I intend to create a narrative-based experience to transform the cultural visits into an adventure, essentially gamifying the process of learning and authentically interacting with the city.
Tested research question:
How can gamification encourage anti-social day tourists to seek access to cultural institutions and under-explored areas of the city of Venice?
Index:
- Initial ideas
- Final Idea
- Results
- Particularly good feedback
- Challenges
Initial ideas:
Initially, I thought I could write a script of the entire tour, which would have included history, art history, narrative…
However, I soon realised that such a format would have made difficult for stakeholders to engage with it. I feared it would look too much like a short novel and put people off from reading something too long. Furthermore, at this stage there are a few uncertainties that prevent me from writing a tour in detail. For instance, I still need to get some cultural institutions and artisans on board with the project. Without their support the route I am focusing on is temporary, everything can still change.
At some point I thought I could make a sort of documentary video with the script, showing videos and pictures of the locations but in the end I decided to opt for something easier to digest and more straight to the point.
Final Idea:
I decided to design a fake website that outlines my game idea.
The platform is called “Knights of Venice” (may still change) after the knights of the order of Saint Mark’s. This was the only knighthood in Venice and was dismantled when the Republic of Venice fell end of the 18th century.
Following research about tourist psychology, one the ways to make them respect the host location is to make them feel involved with it, like they are part of it as well. Therefore, making them knights of the city is a fun way of including them. Furthermore, Venetians may appreciate the resurfacing of the lost knighthood.
There are 5 main features in this fake website: Vision, About, Story, Routes, Homepage.
Home page:
Vision:
This is a quick outline of what the problem is: depopulation of the city, mass tourism, fragile infrastructure.
About:
Here is a quick outline of how the game works: follow the ghost of a murdered merchant, learn about the city’s history, find the clues to unveil a long kept secret, interact with the local to have a more authentic experience.
Story:
This section explains the narrative that the tour is following, what the aim of the game is. The tourists will be guided by the ghost of a murdered merchant in order to find a mysterious and powerful object.
Routes:
The user is presented with a number of route options.
The diamond route is the only developed one. Here are its five locations, each presented with a little summary.
- Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo (the hidden gem)
- Chiesa di San Zaccaria (the Church)
- Palazzo Grimani (The Museum)
- Sotoportego dei Preti (Venetian legend)
- L’Artista Della Barbaria Venezia (mask artisan)
Results:
To gather feedback I created two different surveys each tailors to one specific type of stakeholder.
I got some really interesting results, some of it was delivered directly to me and not through the survey, especially for the Venetians (they preferred direct contact).
Examples of questions and answers:
Tourists:
Did the message of this project was clearly conveyed through the website?
Would you want to try this gamified tour if you were to visit Venice?
Which should be the vessel of this tour?
Some questions asked to locals:
Do you like the idea that some tourists would explore less mainstream/more private areas of the city?
If yes, do you think that getting Venetians involved in the game could improve local-tourist relations?
Overall, I had very positive and straightforward replies, which is very encouraging.
Particularly good feedback and advice:
Globally, this intervention was successful because I think it is going to make my project grow. There are a few pieces of feedback and advice, which I think will be particularly useful.
One of them is that the narrative of the tour guide could be a metaphor for what happened to Venice (the fact that it was sold to tourism) and that at the end of the game the tourists realise that the precious object they are looking for is not a small trinket but the entire city of Venice. The moral of the story will be that the city is a precious jewel that must be preserved. Consequently, it is a way to connect the story to the actual problem.
Then, another more practical comment was that from the fake website it was not clear enough that the tour was going to include real history and not only fiction, which is something I need to fix. There other details I should clarify, especially when it comes to the Knights of Venice, who they are and what role exactly they play in the game.
Some expressed that although they like the idea of tours, sometimes, they prefer getting lost instead. This is something I could think about. Maybe, the path they take to reach each location should be completely up to them and not to the game. Giving them a general idea of the way could be enough?
I was also adviced new locations to add to the tour such as:
- San Giovanni e Paolo Church
- Church San Francesco della Vigne
- Vivaldi Church
- The Arsenale district
Challenges:
This intervention was not perfectly executed and there are definitely things that could have gone better.
One thing that I found quite challenging is to get Venetians to engage with my interventions. Only 4 people in that group filled out compare to 14 in the tourist group survey. I understand now that they prefer giving feedback directly to me rather than through a survey. Furthermore, although I had selected locals that could speak english some may not have been as comfortable reading with large amounts of english text.
I predict that language barriers is going to be a big challenge for this project as I am more comfortable writing in english than in Italian. English is the universal language, which marries itself best with tourism, unfortunately, locals here in Venice are not always the best english speakers. A lot of translating work will have to be done.
When I started sending out the fake website pdf to my stakeholders I realised that I had made a mistake. I forgot to include the (About page), which explains how the game works. Fortunately, those who experienced the intervention without (About) still understood what the project was about but it does not change the fact that it created an inconsistency in how my stakeholders engaged with the intervention. Will be more careful in the future.