1.1LBMGs in Cultural Heritage: state of the art and potentialities

The story of mobile technology in the cultural context has a long and established history dating back to the ‘50s (^{Tallon & Walker, 2008}). Nevertheless, over the years, different and ever new technologies substituted the previous ones to perform the same functionality with brand new devices (^{Spallazzo, 2012}). Despite technological advancements, the dominant visitor experience supported by digital technologies strongly relied on the audioguide paradigm. Different devices provide museums and cultural institutions patrons with passive consumption of multimedia contents to be, more or less automatically, triggered at several points of interest across the exhibition (^{Proctor, 2010}). Alongside, games emerged as a novel, involving way to engage users with cultural contents aiming at capturing that part of cultural visitors keen to learn while having fun and personalised experience (^{Beale, 2011}). Location-based mobile games (LBMGs), namely mobile games that leverage players’ position, have been increasingly explored for achieving immersive and engaging experiences in the cultural heritage field (^{Malegiannaki & Daradoumis, 2017}) while providing contextual information.

Seminal works on LBMGs for cultural purposes have been conducted far before the widespread diffusion of contemporary smartphones - Environmental Detectives (^{Klopfer & Squire, 2008}), and Frequency 1551 (^{Huizenga et al., 2009}). Over the years, several research groups (e.g. Mixed Reality Lab, MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program, Waag Society), media artists (e.g. Blast Theory), and finally museums developed and tested a significant number of LBMGs. Nevertheless, most of these experiences remained in the prototype stage, and very few became commercial products daily available to visitors (^{Malegiannaki & Daradoumis, 2017}; ^{Spallazzo, 2012}). On the contrary, video games, thus games to be played exclusively on a screen, flourished in museums worldwide, to the point that some big institutions staffed themselves specifically for their in-house development (e.g. Tate, Smithsonian, MoMA).

LBMGs have not been largely explored and offer significant room for possible experimentation. Although the key role of narrative and fictional worlds as important drivers able to motivate, grab and immerse players is well recognized, such a potential seems not yet properly exploited in LBMGs. Especially in the CH field, promising advantages may spur from merging powerful narratives with the potentialities of contextual experiences that continuously mix the physical and digital realms. The potentials of LBMGs for cultural purposes rely on their ability to foster playfulness (^{Sicart, 2014}) and mix engaging play activities with the richness of the contingent world. This condition can trigger active engagement, motivation, and situated learning (^{Lave & Wenger, 1991}). LMBGs can indeed embed the acquisition of knowledge in authentic environments, a potential that has also been highlighted by ^{Klopfer (Klopfer, 2008}) as essential to augment the learning experience, be it in a formal or informal context. The role of the context is even more critical for those places that preserve a rich history made of objects and people, as in the case of the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, the venue of our experimentation.

1.2 The setting: Bagatti Valsecchi Museum

The Bagatti Valsecchi House Museum results from Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi’s creative minds, an ambitious project that took the Renaissance as a reference. Mixing authentic pieces from that period and details personally designed by the brothers, the house appears as a middle ground between the collection and the personal aspiration. Still, we must not forget that, primarily, it was a context of lived life: the Bagatti Valsecchi family inhabited the house until 1974. After that date, the house was restored to the original condition in which the creative ancestors left it and transformed into a contemporary museum. A small, precious house museum frozen in the past, and, eventually, not so effective in communicating its uniqueness. The rich amount of stories and experiences of living lives contained in the house are worthy of being unveiled.

The museum is today willing to enhance the narrative potential of the place, making evident what we can call genius loci, the spirit of the site. Making visitors perceive the museums’ rooms as something more than a simple collection of objects on the show has been the driving force of the collaboration between the museum staff and Politecnico di Milano, from which the experience here discussed took his cue. The critical point is that the museum is nowadays particularly attractive only for an older target group, and it is willing to engage young people with a rich schedule of initiatives. In this context, the community Speechati, composed of people under 35, has been created to transform the museum into a living space for culturally relevant social engagement in the evening hours.

Given these ambitious aims, we decided to address the brief by involving young designers, so the same target audience, in the design and implementation of LBMGs.

2.1. Technical limitations and design implications

Given the above-described approach that strongly relies on working prototypes and an iterative process of tests and correction, it was mandatory to find support tools to allow students, with a design background and almost no programming skills, to achieve a working system.

