Game Friday: The Thrill of the Chase

A simple little game today, Lonely House Moving, which caught my eye not for the gameplay (urban Mario) but for the intoxicatingly simple story. Girl and boy talk. Girl gets into U-haul. Boy has epiphany and starts racing after her.

You play the role of the boy, dodging squirrels, bird poop, and the lampshades falling off her truck as you try to catch the moving vehicle and, presumably, announce your affection. It’s like every modern romantic comedy compressed to its most basic form. And the impact is powerful; in the discussion area of Casual Games, comments ranged from

“Go nameless lonely guy! For the sake of love!”

to

“dodging stuff in the context of this little guy's newfound love-struckedness is a nice illustration of the way you have to prioritize if you discover that you really want something. I honestly feel like I'll take a little piece of this game away with me and it might improve my life in some tiny way.”

What makes this simple narrative so impressively conveyed? There isn’t any dialogue or facial detail on the characters. There’s no carefully composed heartstring music. Visually, the game uses two devices to great effect: the relation between two faces, and the passage of time.

First, the relation between the characters. It’s no more detailed than the fable of Mario and the princess (less if you consider the occasional text in Mario about the princess needing help). And yet the game designers here did something brilliant: they keep the two characters in the visual frame throughout the entire game. The boy isn’t moving towards a goal (the girl). He’s chasing her. For most of the game, you watch his body, constantly moving towards her, while she is facing the other way, unaware as she rides the truck that she is being followed by her friend (and is losing several personal items off the back of the truck). Seeing both of these heads and their directionality continually reinforces the relationship between the two, and you are constantly hoping that she will turn around and see you. That tension and hope fuels the game.

The other thing the game does well is passage of time. It’s accomplished in the cheesy “sun goes down then comes up in the background” way, but it works. In the context of the simple story, it conveys the length that the boy will go to follow the girl, and you can imagine how the 12 hours pass in each of their minds.

Ultimately it’s this invitation to the imagination that makes the simple strokes of this game so emotionally appealing. The game sets you up with everything you need to get invested, get interested, and get imaginative. You can port your own emotions onto the characters, thinking of that one woman or man or job or chance that got away. And then you run and hope to God this time you’ll catch it.

See You at the Igloo: The Power of Club Penguin

When I talk with museum people about virtual worlds, the conversation usually centers on Second Life. And sure, by some metrics, it's the biggest, most fully realized 3D world out there, full of user-generated content, sex shops and waterslides, and a whole lot of buggy, experimental experiences.

But Second Life isn't the biggest, and it isn't the fastest growing. It's just the most open.

If you want to see where the real action is, waddle over to the igloo. Chances are if you know a kid between 6 and 12, you know a kid who uses Club Penguin or Webkinz, or both. Club Penguin is subscription-based and purely on the web; Webkinz requires the purchase of a plush toy (with an active virtual life). These virtual worlds are, as one father put it, "the cuddly G-rated version of Second Life." And they're booming. Club Penguin has 700,000 subscribers (at $6/month), about 12 million users, and was just sold to Disney for $350 million with a $350 million additional earn-out. And unlike Second Life, Club Penguin is 2D, highly controlled, and its primary users are too young to type.

But not too young to fall in love with virtual worlds. In January, there was an interesting CNET article about "Generation We"--kids growing up today who are constantly plugged in, not to their own personal gadgets, but to a larger social network. They expect their computer experiences, like in-person play experiences, to be social. While there's not much interest in playing with strangers, kids as young as 6 will make plans with school friends to meet up in the virtual igloo afterschool for scripted chat and simple flash games.

Talking to kids about these worlds, I've learned they know how to game the system (removing those pesky parental controls). But they don't use it to swear. They use it to play. They love the way it fuels their desire to quickly jump from one activity to the next. Now we're making pizza! Now we're playing hockey! It's not just one game, so it doesn't feel constrained. It emulates real social imaginative play and provides a realized (if virtual) environment for interaction.

They also love a part that creeps me out: the commercial aspect. Much of the gameplay in these worlds focuses around earning virtual money to buy virtual goods. And I can see the appeal; I felt the same excitement playing Lemonade Stand, filling pitchers and raking in the imaginary text-based dough. Whether healthy or not, acquiring, saving, and scheming with money is a classic child preoccupation--and one that cannot fully be realized in the real world.

One of the best places to get a good idea of Club Penguin without strapping on a beak is through their blog. Blogging may seem like an adult (or at least teenage) activity, but the Club Penguin creators realize that their users are enthusiastic and want to be involved in the action. You get a feel for the emphasis on new! improved! content, events, and the extent to which kids really feel this is "their" world. If only museums' blogs got such a wealth of poorly spelled comments. "THE MISSION IS AWSOME I WANTED TO BEAT THEM ALL AND I DID THANK YOU SO MUCH CP I LOVE YOU." Indeed.

