Reaching a new audience through gaming

Abstract

About three years ago, Wellcome Collection, a small interdisciplinary medical museum in London, began developing a strategy for reaching new audiences with games that were based on their themes and collections. Since then, several games have been commissioned and released, including High Tea and Axon, which have both been played over 4 million times. High Tea takes the subject of the 19th-century opium wars and puts the player in the position of trading opium with the Chinese. Axon uses the rules of foetal neuron development as the basis for a fast-paced and addictive game. While their success has been gratifying, it has been even more important to evaluate these games in order to better understand their impact on the player. Through this work, a great deal has been learned about the process of making games and what effect they have on the people who play them.