In the previous editions of the course, the students used and tested mainly two tools: ARIS by Field Day, and the CMS of the Mobile Learning Academy by 7scenes. They demonstrated to be useful and powerful tools to create LBMGs and narrative location-based experiences in an educational setting (^{Ceconello et al., 2015}; ^{Mariani & Spallazzo, 2016}). But they also caused limits in the creativity of designers: defined game mechanics, as well as rigid templates and widgets, influenced the design possibilities. As a consequence, since 2016, we looked at trade-off solutions between ease of programming and expressive possibilities. We firstly identified Taleblazer, developed in the context of the MIT Teacher Education Program (^{Medlock-Walton, 2012}), then discarded in favour of MIT App Inventor, upon which it is based. Born as an academic project, MIT App Inventor is a drag-and-drop visual programming tool for building functional mobile apps running on Android devices. Focusing on the app programming logic rather than on the coding language and its syntax empowers those who don’t have a programming background to design a working application (^{Pokress & Veiga, 2013}).

During the projects’ development, App Inventor demonstrated to be valuable for supporting the different game concepts. Nevertheless, it showed some limitations. The most obvious restriction is the possibility to deploy the working app on Android OS only, a condition that prevented almost half of the students from testing the prototype on their mobile device. Furthermore, App Inventor does not allow perfect management of the app GUI - especially for demanding designers - and it poorly supports the interface responsiveness to a variety of devices and screen resolutions.

Lastly, developing the games, it emerged the need of including and consequently prototyping AR experiences. Some students used systems relying on App Inventor but integrating AR functionality, such as Vedils. Others complemented the game by employing software as HP Reveal or Blippar.

2.2. Assessment strategy

The experimentation involved a total of 55 students (f:38, m:17) with different design backgrounds, split into 13 groups of 4 to 5 people. Considering the objective of entertaining the museum visitors, transmitting information and knowledge in the meanwhile, our research aim was twofold:

1. Exploring how narrative and mechanics can be designed for developing working LBMG aimed at enhancing cultural heritage while engaging visitors in compelling and entertaining experiences (^{Spallazzo & Mariani, 2018});

2. Verifying how the games developed were perceived by the end-users.

To answer these objectives, we analysed the process of making LBMGs and the games themselves using mixed methods for collecting multiple forms of primary data and conducting triangulation with the literature (^{Rothbauer, 2008}). The game design followed a co-design approach, capitalizing on the specific knowledge that each participant could bring in. The museum staff as contents experts, and students as in-training designers matching the age group of the end-users.

Fig. 1 The design process and the methods applied to collect data throughout it. Source: by the authors 

During the iterative design cycles, we performed three-month interpretive ethnography and participant observation to assess the overall process, looking at each LBMG as a case study. Questionnaires were employed to gauge the various interplays these games triggered, especially their ability to entertain, engage, communicate and inform. Data collected provided a deep understanding on crucial aspects: from the interaction with the museum environment and objects to the one with the stories of who inhabited it, up to the one with other visitors. In parallel, rapid ethnographies and informal interviews with players served to complement the results from questionnaires.

On a closing day, the museum hosted a playtest in which each of the 13 LBMGs designed was tested in a peer evaluation activity. The schedule was structured so that each game was played by two design teams in subsequent playtests, resulting in 26 game sessions and 104 post-experience questionnaires enquiring the game playability and their communicative effectiveness, specifically exploring players’ interpretation of the games. During the playtest, four LBMGs were selected, undergoing a further iterative process of improvement in view of the aperitif evening during which they were staged for the museum under 35 community. The event gathered about 100 visitors. Nearly half of them filled our evaluation form, resulting in additional 53 questionnaires (25 for The fire of eternity; 12 for The crime; 9 for Next, please and 7 for Wreck this BaVa), and several informal interviews.

Fig. 2 Students preparing for the playtest session in the grand salon of Bagatti Valsecchi Museum. Source: by the authors 

3.1. The fire of eternity. Compelling narrative and AR

The first game revolves around a fictional world so captivating and well developed to become the pivot of the whole playful activity, favouring engagement and immersion. The fire of eternity - Il fuoco dell’eternità (^{Bellosi et al., 2017}) tells of Fausto and Giuseppe, brothers and skilled collectors. One day they received a shady merchant who presented the two with a contract in which he promised the eternal immutability of their beloved home in exchange for its custody. After signing the agreement, the house came to life, and the souls of Fausto and Giuseppe got trapped in it, and there they still are, waiting for a brave person able to break the spell. Players who enter the museum are asked to put themselves to the test in this mission, interrogate the objects, and finally free the two trapped souls.

