‘More like an Arcade’ – The Limitations of Playable Games in Museum Exhibitions

Authors

  • Patrick Prax Department of Game Design, Uppsala University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6597-1738
  • Lina Eklund Lecturer at the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Sweden.
  • Björn Sjöblom Aassociate professor in Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v17i3.2777

Keywords:

Exhibition, Digital Games, Interactive Museum, Interactivity,

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between playable, interactive games on original hardware and the representation of game culture using the case of the exhibition Game On 2.0, often considered to be the largest exhibition of digital games in the West so far. Our results suggest that play as a way of engaging with games as museum objects has limitations which make it necessary to add other means of contextualization in order to afford critical engagement with digital games as contemporary culture. Play excludes visitors who lack necessary gaming skills as well as many genres of games which need longer or different kinds of interaction than a museum can allow for in the context of an exhibition. Moreover, we show that not all games can be exhibited in the same way and that we need to adapt exhibition strategies to individual game and their properties and contexts.

Author Biographies

Patrick Prax, Department of Game Design, Uppsala University

Patrick Prax has a PhD in Media Studies from the Informatics and Media Department at Uppsala University. He wrote his dissertation on the co-creation of digital games as alternative media. He is interested in how players can change the games they are playing to reflect an alternative perspective to a hegemonic capitalist world view. He is working with theories for shared cultural production like co-creation, open innovation, and participatory media. You can see his TEDx Uppsala University talk about this topic here.

Patrick has also been working with problematic gaming and game addiction (recorded for UR), game journalism, games and learning and games and leadership. In a research project at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology Patrick investigated the preservation and exhibition of digital games and appears in the newly opened exhibition Play beyond Play as an expert on participatory media and games.

Lina Eklund, Lecturer at the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Sweden.

Lina Eklund is an assistant professor at the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research uses a mixed methods approach to investigate social behaviour in relation to digital technologies. Her current work focuses on uses and practises of digital technologies in managing families, the impact of anonymity on digital sociality as well as the role of digital games in museums. She was part of the project "Realms of computer games" at The National Museum of Science and Technology, Stockholm.

Björn Sjöblom, Aassociate professor in Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University.

Björn Sjöblom is an associate professor in Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. His research interests concern the relationship between children, youth, and digital technology. He has studied practices of play, interaction and spectatorship in digital gaming, often using various video-ethnographic methods, as well as children’s digital heritage and representations of children in digital media. He was part of the project “Realms of computer games” at The National Museum of Science and Technology, Stockholm.

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Published

11/29/2019

How to Cite

Prax, P., Eklund, L., & Sjöblom, B. (2019). ‘More like an Arcade’ – The Limitations of Playable Games in Museum Exhibitions. Museum & Society, 17(3), 437–452. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v17i3.2777

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 3 (2019): On the Properties of Things: Collective Knowledge and the Objects of the Museum

Section

Supplement

License

Copyright remains with the author(s) of the article. This article can be re-used according to the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  licence.