Escape the Gallery
A Roblox Game at Wolverhampton Art Gallery
How could games and gaming be integrated into permanent exhibition spaces? This was the guiding question of Wolverhampton Arts & Culture and the starting point of an inspiring collaboration between the art gallery and a local college that culminated in the creation of a Roblox escape game.
Located just outside of Birmingham, Wolverhampton Art Gallery has long been committed to carry out community engagement projects, but had never tapped into videogames before. For a long time, Penelope Thomas, Learning and Engagement Officer at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, had been dreaming of creating a game rooted in either the building or the collections and targeted at younger children and families. It was a wink of destiny when an opportunity to cooperate with four Walsall College T level students arose who took on the challenge of developing a game as part of their placement at the museum.
Apart from a small briefing around the vague game focus, the students were given creative freedom to shape the project. They proposed to develop the escape game using Roblox, merging online and real world elements, that families could enjoy both at the gallery and at home. For the escape game, the galleries were fairly realistically rebuilt in Roblox with high-resolution JPEGs of the artworks embedded for interaction. As players navigate the virtual gallery, they unlock challenges solving puzzles and finding clues in order to escape—just as the game’s title alludes.
The game development lasted one year with weekly check-ins between the museum and the students. Beta testing with families in the museum ensured the game was engaging and accessible for its target audience. After months of collaboration and refinement, the game was officially launched in November 2023.
“We are trying to find new ways of how to digitise and make relevant the collection here for everyone.” – Dinosaur Kilby
Benefits & Impact
Interestingly, the test phase revealed one of the game’s key strengths: its ability to connect players. While testing the game in the gallery, children shared the game link with their friends at home and were playing together in real time from different locations, thus resulting in a sharable experience.
In the past, the museum had tried out other community engagement initiatives like an artist incubator program resulting in the production of high level contemporary art connected to the collection. However, these efforts failed to resonate with the local community. The museum’s goal is now to better reflect the community’s interests – such as broader visual arts, music and videogames – through its work and programming. The Roblox game was a first attempt in that direction. By embracing videogames, the museum hopes to showcase its efforts to connect with the community and to reflect its understanding of art.
Being in the orbit of the cultural hotspot Birmingham, Wolverhampton has long struggled to retain local audiences and gain a voice for itself. With the help of the game, the museum wants to strengthen its ties with younger audiences, particularly those aged 10 to 15 – a demographic that is currently underrepresented at the gallery. This age group is very engaged on platforms like Roblox in their spare time and the museum hopes that engaging them through the game will spark greater interest in both the gallery’s physical space and its online presence. Additionally, the development of the game was also a great push to digitise the collection and show the target group of how it can be used.
The development of the game also offered valuable benefits for the Walsall College students. They gained hands-on experience working on a real-world application that would be used by actual players in a real setting—an achievement they could showcase in their portfolios and CVs. During the development process, the students were given significant creative freedom, allowing them to develop and implement their own ideas, further enhancing their professional development.
Challenges
Having little knowledge on building video games posed a bit of a challenge for the museum staff leading the project, says Dinosaur Kilby, Creative Producer at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. It was necessary to bring in the University of Wolverhampton’s Games Department – as support partner for technical issues related to videogame development. A lot of facilitating between the gallery, the university and the college was needed, but this collaborative approach allowed the students to gain valuable knowledge throughout the process.
Due to time constraints from the side of the museum project leaders, the project became basically student-led. However, sometimes it was difficult to marry the ideas of the museum with the ideas of the students who initially envisioned the game to take place in a dystopian reality full of danger and horror which did not align very well with the museum’s game vision and target group.
As the internship took place in the museum, another challenge initially was to resolve Wi-Fi connection issues in the galleries as well as equipping the students with powerful devices capable of handling game programming.
A significant issue that remains unresolved is game ownership. Currently, the escape game is hosted on a student’s personal Roblox account, making it difficult for the museum to collect and monitor player data and ensure the game’s longevity. To overcome this challenge, the museum plans to open an institutional account on Roblox and migrate the game there as well as to bring it onto its website, which is currently under re-development.
Outlook
Escape the Gallery is a pioneering project, making it a unique initiative within the region. Developing a game introduced a fresh approach to engaging younger audiences with the gallery’s content both online or onsite and to convey the message that the museum is for everyone. It is the result of a strategic shift away from high-level art programmes to offerings that are better in sync with the community’s interests.
Building on the success of this project, the museum will again offer a placement this year and develop a second game in collaboration with students from Walsall College. While the upcoming game will also be centred around the gallery, the specifics are still unknown, leaving plenty of room for creativity and innovation. Tapping into videogame development positions Wolverhampton Art Gallery as an institution that evolves alongside the local community reflecting its interests and preferences.