“Designing History: A Multidisciplinary Approach” Walk through the design process of Pox and the City, a medical history game on early smallpox vaccines.

1. Making Museum Games

2. • National Center for Preservation Technology
and Training
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• Rochester Institute of Technology

4. A 19th century handball

5. Trust

6. Indirect vs direct narratives

7. Distribute content!
Player agency
Narrative (dramatic)
Game mechanics
(formal)

8. Process
• Step 1: Pick your object
• Step 2: What do you want the player to
experience? Educational goals
– Affective or cognitive domains
• Step 3: Narrative, characters, supporting objects
– Texts, objects, art work, maps, photos, etc
• Step 4: Game Mechanics and player activity
• Step 5: Distribute narrative and educational goals
and objectives throughout narrative and game
play elements.