Hi all, As many of you know Animal Crossing was released a few weeks ago for the Nintendo Switch. The game has done extremely well for Nintendo and taken up a ton of interest in The Discourse on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. I'm currently piloting exploring two different ideas for what an MCN presentation oriented around Animal Crossing looks like.
Option 1: An exploration of Animal Crossing's museum as indicator of what the general public thinks museums are The museum in Animal Crossing starts off soliciting donations from the player of bugs, fish, and fossils that can be found on the player's island town. The curator, an owl named Blathers, will take any bug, fish, or fossil that he doesn't already have, quality, endangered species status, or sourcing is not an issue to him. Recently, in an update Nintendo added an art gallery wing where players can donate art pieces (such as Van Gogh's Starry Night). These art pieces are acquired from the shady fox Redd, who sometimes sells forgeries. Blathers however will not accept forgeries and the onus is put on the player to 'buyer beware.' Considering that Animal Crossing is probably the most popular game of recent times that involves a museum I'm interested in exploring the tropes about museum organization, labor, acquisition processes and how they can inform our own creation of digital experiences/public outreach. Option 2: How Animal Crossing could (have) been leveraged for relevant timely museum content The first few weeks after any major game release is The time to tap into the hype around it as that is when the most amount of people will be involved and gaming websites/influencers will be most willing to share/collaborate on content. Animal Crossing is filled with opportunities for museums to make relevant content. The Getty put out a tool to important certain artworks from their collection into the game, which is very cool and very smart. That tool was picked up and shared in the major games press, though I think it could have been a bigger deal with some more direct outreach to other publications, notable podcasts, and Discord servers. Since Animal Crossing is extremely popular on TikTok and other platforms generally used by younger users, museums had an opportunity to generate educational content and memes. However, most museums, my own included lack the agility/labor/space for staff to dive into this content for an unspecified amount of payoff. I want to use Animal Crossing as a case study of the kind of activities museums should take great interest in, as aside staff time, generating Animal Crossing content is low cost compared to large pie in the sky digital initiatives. If you'd be interested in having a talk about either or both of these please feel free to reach out! Jeremy Munro Database Administrator National Museum of African Art Twitter<https://twitter.com/porchrates> _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/