So what does this mean for museums? Someone recently said to me, "the mass audience for virtual worlds is growing up with the technology." It isn't the Second Life early adopters for whom this technology will be ubiquitous: it's the young penguins in their virtual igloos. Adults may not expect social networks and virtual extensions of real experiences in museums, but within ten years, adolescents raised on Club Penguin and Webkinz will. In the same way that today's teens have grown up with the mobile phone technology, today's pre-teens are growing up with social networks and virtual worlds. If you are going to invest time looking into virtual worlds while thinking about future audiences, perhaps it's time to start getting out on the ice. Or, as the Club Penguin blog would put it, waddle on!

Talking Through Objects: The Dog Analogy

I'm gearing up for some conference talks next month, and one of these is part of a very cool session, Eye on Design, at the Western Museums Association conference. The coordinator asked several folks to pick a design trend from outside the museum world and discuss how they might be applied to museum design. I've been thinking about what, of all this 2.0 stuff, is most exciting to me. And right now, it's the ways that these technologies encourage social engagement among strangers.

On the web, such socializing can happen around games (MMOs), shopping (Amazon discussions), trip planning (TripAdvisor), music or book collections (Librarything)... the list goes on. But I recently stumbled back upon one of the most powerful tools for stranger-stranger socializing in the real world: dogs.

I'm in the process of adopting a dog. Doing so has brought me to shelters, dog parks, and generally a heightened awareness of dogs and their owners. Dogs are the ultimate social object. They allow for transference of attention from person-to-person to person-to-thing-to-person. It’s much less threatening to approach someone by approaching and interacting with his/her dog, which will inevitably lead to interaction with its owner. Similarly, enterprising dog owners use their dogs as social instigators, steering the pups towards people they’d like to meet.

Why does this work with dogs but not with, say, 18th century coins in museums? When you are looking at a painting, and I am looking at the painting, why don’t we transfer our interest in the painting into social exchange?

One argument might be that dogs are owned and therefore uniquely associated with their owners. In the museum, neither of us has a vested interest in the exhibit with which we are both interacting, so neither of us can extrapolate back to interest in the other person. But that’s not quite true. Often I’m standing at an exhibit, totally thrilled by the way I can use my hands to make cloud formations or listen to strange sounds or… and would LOVE to share it with strangers. I feel some ownership of the experience I’ve discovered. I’d love to flag someone down and say, “Hey! Check out this awesome thing!” But I rarely do. I’m conscious of other people’s “alone time” in the museum. When I see someone having a great experience with an exhibit in a museum, my impulse isn’t to approach him and ask what he’s enjoying. My impulse is to leave him alone to enjoy his experience, to be alone with his dog, as it were.

But leaving dogs “alone” never seems like the right choice. They have so much social energy on their own, absent of owners. Have you ever had a stray dog, a sweet and not-too-mangy one, approach you on the street? In my experience these dogs are the best social generators. Immediately, I spring into action, asking the people on the street if they know the dog, have seen it, etc. Suddenly an ad hoc gang of strangers is shepherding this dog through the neighborhood looking for its home.

Imagine an exhibit that could do this—that could approach you, express a need, and spring you into social action. An exhibit that compelled you to walk around to other visitors and ask, “Do you know this exhibit? Is it yours? Any idea where it belongs?”

What are the general characteristics of dogs that make them good objects for sparking social interaction?

They are intrinsically relational. Exhibits are things. Dogs are persons (if highly limited in their abilities as such). The expectation with a dog is that the only way to engage with it is by being social with it, which then breaks the ice for being social with those around it. The expectation with an exhibit is that one approaches it intellectually, physical, even emotionally, but that the approach is uni-directional; that is, the exhibit isn’t giving anything back. You are the only active agent with an interactive. With a dog, you are both active agents, and the “interactivity” is social.

Dogs are outwardly emotive. There are many museum exhibits that are arguably as interactive as a dog. And yet the thing that makes dogs lovable is their desire to relate emotionally, to perform and to please. It’s easier as a stranger to respond positively to an animal that expresses interest in you than an exhibit that just sits there. And dogs’ attention is not uni-directional—dogs will spread their attention to all those around them. Which means if you are having a great experience with your dog, I can perceive and access that. In a museum, I can’t necessarily tell if the ancient bowl is communicating with you or you with it. Dogs are approachers. Exhibits only receive.