The story involved players in an augmented reality LBMG based on interviews with objects and mini-games. The mainstay of the game relies on its ability to create an engaging game narrative, well situated in the space, and digitally attached to the museum assets, their cultural value, and significance. The fire of eternity was the most played game during the public event. The questionnaires’ results underline that players mostly appreciated its fictional world, defined as “compelling and thrilling, and, fortunately, not too easy”. They also highlight the role of AR that “allows to plunge into the narrative”, with “animations of paintings that are perfect, and create a whimsical and involving atmosphere”. Players also appreciated the graphic and the ability of the game “to foster a novel visiting approach”, that “allows to look at the museum from a different and stimulating standpoint”.

3.2. The Crime. Educational and detail-oriented

Inspired by board games such as Cluedo, designers exploited game mechanics as interviews, mysteries and riddles that make the game engaging and the tangible and intangible heritage emerge while unfolding an intriguing story. In The Crime - Il Misfatto (^{Banfi et al., 2017}), the players are given a booklet with a request for help. The ghosts of Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi are invoking someone’s assistance for discovering the culprit who replaced an object from their precious collection with a fake. To investigate the facts of the past, they must use a mobile device that awakens and permits them to interrogate the ghosts of the six suspects still wandering in the house. In doing so, the mobile becomes the access point to resources otherwise not visible (^{Spallazzo & Mariani, 2020}). Some game mechanics, such as interviewing objects and ghosts, are similar to the previous game. But the focus is here on the museum assets rather than the people who inhabited it since players have to uncover the culprit by looking for discrepancies in suspects’ description of the objects and understanding clues.

In The Crime, designers emphasised the educational dimension, focusing players’ attention on often unnoticed details. Players reported that the game made them discover and remember the museum’s assets and rooms. Furthermore, they considered it fun and “a new enjoyable way to experience the museum, paying attention to details”.

Fig. 3 A group of students scanning a QR code to start testing the game The Crime (left), and students introducing players to the game Next, please (right). Source: by the authors 

3.3. Next, please. Characters and game mechanics

The game Next, please - Avanti il prossimo (^{Brambilla et al., 2017}) is designed as a quiz game, based on dialogues between the players and some of the characters who lived in the house. In the game, the current heir of the family, Pier Fausto Bagatti Valsecchi, is looking for a new guardian for the house, and the players are in the role of interviewees for having the job. Each dialogue conveys notions about the habits and traditions of the time and reveals the different personalities of those who once lived in the house.

The narrative sustains game mechanics chosen to make the game fast, enjoyable, and replayable. The game concept revolved around two main aims: (i) to create vivid and plausible characters and (ii) to allow players to return to the museum several times to play a game always different. Accordingly, the designers closely cooperated with the museum staff to collect extensive documentation on the house service personnel and build the characters. They put a characters’ rotation mechanism in place to favour repeated visits: every day, characters shift, creating an ever-changing experience for visitors. By mainly focusing on characters and game mechanics, designers were able to design a “dynamic and enjoyable” game, perceived as “very innovative and involving” with “very ironic characters” “changing every day”.

3.4. Wreck this BaVa. Social engagement and fun

The game Wreck this BaVa (^{Guidi et al., 2017}) is inspired by the Wreck This Journal, a pocket-sized diary that offers a series of tasks that test the reader’s skills and creativity. It is substantially a booklet that allows visitors to experience a different and unusual visit within and outside the museum. By exploiting physical and digital interactions, this playful activity requires visitors to draw, read stories, complete a series of puzzles, and perform mobile-based actions such as activating augmented reality contents. Players are also encouraged to use social networks to share photos, images and messages, thus increasing the visibility of the museum. Finally, the interaction activities allow the journal to be expedient to make the user interact with other visitors while they are in the museum.

Instead of looking for cultural relevance by building coherent fictional stories, Wreck this BaVa uses the museum assets in a bold, sometimes shameless, way, as pure triggers of playful activities. Examples are taking a selfie with the painting, or activating AR mini-game over artworks. The mainstay of this location-based activity relies on its ability to trigger playful and enjoyable activities mainly aimed at having fun with friends. Comments from players reinforce the potential of the game for social engagement. They underline that the game is “enjoyable with friends” and “facilitates social engagement”. Furthermore, the game is described as “an opportunity to get around the museum far and wide” and come back for repeated visits, since “the experience invites visiting the museum several times, to test new games and augmented features”. It is also noticeable the designers’ will to enhance the museum’s outreach, by asking players to perform fun performances and tasks across the city, raising the museum’s visibility and “advertising” its activities.

