Re: [MCN-L] Looking for folks to help with an Animal Crossing MCN Proposal

[Dana Allen-Greil]

Jeremy,

I won't be able to attend MCN due to budget cuts but I did want to make
sure you're aware of some Animal Crossing happenings in the science museum
and aquarium world. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has been doing live Twitch
streams of the game for a few weeks. We've been inviting guest experts onto
the show to nerd out with us. It started with Emily Graslie of The Brain
Scoop / Field Museum to talk fossils, with entomologist Ryan Gott of Phipps
Conservatory, and Monday the 4th we'll be talking with a beetle expert from
the Smithsonian.

If anyone else has relevant expertise and is interested in meeting us
in-game or joining the stream, please feel free to reach out to me.

Check out recordings of our Animal Crossing streams here (we've done seven
2-hour episodes so far):
https://www.twitch.tv/collections/B2eYd5CdAxZ8DA

And read the story behind why we're doing this here:
https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/13/21218993/animal-crossing-new-horizons-real-museum-curation-tour

Best,

Dana Allen-Greil
Director of Digital Strategy
Monterey Bay Aquarium
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[MCN-L] Looking for folks to help with an Animal Crossing MCN Proposal

[Munro, Jeremy T.]

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
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