Dogs are endlessly interesting to their owners. If I approach you in a museum and ask what captivates you about the sculpture in front of us, you might look at me strangely and tell me you were just spacing out. But if I ask what you love about your dog or why he does that funny thing, you will chatter on for minutes. Yes, this happens in museums, but most often when you interact with museum staff, who have vested interests, relationships, and ideas about the objects on display. Museum visitors are rarely as “close” to exhibits as they are to their pets.


In a strange way, the dog analogy leads to thinking about personalizing the museum. When the museum is full of objects, exhibits, and experiences that feel personal to visitors, visitors take ownership and have relationships with those experiences that are emotional and deep—like their relationships with dogs. I once toured an art museum with an art educator who told me that she thinks of certain pieces as “old friends” who she loves to visit and communicate with from time to time. It struck me that she was incredibly privileged to have this personal relationship with the art. But that relationship is like her own secret dog. It makes her experience more meaningful, but doesn’t necessarily induce social behavior.

Having personal relationships with museum content is a start—but that’s just the first step, when you clip the leash on the dog and call it yours. The real challenge is figuring out how to design exhibits that are “approachers,” that come up to you with interest and attention and needs and ask you to satisfy them. How do we design exhibits to be the cutest, most friendly strays on the block?

Please share your thoughts. In the meantime, I’ll be out socializing with my new friend.

Game Friday: Supporting Community Influencers

The Austin Game Developers Conference is finishing up, and from it comes Gamasutra's intriguing account of the session on Engaging and Empowering Community Influencers. In gaming, especially MMOs (massively multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft), the social component--supported by bulletin boards, community sites, and in-game social areas--plays a major role in how the game is perceived, and, by extension, its success. The players who talk to the most other players are often more influential than those with the highest scores, and game design firms are starting to consciously cultivate and support their influence.

There are some obvious ties to the role of "community" in museums. Recently, some museums have launched initiatives to rebrand as community spaces, acknowledging and attempting to harness the positive social energy around visitation. Notably, the Brooklyn Museum's heavy involvment with social networking sites like MySpace has extended the idea that museums are sites for discussion. And even museums that don't have online social presences are sites for discussion, whether on TripAdvisor, Yelp, or other forums for opinion about cultural attractions.

As this evolution progresses, it may be worthwhile for museums to turn to gaming and consider the ways that game designers treat their players. Traditionally, game designers thought of players as consumers, and were uninterested in their social discusions, forums, etc. around gameplay. Now, designers realize the power of such forums to influence the game's success, and are employing "community managers" to work with and in those forums.

An easy place to start is the web: get out there and see what people are already saying about your museum. Search for your institution of TripAdvisor (for reviews), on Technorati (for blog mentions), on Flickr (for photos), or on YouTube (for rare but coveted visitor-generated videos). Read the comments. You'll quickly see that a conversation is happening about your institution--and you do not control it. But that doesn't mean you can't be a part of it, either by actively inserting your voice, supporting discussion on your own site (a la Brooklyn Museum), or, in the model of the game designers, trying to steer it.

How do these game companies steer the discussion? It's a three step process.

First, the community managers identify and reach out to "community influencers"--everyday players whose voices are particularly clear, persuasive, and insightful. Most of these people have enough vested interest in the game--either because they love or hate it--that a solicitation from the game production company to get involved is met with positive response. Who are these influencers? People with "leadership, empathy for what people like and don’t like, ability to sooth ruffled feathers, articulate." Critical people are sought after; "yes men" are not as useful as those who have clearly articulated issues with the game. Note that these people are selected, not self-selected. These aren't the people who tell the museum about their visit via program surveys or comment cards; they are the people who tell their friends about their visit. It takes staff time to break into these communities, but it means that the sample is not based on people with visions of grandeur or "yes" folks. Their interest is in the game, not the influence.

Second, the community managers give these influencers special responsibilities and perks. In many cases, the responsibilities are direct extensions of things the players were already doing--offering critique of issues and suggestions for new features, supporting newbie experiences, rallying people around certain elements of the game. The perks include access to information about the game, praise and fame within the forums, and occasional freebies and in-game rewards. Note that these influencers are not formally hired; they do not have contracts (though many sign NDAs). They are being supported as goodwill volunteers, not hired as corporate shills.

Third, the game designers use the influencers' feedback to change the course of the game. This is the most important point, both for the influencers and the designers. If the community managers just made influencers feel good about their involvement, they'd be marketers, not community managers. The point is that the designers actually believe that they can learn something from these influential, thoughtful players. When the designers make changes based on their learnings, they have a readymade audience of influencers who will test, support, and distribute information about the changes. The influencers become part of the design experience--not in a heavy or disruptive way, but in a supportive and provocative one.


Could museums do this? Sure. Some already do. It requires relying not on the self-selected group of influencers (i.e. members/donors), but on the people who use the museum most frequently, most thoughtfully, and most socially. Right now, it's hard to do step 1 (identifying), because in many cases museums aren't aware of where influencers are making themselves known.

