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Welcome to the MEMENTOES newsletter!

Welcome to the MEMENTOES newsletter, a guide to our latest work and news.

MEMENTOES is a collaboration between museum professionals, video game developers, and research centres which aims to combine the educational and empathy-building impacts of historical museums with the global reach and entertaining format of video games. Together, we'll produce three digital games designed to teach players about the past and think critically about its parallels with the present. We'll also codify best practices, develop new technological services, and publish an accessibility toolkit to encourage future partnerships between the tech and cultural heritage sectors and promote inclusive interaction with cultural heritage.

Follow us for ongoing updates about our research, game development, and other outputs.

   

About MEMENTOES

MEMENTOES creates three game development partnerships, each involving one museum partner and either a game developer or a computer-human interaction lab. The partnerships will each create a video game built on the museum's collections which will immerse players in the past, allowing them to interact with archival content and experience historical events through the eyes of regular people. The games will support the goals of each museum's exhibition, enabling players to build empathy and forge emotional connections with past marginalised groups and their contemporaries in the world today, while making the archival material and all its educational potential available to a global audience.

MEMENTOES: Creating partnerships between tech and cultural heritage

Want to learn more about our work? Read this short article outlining our approach, objectives, and consortium.
   

What we've been up to

Last month, each game development partnership released an initial description of their game, including storyline, narrative techniques, and design elements. Check out the summaries below—but note that these are works in progress which are likely to change over the course of the project.

Gulag Diaries by FORTH and Gulag.cz

Gulag Diaries is a first-person environmental narrative game in which players form part of an exhibition team exploring the ruins of a gulag camp in the Siberian taiga, where they are confronted with the experiences of victims of the Soviet regime. Click the link below to learn more about how this game will bring Gulag.cz's collections to life.

Toys by Charles Games and the War Childhood Museum

Toys is a narrative adventure game which places players in scenes inspired by the memories of people who grew up during conflicts in Sarajevo, Aleppo, and Kharkiv. Read on to learn more about this game inspired by the archives of the War Childhood Museum.

Those From Below by Causa Creations and Le Bois Du Cazier

Those From Below is an immersive virtual reality experience which will bring players into the tunnels of the Marcinelle mine and the lives of Italian migrant workers who laboured there around the time of the 1956 disaster. Head to the post to learn more, including how the victim's descendants are involved in the creation of the game.

   

What we're reading

Lukáš Kolek, Cyril Bron, Vit Šisler, and Patricia Martinkova, "Can video games change attitudes towards history? Results from a laboratory experiment measuring short- and long-term effects," Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 37, no. 5 (October 2021): 1348-1369.

A growing body of scholarship is building evidence that video games use similar storytelling techniques as museums, pointing to their efficacy as a tool to support cultural heritage initiatives. This study found that playing historical video games can lead to long-term changes in players' implicit attitudes about history. "Our results confirm that video games can affect historical awareness," the authors write, and "have an important role in our understanding of historical and social realities."

   

MEMENTOES partners

The MEMENTOES consortium includes three research institutions, two game development organisations, and three museums. The Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH) is the project coordinator, and leads tasks on software development and image processing techniques. The Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) is the technical manager of the project and develops one of the three video games. Trilateral Research contributes to dissemination, exploitation, and ethics. The game developers involved in the project are Charles Games and Causa Creations Interactive Media. The museum partners are Le Bois Du Cazier, the War Childhood Museum, and Gulag.cz.

This project has received funding from the European Research Executive Agency under grant agreement No 101061496.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union of the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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