Final Title: Affordances at the Intersection of Museums and Videogames

My thesis critically examines the prospective role of videogames in the museum and heritage sector, focussing specifically on their potential as interpretative practice. It will explore how videogames and museum interpretation, in both academic research and practice, interact with ideas of narrative/storytelling, emotion/affect, and persuasive/procedural rhetoric in order to study how videogame affordances might be able to respond to modern museum interpretive needs and innovate interpretative practice.

Research Aims:

In particular, the research will explore the following:

• How is interpretation understood and variously undertaken within the museum and heritage sector?
• What are the affordances of the videogame medium that respond to museum interpretation?
• In which ways can videogames contribute to the museum sector’s development and design of digital interpretation?

This thesis will argue:

• That academic conceptualisations of interpretation within a museum context are complex, multifaceted, and often limited, and that ability of previous conceptualisations to accommodate the increasing diversity of digital interpretative media and participatory practices is also limited.
• That there is significant crossover between concepts, ideas, and practices in museum interpretation and the videogame medium.
  
• That videogames and game studies have the potential to meaningfully contribute to contemporary interpretative practice in museums.