So get online and start looking for and reaching out to your influencers. Or, start at home on the museum floor. Influencers ask insightful questions at programs, bring rowdy crowds through exhibits, and hang out in the cafe and on the museum steps. They complain and criticize and don't let the museum take the easy way out. They delight and share and are perplexed and want to talk about it. This often happens in a lovely way in children's museums, where there are many heavy repeat visitors, kids who have a good understanding of what works and doesn't on the floor. I once worked at a tiny museum where each week a boy would come in and give us a tour of what he did and didn't like. He was a great and honest evaluator, and he loved his role as an influencer.

Once identified, acknowledging and supporting influencers can be a wonderful way to get new programs or experimental projects rolling. Community development doesn't have to rest solely on staff's shoulders--getting the community involved should, after all, be about them. What's going on in your museum? How do or could you support your community influencers?

Museum 2.0 at ASTC: Come Tour the Best Tech Museum in LA!

The ASTC (the Association of Science and Technology Centers) annual meeting is coming up in LA (home of my childhood), and Museum 2.0 will be there! The fine folks at ASTC must have made a teensy oversight when they neglected to include my favorite tech museum in the conference proceedings, so I'm remedying the situation by sponsoring a conference alternative on Sunday afternoon, October 14: lunch and a visit to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

In a world of increasingly sterile museum environments, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is a beacon of emotion, strangeness, and wonder. Created by artists David and Diana Wilson, it is an homage to the curiosity cabinet of yore, a place where the grotesque, the imaginary, and the unfamiliar intermingle. Exhibits range from oil portraits of the Soviet space program dogs to immersive stories about scientists who may have existed to failed dice to letters sent to the Mt. Wilson observatory, and are by turns exquisite and disquieting. Enjoyable and fascinating both as a designed collection and a meta-commentary on museums, the MJT is small, quirky, and DEFINITELY worth a visit. Plus, they serve free cookies and tea. What's not to like?

The logistics:
This outing will be on SUNDAY, OCT 14 from noon until 3:15; we will make it back in time for the 3:30 sessions. We will leave the convention center promptly after the morning session, zip over to Culver City, explore the MJT for an hour, grab some lunch, and scoot back. I wanted to make it a more leisurely affair but am concious of everyone's needs for heavy conference time. We'll take cabs/my car; the whole experience should cost about $30 between food, transportation, and museum donation.

Please contact me at nina@museumtwo.com to join the adventure. It's an opportunity for us to discuss some of the content that's been brought up on the blog, but more importantly a chance to visit a really weird museum. And I mean that in the best possible way.

And if you want a more traditional Museum 2.0 experience, I will be presenting on:

• SATURDAY in "I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours"
• SATURDAY in "Defining Museums 2.0"
• TUESDAY in "Web 2.0 the Sequel: What's Now? What's Next?"

See you in LA!

Labor Day Thoughts: Getting Admin Staff on the Floor

It's Labor Day, and across the country, a working dichotomy is manifest in museums. Administrative offices are dark while the galleries are packed with visitors. The floor staff are directing traffic, selling tickets, and facilitating experiences for throngs of people. If they're lucky, they've got a few good visitor services managers running the show. And if the leadership is wise, there are some admin staff among them, learning from the experience.

This post is not intended (primarily) as a salute to floor staff--though they deserve it. Few would contest their value and service to institutions that generally pay them poorly for the often monotonous work of facilitating smooth, positive guest experiences. Instead, this post is an open question: how involved should admin staff be with the floor experience? How often should educators, designers, and execs push back from their desks, throw on a nametag, and walk the floor? Is this an outdated concept or a useful business strategy?

For mostly practical reasons, museum staff offices have shifted over the last couple decades further and further from the public. As museums grow in staff and exhibits, the reshifting of space often necessitates moving people into new buildings, basements, and unused floors. In the most extreme situations, staff work several blocks from the closest visitor, and frequenting the museum floor requires an outing rather than just a bathroom break.

Is this a bad thing? Arguably, much of what happens behind the scenes at museums has little bearing on the visitor experience and vice versa. The screams of children, while invigorating, don't inspire better fundraising nor conservation. And yet I'd argue that museums are in a very special position as "product manufacturers" because staff always have direct access to their consumers. And if museums are indeed products for visitor/consumers, then that access is the most precious marketing, research, and development resource we have.

Why should admin staff spend time on the floor? It makes us better providers of visitor services. It makes us more compassionate and capable managers of floor staff. It makes us more compelling storytellers and fundraisers about the guest experience. It makes us confront the reality of the museum not from our own perspective as owners, but from that of our users.

