iMmersive gamEs for Museums as vehicles to Engage visiTOrs in Empathetic reSponses

MEMENTOES will build immersive video games to service the needs, and facilitate mass audience affection for museums engaged in the topics of memorialisation and transitional justice. The goal is to create authentic storytelling experiences, where people, places and original items, are used to maximum effect to fulfill the museum’s responsibility to provide immersive, deeply personal experiences that aim to demonstrate empathy toward their communities. Through cutting-edge technology, such as virtual/mixed reality,high-quality digitisation techniques, AI for explorative procedural content generation, and accessible interaction techniques, MEMENTOES will deliver a universal experience where distant people and places will become palpable and present to the players. MEMENTOES will involve a multi-disciplinary team of museum curators, designers and exhibit developers, as well as technology providers and visionary game developers so as to uncover the types of connections museum visitors are making, enabling the game makers to understand the types of education techniques and behaviors that foster historical empathy and tangential learning outcomes and draw appropriate parallels to game storytelling frameworks. Three game will be developed, each targeting an authentic museum recognised internationally as a Site of Conscience, to help get deliver the museum messages to wider audiences from around the world, transcending even the boundaries put in place by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. MEMENTOES will further facilitate a liaison with the outcomes of HORIZON-CL2-HERITAGE-2021-01-09: ‘Games and culture shaping our society’, contributing with its evidence on games as a vehicle to engage cultural institution visitors in empathetic responses.