Applying Videogame Narrative and Level Design To Museum Exhibit Design

Andrey Svetlozarov Mintchev. (2021). Applying Videogame Narrative and Level Design To Museum Exhibit Design.

Abstract

This thesis examines how practices of narrative and level design used in the videogame industry can be applied to the museum sector, and from this research, propose a set of design lessons that can be used for the creation of exhibits. To that end, this thesis hypothesizes that these practices from gaming will serve the purpose of elevating the visitor experience—specifically in the way museum spaces, artifacts and their stories are presented, navigated, and experienced by the visitor. In order to produce this set of design lessons for exhibit creation, a qualitative study of five videogames was conducted for the purpose of identifying methods of narrative delivery, and level design practices. In regard to narrative design, I establish three methods of narrative embedding, partly inspired by Huaxin Wei’s work, in addition to summarizing Ahmed Khalifa et al.’s findings, which contributed to this studies understanding of level design. The combined knowledge of these works where foundational in developing a unit of analysis, which was used to identify narrative and level design practices within my sample. The findings from this research was then translated into applicable design practices for museum exhibit creation, called design lessons. Moreover, the design lessons developed from this study were used in the creation of a prototype exhibit for the purpose of demonstrating its effectiveness. Thus, this study advocates that there are indeed lessons to be learned from videogames which offer new perspectives in design to the museum sector. That in doing so, this study’s interest in providing museum professionals with new views on narrative and level design, will have a positive affect on the visitor experience.

Materials

URL (http://hdl.handle.net/1807/109299)

BibTeX

@mastersthesis{mitchev2021thesis,
  author = {Mintchev, Andrey Svetlozarov},
  title = {Applying Videogame Narrative and Level Design To Museum Exhibit Design},
  school = {University of Toronto},
  year = {2021},
  month = nov,
  url = {http://hdl.handle.net/1807/109299},
  type = {thesis}
}