It's easy to write these things and much harder to live them. Time on the floor often feels repetitive. You rarely gain new insights; instead, you hone your ability to give directions to the bathroom. The tangible value of the experience for you, and your impact on guests, seems minimal, and quickly you start itching to get "back to work." You get it. You know what the museum's like. Why reexperience it again and again?

Because your visitors don't. It's an interesting characteristic of museums that most visitors to them are newbies to the location and are unlikely to advance beyond that status to become frequent users. Unlike, say, people who ride the subway or people who listen to iPods, the "product experience" in museums is largely formed in a single initial visit. If the visitor returns, it's likely to be for "something new" next year, by which point they have a familiarity with the general museum experience but not the specific content experience. What this means is that as product creators and distributors, museum staff are largely dealing with people brand new to the product. Our visitors don't have the luxury we as staff have to "get to know the museum" over several visits. The museum they know is very different--and getting out on the floor helps us understand that difference.

On the floor, even as staff familiarity with the content and the layout grows ad nauseum, the visitor experience is largely uninformed. And while it's easy for non-floor staff to remember the sensations of being on the floor--the noise and quiet, the elation and confusion--it's hard to remember the sensation of being there for the first time. And that sensation is the one to which we must design, program, and sell.

For this reason, the most important place for admin staff to spend time is in front of the museum, walking the line, answering questions, selling tickets and memberships and welcoming people in the door. This is the location where visitors' prejudices and expectations are on display. This is where their questions, yet unaddressed, are most clearly expressed.

And the second most important place is alongside the newbies. Take a tour with a group of visitors. Walk in and wait on line with them--as long as it takes. Read the map. When we can dart around the lines and pop in to our favorite haunts, it's hard to remember that most visitors are not as well-informed as we, and that their experiences are limited by what we do--or don't--give them as aids.

This basic fact--that being a visitor advocate means being a newbie advocate--has become central to my work now. I'm doing some experience design within the virtual world of Second LIfe, where I am humblingly, and somewhat embarassingly, a newbie. The talented people with whom I work, who make my content come alive, are the experts of Second Life, and they navigate the world and its quirks with the confidence of experience. When I bring up issues about unclear orientations or weird freakouts when my avatar (character) gets stuck in a wall, they smile and say, "Sounds like typical Second Life." And yet for me, as a confused newcomer (like many SL users, the majority of whom don't return after their first visit), it's nothing to smile about--these challenges are barriers to me becoming an active user.

The same thing is true in museums. If, sitting upstairs in front of your computer, you hear the screams or see the lines out your window, you may smile and say, "Typical day at the museum." But for the majority of visitors, it's not typical: it's new and confusing. Floor staff know this, and their observations can be painful to designers or educators who believe they are dealing wtih more sophisticated users, people more like them. The only way admin staff can design for these real visitors with their real experiences is to understand the banalities and imperfections of that newbie experience as it exists.

I treasure the fact that I'm a Second Life newbie; I believe it makes me a more compassionate designer. I know that I can't turn back the clock and make myself a museum newbie, but I can spend as much time with them as possible, trying to remember, to appreciate, and to design for their needs. It's hard work. Walking back into the museum on Labor Day as a visitor may be the first step.

Game Friday: Playing in Real-Time

What's more important: convenience or realism? I’m working on a game design project now that involves an interesting experiment: a blend of real-time and on-demand gaming. And I mean experiment, because I don’t have a bias, or even truly, a hypothesis, as to which component will be better, more popular, more compelling.

What do I mean by on-demand and real-time? Real-time gaming is controlled by an external clock. On-demand games start and end when you choose. Of course, most on-demand games are sequential—you move your pawn, I move my rook--and the sequences form an internal real-time aspect to the game. You can’t jump from owning Baltic Avenue to winning Monopoly to debt; you progress through the game as it unfolds. Similarly, in a video game, you are controlled by the time of the game—the time you have until your energy bar goes to zero or all the aliens are killed.

But all of these examples represent time inside the game. All of these games are on-demand, since you decide when to take them off the shelf or switch on the Playstation or abandon the game for dinner. In real-time gaming, on the other hand, you have to be there, ready to play, at the time the game is available. It may be a continuous one-time experience or an episodic one. Whatever it is, it’s in someone else’s control.

On the surface, this seems incredibly limiting. You have to know when the game starts. You have to be available on someone else’s schedule. You have to keep track and not fall behind. Why would you ever want to play (or create) a real-time game? Because...

