What Museums Can Learn from Gaming Communities

Museums are at a pivotal moment where innovation and engagement are more critical than ever. By tapping into the expertise of the gaming community, museums can embrace game design principles to create immersive, educational, and interactive experiences that resonate with modern audiences. From world-building to digital preservation, the gaming industry holds unique skills that can revolutionise curatorial and visitor engagement strategies.

Museums can work with gaming communities on collections, preservation and exhibition design. Video games, with their unique combination of storytelling, design, and interactivity, have captured the imaginations of audiences worldwide, making them a powerful cultural force.

Alysha Connor, Variable Media Archivist at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, delivered an insightful presentation at the Museums, Games & Play Summit 2023 highlighting how consulting with the gaming community can revolutionise curatorial, archival, and conservation practices.

In this article we give an overview of that presentation.

Why Gaming Should Matter to Museums

Video games are no longer merely a pastime. They are an immersive cultural force that blends storytelling, interactivity, and design, resonating with audiences of all ages. For decades, video games have captured imaginations, creating entire worlds, encouraging exploration, and challenging players to think critically.

This influence has the potential to inspire museums to approach their collections and exhibitions through fresh, game-inspired perspectives. As Connor points out, the expertise of the gaming community, from world-building to data management, is an invaluable resource that museums can leverage.

Learning from the Gaming Community

The gaming community brings a wealth of expertise that museums can harness to innovate and engage audiences. From world-building to user experience design, gamers and developers possess skills that can revolutionise museum practices. Here are some key areas where museums can benefit:

The gaming community brings a unique set of skills to the table. Game developers, designers, and players have mastered the art of:

• World-building: The ability to create engaging, fully immersive environments can help museums design exhibitions that captivate visitors on a deeper level. By taking inspiration from how video games structure exploration and narrative, museums can rethink the spatial flow of their galleries.
• Digital Preservation: Museums are increasingly tasked with preserving digital artefacts, including video games themselves and their virtual objects. Gamers and developers understand the complexities of preserving digital assets and can offer expertise in areas such as software compatibility, versioning, and data management.
• User Experience Design: In video games, seamless user interfaces, interactivity, and feedback loops are key to engagement. Museums can collaborate with game developers to optimise interactive exhibits, ensuring they are intuitive, accessible, and enjoyable for all visitors.
• Community Engagement: The gaming community thrives on collaboration, feedback, and shared experiences. Museums can learn from this dynamic to create exhibitions that are not only participatory but foster long-term connections with audiences.

Indigenous-led digital projects at ROM provide a more specific example of collaboration, community knowledge and making games.

Reimagining the Museum Experience

During her presentation, Connor emphasised that working with the gaming community is more than a trend; it is an innovative approach to creating engaging museum experiences for future audiences. A historical example is the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Ghosts of a Chance, launched in 2008. Its activities included puzzles, text messages and participant-created objects. Visitors solved puzzles and uncovered hidden stories, turning art appreciation into an interactive quest. Such examples demonstrate the potential of gamified design to engage audiences of all ages.

The Broader Benefits of Game Design for Museums

The benefits of gamification extend far beyond entertainment. Possible aims for a game-based project include:

• Boost visitor engagement through interactive storytelling and exploration.
• Attract new demographics, particularly younger audiences who have grown up in digital-first environments.
• Provide inclusive and accessible learning experiences tailored to individual paces and needs.
• Strengthen heritage preservation efforts by teaching visitors to interact respectfully with cultural artefacts and sites.
• Gather data insights from digital platforms to improve visitor experiences.

A Thoughtful Approach to Gamification

Connor cautioned that while gamification holds immense promise, it must be approached with intention and care. Poorly implemented gamified experiences risk overshadowing the educational value of museum content. She underscored the importance of gameful design — focusing on positive motivation, challenge, and play — rather than simply adding game mechanics for the sake of novelty.

Effective gamification requires clear goals, audience alignment, and accessibility. Connor urged museums to collaborate closely with game developers and gamers, whose knowledge of user engagement and digital storytelling can help museums create meaningful and memorable experiences.
Family testing at Louvre Abu Dhabi illustrates how a museum can revise a game in response to players.

The Future of Museums and Play

As museums continue to evolve in a digital-first world, partnering with the gaming community provides an opportunity to think differently. Emerging technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence hold incredible promise for future exhibitions, making it essential for museums to build these partnerships now.

Start a conversation with a specific question: are you trying to collect a game, understand its community or design a visitor activity? Each calls for different expertise. Agree how contributors will be credited and paid, what material can be shared, and who will maintain any software after the project ends.

This article is based on the presentation “Gaming Community Engagement in Museums” by Alysha Connor, Variable Media Archivist at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia at the Museums, Games & Play Summit 2023, organised by MuseumNext.