Working Title: Playing With Interpretation: The Videogame in the Museum and Heritage Sector

My thesis will critically examine the prospective role of videogames in the museum and heritage sector, focussing specifically on their potential as a medium for active and participatory interpretative practice. It will explore how videogames and museum interpretation 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 could address issues in museum interpretation?
• In which ways can videogames contribute to the museum and heritage sector’s development and design of digital tools for interpretation?

This thesis will argue:

• That academic conceptualisations of interpretation within a museum context are limited, and that its ability to accommodate the increasing diversity of interpretative media and participatory practices is also limited.
• That videogames and game studies has the potential to contribute significantly to a re-conceptualisation of contemporary interpretation practice.