Real-time games are mass events. There's a reason murder mystery dinners are more fun when they're the real deal than when you take them out of a box. I could write a little scavenger hunt for my friends and we could do it on-demand on a Sunday afternoon at our pleasure. OR we could take part in one of the many all-night or all-weekend puzzle hunts that go on in major cities every year. Similarly, orienteering on your own isn’t as fun as taking part in an adventure race. When there’s a time and a place and an expectation, people have time to get psyched for the game ahead of time. Rarely do I think to myself, “Wow… next week I might get to actually play cribbage!” But I do think, “Wow… next week I might get to play Cruel 2 B Kind.”

This characteristic isn't just good for players who want to be part of something "big," it's also good for game sponsors/creators who are using games as a promotional device. Sponsoring a game that happens real-time captures more media attention than releasing a flash game on your product's website.

Real-time gaming is practical when you want to bring together strangers socially. Of course, sitting down to a game of poker is social. But if you want to play games with people you don’t know, there are two options. There are on-demand games, like chess, that are available in playing environments like Washington Square or Yahoo Games. Or, there are real-time games, like World of Warcraft and other MMOs. You can play WoW alone, but most players end up teaming up with others to form guilds, go on raids, etc. All of those activities need to be coordinated among the players, and the easiest way to do that is via real-time scheduling and play.

When the time pressure is real, the game gets more exciting. If a video game tells you a bomb will go off in 30 minutes unless you pass the level, it energizes you. But that energy is tempered by the fact that you know that a bomb isn’t actually going to go off, that the game won’t totally end if it happens because you can play again. In real-time gaming, that’s not necessarily the case. If you don’t pass a threshold within the allotted time, you may not be able to continue, or the game may be significantly altered. You can’t pause the game or take a break.

Real-time gaming is more realistic. The external ticking clock serves serious as well as recreational gaming. While some military, fire, and law enforcement simulations do allow time out for discussion and reflection, others require the “players” to move through exercises in real time. They do so not to raise the adrenaline but to create environments more directly related to potential real situations.

Episodic real-time gaming allows for a different kind of casual play. In most on-demand games, the decision to play is binary: either you are playing or not-playing. There aren’t many opportunities to take a break in the middle and let the game continue to flow around you. Episodic or long-term real-time games can function more like TV series: you watch a few episodes, you skip one or two, you get back up to speed and keep moving. Arguably the TV series Lost is a highly successful real-time game in which the viewers/players have the challenge of figuring out what the heck is going on. When real-time games have a long duration (weeks or months), the game designers should be thinking about the ways people can drop in and out (unless they want to restrict the game to the most hardcore players alone).


Ultimately, I’m not sure whether real-time or on-demand gaming is more compelling. On-demand gaming certainly captures a wider audience and requires a lower barrier to entry. And yet, particularly for games with strong narrative, real-time gaming can add complexity that makes the game feel more personal, more real. TV has certainly been successful spinning out stories in real-time, whereas books and movies offer a more on-demand experience. Where do you cast your vote? How do you want to play?

Where Do We Put It? Fitting the Web Into Museums

Thanks to Kyle Evans, who forwarded me the fascinating, lengthy master’s dissertation .art: Situating Internet Art in the Modern Museum by Karen Verschooren at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. In it, Karen provides a survey of the evolving relationship of Internet art to art museums. The first 150 pages give a background on Internet art projects in museums, ongoing debates about their value, and Internet art's place in traditional collections. And while there's lots of good stuff in these sections (including an introduction for me to some wild net artists), it's the last chunk that interests me most, where Karen explores the question of how and where Internet art should be exhibited.

Karen separates the exhibition of Internet art into three techniques:

1. separation (Internet art displayed solely on the web, either through museum portal or links)
2. sepragation (Internet art displayed in the physical museum, but in its own distinct viewing room/area) (and no this is not a real word)
   
3. integration (Internet art alongside the physical collection via computers, kiosks, or more innovative platforms for display and interaction)
   

These techniques and the related questions about exhibition aren't limited to the display of web-based art. They are applicable to any kind of internet- or network-based experience in the museum, whether that experience draws content from museum visitors, outside data, or the web. Citizen science programs. Networked exhibits that allow you to armwrestle people at other museums. In some cases, the medium is the message, as in globes that display real-time weather data from satellites. But other times, it's not clear where the content belongs.

Let's say you create a magic scoring device that allows visitors in the museum to rate each exhibit on a scale of 1-5. Where do you display those ratings? Alongside the exhibits? At the info desk with the maps? On the website?

How do you decide? Let's examine the case for each of Karen's techniques.

Separation. In her thesis, Karen concludes that relegating Internet art to museum websites is in most cases not sufficient and should be seen as a stepping stone to inclusion in the physical museum. She states that separation means that such art "can be called marginal in the number and broadness of public it attracts and the institution's commitment to the art form it communicates." I was a little surprised at this conclusion; after all, museum websites have arguably a broader, large audience than the physical museums themselves. Then again, many museums still think of their web visitors as second-class citizens, and may be unwilling to put on the floor what they put on the web.

