in a real-life place, the Caribbean, it should not then introduce Indigenous people via stereotypes (cannibalism). By creating new fictional cultures, developers can enrich their games with diverse, intriguing worlds without risking harm to real communities.

When adapting elements, developers can (yup – you guessed it) integrate Indigenous consultants into the creative process to ensure that any borrowed cultural elements are handled with care and respect. These experts can guide developers in understanding which aspects of a culture are appropriate to adapt and which should be avoided to prevent cultural insensitivity, misrepresentation, and perpetuation of stereotypes.

A Call for Indigenous Creation

The call for more ethical creation in these entertainment mediums is getting louder. More developers and producers are realizing the importance of consulting with Indigenous cultural experts and communities from the conceptual phase through to production. This collaboration helps ensure that portrayals are respectful and accurate and that they contribute positively to the cultural landscape.

However, there is an even better approach: investing in Indigenous-led storytelling across all these platforms. The narratives naturally become more authentic and diverse by empowering Indigenous creators to tell their own stories. This enriches the games and shows and broadens the audience’s understanding of Indigenous cultures.

This movement is about more than just adding authenticity; it shifts the creative power to the voices most qualified to represent their cultures and experiences. When Indigenous storytellers are at the helm, they bring a depth of perspective that can transform how stories are told, the nuances they include, and the themes they explore.

This shift toward Indigenous-led storytelling ensures a more nuanced portrayal of Indigenous peoples’ complexities, challenges, and triumphs. It also helps avoid the pitfalls of tokenism and surface-level representation, which often occur when stories about Indigenous cultures are told without their direct involvement. Indigenous creators can introduce audiences to the vibrancy and variety within their cultures, challenging stereotypes and expanding viewers’ understanding beyond the typical narratives.

When games, films, and series feature stories crafted by Indigenous writers and directors, they contribute to a more diverse media landscape. This diversity makes the content richer and more interesting and plays a vital role in educating the audience. It provides a platform for Indigenous cultures to share their histories, values, and visions for the future, promoting greater empathy and appreciation among a broader audience.

Indigenous-led projects can also inspire younger generations within those communities to explore storytelling and media creation themselves. Seeing their cultures portrayed with respect and depth can empower them and provide a sense of possibility and pride in their cultural identity.

As creators in these fields continue to draw on real-world cultures to enrich their fictional worlds, the responsibility grows to handle such inspirations with care. The goal should be celebrating and respecting these cultures rather than reducing them to stereotypes or aesthetic elements. By engaging with and supporting Indigenous voices in the creation process, the entertainment industry can help foster a more inclusive and accurate cultural representation. The investment in Indigenous-led storytelling is pivotal not just for the sake of accurate representation but for the cultural empowerment and educational potential it holds. It’s a progressive step that enriches the entire spectrum of media, offering audiences everywhere a chance to engage with and understand Indigenous cultures in a profound and impactful way.

 


 

Guardian Adventures provides LARP and game consulting and program development for museum and science centerssummer campsamusement & attraction industries, and more.


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Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) is a unique and immersive form of role-playing game (RPG) that involves physically acting out characters’ actions and interactions in a live setting. Running a LARP event can be challenging – especially for those new to the world of RPGs. But it can also be a rewarding experience, and with proper planning, it can be a memorable and even impactful event for all involved.

Here are some suggested steps for running a LARP:

  1. Choose a Theme: First, decide on a theme or setting for the game. This can be based on a fictional world, historical event, or even a modern day scenario. The theme or setting will provide a foundation for the game and will help to guide the creation of characters, costumes, and props. You should also consider if the theme fits any educational outcomes you want your players to gain, such as STEM or social emotional learning (SEL).
  2. Choose a Game System: This is what tells your participants and staff how to play the game. Think of it as the “rule book” or “instructions” of any tabletop game. If you are not already using an established LARP game system, you will need to either create one or decide which one to use. If you are new to running a LARP, simple is best. Creating your own system can be a long endeavor because it requires playtesting and updating numerous times. Some free LARP systems are available. You might want to be certain that the game system you choose covers your preferred type of combat or conflict system whether that is using foam weapons or nonviolent communication.
  3. Create Characters: When running a shorter LARP, it is advisable to create established characters for the participants to play. For longer LARPs, you can provide character creation sheets with rules and the participants can design their own character. In either case, these characters should be well-rounded and have distinct personalities and abilities. They should also be appropriate for the theme or setting of the game. Providing a character sheet with the character’s background and abilities can be helpful for the players to better understand and connect with their character.
  4. Props & Costumes: If you are running a short term LARP, participants (called “players”) should be provided with costumes and props to help them fully embody and represent their characters. For longer term LARPs, players can create their own according to the requirements. These can be as simple or as elaborate as desired, but they should be appropriate for the theme or setting of the game. Foam weapons and shields or NERF Blasters can also be provided for safe combat scenarios if this is part of your LARP theme.
  5. Create the Game Scenario: This is often referred to as the “module”, “adventure”, or “quest” for the players to participate in. This scenario should be based on the theme or setting of the game and should provide a clear goal for the players to work towards. The scenario should also include challenges and obstacles that will require the players to work together and use their characters’ abilities. The module might also include STEM or SEL aspects if you want to make the LARP educational. 
  6. Communicate Safety Rules: It’s also important to have a clear safety protocol in place and to train staff and players on these rules before the start of the LARP event. This includes the use of foam weapons or other interactive combat, as well as guidelines for physical contact. It’s also important to look at your LARP through the eyes of accessibility and make adjustments for people with disabilities.

On the day of the event, it’s important to have a clear plan and schedule for the game scenario, and to have a designated person in charge of keeping the game moving and managing any issues that arise. It’s also important to have a designated person in charge of safety during the event. Please keep in mind that there is a saying in LARP that “no story survives first contact with the players”.  What this means is that you should be prepared to flex and change your story or even your desired outcome depending on what the players do. Having some skill in improv acting is very helpful in this area.

After the event, it’s a good idea to have a debriefing session with the players to gather feedback and suggestions for improvement. This can be done through group discussions or written evaluations.

It may sound like a lot of preparation and logistics… but running LARPs and experiencing the level of player immersion and impact can be a powerful reward. As you create and run more, you will become more skilled at it and the preparation gets much less cumbersome. You will likely also look back on your start of running a LARP with gratitude because you will soon realize that there is nothing quite as exciting as acting out an adventure.

 


 

Guardian Adventures provide consulting and licensing of educational adventures, including a free LARP and cultural programs, for summer campsamusement & attraction industries, and more.


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