11 June, Wednesday, 3 to 430 pm
Venue: STEM Centre of Excellence, Science Gallery Melbourne
Facilitators: Nellie Seale and Sophia Booji
Create engaging, low-cost experiences for your audience!
Learn hands-on strategies to transform traditional stories into interactive games, exploring genres like interactive fiction, scavenger hunts, and escape rooms, while discovering how to measure impact and adapt across physical, digital, and hybrid modes.
Key topics:
- Low-cost, low-tech game design for Museums and Galleries, including formats like interactive fiction, scavenger hunts, and escape rooms.
- Hands-on prototyping to develop simple, playable experiences.
- Adapting games across physical, digital, and hybrid formats to suit different resources and audiences.
- Measuring success and impact of games.
Outcomes:
By the end of this workshop, participants will gain practical insights into using games in museums, and with practical skills to design low-cost, collection-based games and playful experiences.
About the facilitators:
Nellie Seale is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, researching how museums can use games for community engagement, visitor experience and educational outcomes. Her academic background is in museum studies and world heritage, with a focus on Indigenous cultural heritage in Victoria. Nellie is the director and co-founder of Melbourne Megagames where she runs large-scale role-playing events. She is interested in improving accessibility and diversity in games, as well as understanding how games are being used to drive change and how they can be used to communicate and motivate people on issues like sustainability. She is also a Teaching Associate at the Science Gallery Melbourne.
Sophia Booij is a PhD candidate in the University of South Australia’s Creative faculty, researching strategies to promote the development of narrative-based learning games by and for Australian collections. She is currently working on an introductory ‘how-to’ game development guide for industry professionals, in partnership with the History Trust of South Australia. Her work is informed by a background in interactive fiction, digital humanities, museum studies, collections management, and digitisation. She is particularly interested in enabling and encouraging games that tell regional and rural Australian stories.
Ticket Price:
ENVi members: $10
AMaGA members: $15
Non-members: $20
Capacity: 30 pax
Registration: https://bit.ly/ENViGameDevWorkshop
Enquiries: ma.envic@gmail.com
Other programs for 2025:
BEHIND THE SCENES TOUR: SCIENCE GALLERY MELBOURNE
22 August, Friday, 4-5 pm
Capacity: 30 pax max
Ticket Price: FREE
Registration:
BEHIND THE SCENES TOUR: ISLAMIC MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA
23 October, Thursday, 4-5 pm
Capacity: 30 pax max
Ticket Price: FREE
Registration:
YEAR-END SOCIALS AND TRAVELLERS TALE
19 November, Wednesday, 530 to 730 pm
Venue: TBC
Capacity: 30 pax max
Ticket Price: FREE
Registration:
amagaenvi.org 