Fear is never a good reason to put things (like ratings or visitor comments) on the website only. Experimentation is better, IF there's an expectation that positive web experiments might bleed onto the floor.

In my mind, the distinction of web-only is useful when:

• the content provides a personal, repeatable experience. Blogs and social networks fall in this category. Sure, it might be nice to broadcast your blog feed to a screen in the museum somewhere, but the real value is for readers who can visit again and again from the flexibility of their own environment.
• the website has a distinct enough brand to constitute its own institution. In her thesis, Karen quotes Charlie Gere of the Tate as saying "the website is the sixth Tate site, after Tate Britain, Modern, St Ives, Liverpool, and Tate Store." It's useful that he added the store as one of the Tate "sites." We're already comfortable thinking of museum stores as separate but related entities from their parent museums. Why not think of websites similarly? As web-only becomes a more viable option for all kinds of experiences, the web-only component or site for a museum may similarly grow to adulthood.
• the content is best-used in concert with other web content. One of the interesting problems Karen raises when it comes to putting internet-enabled computers in the museum is the question of whether visitors should be able to move beyond the Internet art to other websites. We could have a whole other discussion about whether people should be able to check email in the galleries. However, if the general consensus today is "no," then web-based content that encourages further exploration on other sites, links, etc. may be best suited to a web-only environment, where visitors can surf unrestrained.
  

Sepagration. To me, this is the least interesting model, in which museums provide standard computer stations for visitors to explore web-based content. Why do that at the museum when I can do it at home?

When I stretch my brain, I can imagine this being useful when:

• most of the museum-going audience does not have regular access to computers/web. Of course, in these cases, I would advocate for museums providing full computer services a la libraries. This is related to the utility of meeting visitors "where they are," that is, couching uncommon experiences in the common experience of using a computer. Again, I think this is only valid if you truly meet them "where they are" and let them email, web surf, etc. while at the computers.
  
• the content is presented programmatically. I may not spend much time at a computer in the museum perusing websites on my own. But I might enjoy a "tour" of web content facilitated by a staff member, especially if I could then take home a list of the pages we perused, or, even better, have them automatically added to my del.icio.us or other link set.
  
• the museum wants to promote its web content. If web content is new for your museum and you want people to spend a little face time with the resources, that's reasonable. I think this should follow the museum store model, where there are teasers or limited amounts of content available from the museum, with an expectation that the visitor will go to the dedicated (web) site to learn more.
  

Integration. This is where it starts to get interesting. If content is "made" for the web, what does it mean to recast it in physical space? Karen talks about a variety of methods and projects attempting to break out of the standard "put a computer on the floor" model, the most exciting of which (to me) is the Walker's "revolving door" shown in the image at the top of this post. Users push the door to "open" new pages of web art, thus experiencing both a metaphorical and virtual portal into the content.

Ultimately, I'm most interested in a sub-category of integration I'd call embedment, where the content is naturally part of rather than shoe-horned into the exhibit or museum design. This is challenging when it comes to art, where the original intent of the artist may be distorted if web-only content is squeezed into a non-web-typical interaction. But when it comes to other kinds of web-based experiences and data, embedding the content into exhibits and spaces can help realize its full interactive potential.

In particular, I think integration/embedment is useful when:

• the content is potentially social. We are conditioned to think of PCs as objects with which we have personal interactions. Any socializing is done through the computer, not around it. Embedding content into collaborative touch tables, large-scale projections, and other multi-person accessible experiences may foster social exchange.
• the content delivery is flexible. If your content HAS to be seen on a 640 by 480 window, fine. But if not, why not experiment with new ways to design it into the space? Why not devise new ways to touch it, to move it, and to see it? New technologies around web display and interaction are the darlings of Siggraph, TED, and other hipster conferences. Why not explore them in museums?
• the content requires interpretation. Particularly when it comes to collaborative projects, in which the content is drawn from thousands of data points or blogs or videos, it's useful to have an interface that prioritizes and organizes the content. The interface doesn't have to be web-based as long as it's web-capable. Sometimes, the best interfaces make the web reliance totally invisible to the guest, as in a mountain of beans that grows as the world population does (or something way better than that).
  
• the content forms the basis for a great in-museum experience. This is the most obvious, simplest reason to embed. If the content will help educate, thrill, or challenge visitors on the floor, it's worth putting it there.
  

One of the most powerful things about the web is its ability to facilitate connections among people, data, and ideas. When we intelligently harness and display those connections in museums, we can create experiences that feel personal, relational, and global. This is not to say that everything in the museum should be web-based, but its use and integration is another excellent option to keep in the design toolbox.

