Interactive Games Make Museums A Place To Play

clipped from www.npr.org Fifty teenagers from New Jersey are practically running around a pristine Smithsonian gallery at the Luce Foundation Center for American Art in Washington, D.C. They've broken up into teams to play a multimedia scavenger hunt, in which objects in the collection are part of the clues, and players use cell phones with text messaging to solve them. This game is a scaled down version of an experiment the Luce Foundation Center tried earlier this year: an alternate reality game called Ghosts of a Chance. For three months, players had to solve clues that were planted on Facebook, YouTube and other Web sites. Rather than advertise the game, the museum sent a tattooed bodybuilder to a conference for hard-core gamers. The game was designed for the museum by the company City Mystery. It revolved around restless spirits who were haunting the museum. “Why shouldn't adults play games? It's still the most effective way to learn and push our buttons to get information into our heads.”