Fig. 4 Students performing one of the playful activities proposed by the game Wreck this BaVa. Source: by the authors 

4.3. Involving experts and audience in the creation process

A recurrent issue of discussion in the cultural heritage field regards the frequent gap between the audience desiderata in terms of engagement and how museums deliver their contents (^{Sheng & Chen, 2012}). To better cope with this matter, we structured the course and its design steps favouring the constant involvement of the museum experts. An approach that encouraged proficuous discussions and positively contributed to crafting captivating game worlds where fictional or semi-fictional stories were portrayed. The activity also nurtured the definition of game mechanics able to engage visitors in challenging gameplays, keeping coherence and consistency along the way. Moreover, it produced insights that may facilitate technology design and adoption for this domain. Significant benefits in terms of understanding of needs and expectations to meet came from students themselves. Because of their age and interest in the design field, they constituted a segment of the target audience the museum aimed to reach. One specific advantage regarded students’ insights into how technology could be used to make visits and explorations of the museum engaging and entertaining, being instructive in the meanwhile. Throughout the course, we noticed that this peculiar twofold role of (i) designers and (ii) expected audience largely contributed to framing the existing gap between solutions for visiting museums and games as entertaining means, properly mixing the educational aim with the entertaining one. This overlapping favoured the design of games able to answer the needs and expectations of a varied target under-35, willing to get engaged while grasping knowledge.

4.4. A challenging interplay: bounding narratives and locations

The LBMGs, objects of this study, were designed to sharply bridge the physical and digital dimensions, involving visitors in fascinating adventures. The aim was to obtain meaningful play experiences in terms of gaming activity rich in possibilities and choices, and meaning-making resulting from carrying out activities in the museum context while playing. Aligned with the findings from the game studies literature, the experimentation confirmed several elements served as a boundary between the physical and digital spheres. The strategy adopted was to encourage designers to operate on the museum contents, enhancing them. In particular, they were invited to leverage the value of inherent stories and objects, embedding them in charming and meaningful storyworlds. In designing culturally relevant games, fundamental was effectively bounding contextual information with evolving narratives and gameplays. From the game objects, the environment, and people’s position in space, to narrative and game mechanics, every element entailed specific reasoning concerning how to significantly design their role and interaction coherently with the museum values, the fictional world, and the gameplay. Recognizing that narrative plays a pivotal role when communicating context, it became evident that mixing engagement and situated learning requires overcoming a straightforward, solution-oriented attitude favoring a more strategic approach. By making extensive use of curiosities about the Bagatti Valsecchi extended family, assets, and house personnel, designers developed unique fictional worlds.

4.5. Prompting social engagement

Since the design brief definition, the purpose beyond designing these LBMGs was that they should be played in the late afternoons or evenings, as an alternative, additional way to experience the house museums, without affecting the typical modalities of visiting. Furthermore, we asked designers not to substitute traditional museum technologies like apps and audio guides but rather to develop different solutions to further prompt social engagement within groups.

Indeed, one of the main features that make LBMGs engaging is their ability to favour and encourage social interaction (^{Spallazzo & Mariani, 2018}). In the museum context, games have proved to be an essential means for promoting and inducing sociality. A condition that clearly emerged during the aperitif night. While those who attended the event with friends found activities to be performed as a group, those who showed up alone were able to join others since the games were designed to be enjoyed by several people together.

Among the others, Wreck this BaVa stood as particularly provocatory on the sociality issue, with some activities aimed at having fun with friends, and others intended for encouraging social engagement with strangers, inside and outside the museum. Moreover, the game goes further, making players participate in activities that require sharing content on their social networks. On the one hand, the games transformed the cultural visit into an occasion for reinforcing strong social ties (^{Granovetter, 1983}). On the other hand, they encouraged direct social engagement with strangers, both in the museum and outside the museum, and to share the experience on social networks. By doing so, they favoured the emergence of weak social ties (Granovetter, 1983) besides the strong ones, using the museum collection as a trigger.