The Cirque De Soleil Model: “Entertaining” Doesn’t Have to Mean Low-Brow

Last week, there was a New York Times article about the recently opened Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and Madame Tussauds attractions in Times Square. The author focused on the appeal of the lurid, the sensational, and the devilishly entertaining, and there’s certainly a lot to be said for these attributes. Heck, sign me up for a ticket to the zombie museum. But when I took off my “entertainment” glasses and put on my museum eyes, my reaction wasn’t amusement. It was distaste. I imagined museum folks reading the article and snapping the paper closed with smug smiles on their faces: "See. This is why we have to avoid Disneyfication." But such arrogance is ill-advised. Ripley's is just a small symbol of the growing challenge for museums to compete for audiences in a growing experience economy.

Museums need to be thinking about the competition—and it’s much bigger and smarter than Ripley’s. It’s easy to look at something like Ripley’s and think: that’s what’s the public wants. But that argument respects our audiences too little. Sure, Ripley’s may be the Star magazine of museums, but a lot more people read Time than the tabloids. Look at the most popular shows on television: Lost, Heroes—these are complex, unusual experiences.

Ripley’s is not the ultimate manifestation of what the public wants. Ripley’s is a remake, a B-movie, most impressive for the extent to which it has reinvented itself. The real story here isn’t about Americans’ continued fascination with shriveled heads; it’s about the extent to which we’ve moved beyond them.

Ripley’s is a circus. What P. T. Barnum did for the big top, Ripley did for the public collection on display. But Barnum and Bailey don’t rule the circus world anymore. The public has moved on. The rise of avant garde performances by Stomp, the Blue Man Group, and most notably, Cirque de Soleil, have changed the landscape of the circus—and by extension, the way museum people should evaluate and judge themselves against entertainment venues.

Over the last twenty years, Cirque de Soleil has grown into arguably the most widespread live entertainment experience in the world. They bring in over 600 million dollars yearly from 13 different shows. They have permanent and traveling shows. Their shows have complex and layered stories, music, and visual effects. They take lots of risks, blending gymnastic feats with made-up languages, intensely engineered sets, sexually explicit content, and interaction with the crowd. Tickets are expensive and hard to come by.

It may be easy to discount Ripley’s as a low-brow diversion, inapplicable to the museum world. It’s much harder to do so with Cirque de Soleil. Cirque successfully draws a diverse audience into an experience that is highly visual, metaphorical, and complex. It’s Ripley’s all grown up, and, in growing up, Cirque achieved some goals that museums still struggle with. It’s an emotional, immersive experience. It’s not just eye candy; it’s art that isn’t afraid to pull punches. And yet instead of repelling people by making them feel stupid, it sucks them in.

I was talking to an investor this weekend who told me how much he hates museums. His wife drags him to the Met and all he wants to do is go to the café. When I told him about some of the things I’m working on, he initially couldn’t grasp the idea of museums as immersive experiences. The reference point that finally got him there was Cirque de Soleil. For him, Cirque means excitement, innovative design, content that makes him think—all the positive associations I want him to have with museums are there.

Maybe Ripley’s isn’t the reference point that excites you when it comes to reformation and revolution in museums. Maybe it’s the Creation Museum. Maybe it’s Cirque de Soleil, or street performance, or farmer’s markets. But the point is that all of these have valid and interesting lessons to teach us about how to reach out to audiences. Sometimes exhibit designers do site reviews when planning major building projects. It always seems most valuable when they venture outside the museum to retail venues, web venues, thinking to themselves: “How would Sephora do a museum? How would YouTube do a museum?”

How would Cirque de Soleil do a museum? Maybe it’s time to slap on some leotards and find out.

Game Friday: Lovely, Quirky Amanita

This week, Game Friday pays homage to Amanita Design, the funky game and animation design firm behind the award-winning Samorost series and several flash-based corporate games that blend lush imagery, surreal storytelling, and surprising little puzzles.

Amanita is one of the few design firms capable of creating "game other," game experiences that stretch and change expectations about what it means to play. They are leaders in the point-and-click casual game market, but their innovations stem from wild environments rather than particularly tricky puzzles.

I often treat games like this as interactive art and use the cheat sheet walkthroughs as a way to explore the world of the game. I'm not too concerned about the competitive or addictive elements of the gameplay; most is based on an other-worldly if-then relationship between toads and flowers, carrots and carriages. This willingness on my part to abandon reliance on narrative or gameplay speaks to the power of the visual design and wonder inherent in the experience Amanita creates. There's no magic formula for what games "must" be to be successful, and the Amanita games delight with experiences and pleasures from roads less traveled.

Play to win or play to explore; either way, it's a lovely Friday sort of dream.