Wen | Li Shujing
*This article is reproduced with permission from the public account "Words are exemplary"
On December 24, 2019, the Shanghai Museum of Glass planned a special event - "Disappearing Artists", which attracted about 400 spectators and was regarded as the earliest successful case of domestic museum script killing, the plot revolved around the search for artists and works of the museum to carry out a puzzle journey, in which the museum staff played the ROLE OF NPCs (non-player roles), while the visitors played the role of the museum in the museum, such as the curator, reporter, photographer, etc. An immersive experience that interprets the cultural implications behind museums and artworks.
In 2021, script killing has become a new hot spot for young people to chase entertainment consumption and social experience, and more and more museums have also begun to take action. In response to this time of script killing and museum cross-border alliance boom, a script killing industry friend said bluntly in an interview with Fan Fan, "Playing script killing in the museum does not currently have the possibility of national promotion, or say a time, feel at least five years, but at that time the script killing this format still does not exist, fire is not hot or two said." ”
On the one hand, more and more museums are beginning to try to combine with script killing, and on the other hand, the regulatory issues after the brutal expansion of the script killing industry are also attracting more and more attention. On November 17, the Shanghai Bureau of Culture and Tourism issued the "Shanghai Secret Room Script Killing Content Filing Management Regulations" (Draft for Comments), which will become the first management regulation for the secret room script killing industry. It is clear that there must be ten major types of situations such as yellow riots and terror in the script and storyline, and the four major types of acts that the cast and crew of the practitioner unit must not carry out. The Release of the Provisions (Draft for Comments) quickly sparked public discussions, which also helped museums to think about the next step in combining with the killing elements of the script.
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"Storytelling + Immersive Interactive Experience",
Lay the foundation for the integration of "museum + script killing"
At present, there are two main ways to combine museums and script killing, one is that the museum provides basic information and back stories of cultural relics, and the script killing company absorbs cultural relics information in the creation process to supplement or completely rely on museum cultural relics to create script content, which is more common in the current script killing game. In September 2021, Luoyang Museum jointly developed the online script game work "Luoyang Dongfeng Even If You Come" with three collections of cultural relics "Jin Gui Yi Hu Wang" Golden Seal, Transparent Carved Dragon Pattern Agate Bi and Golden Lion String Authorized Little Black Detective and Alipay, which exceeded 300 million traffic in one day.
This combination of methods is better from the perspective of the museum, because the museum undertakes the part of the cultural relics IP authorization, through the authorization of the cultural relics to participate in the script to kill the story outline, and the overall development and project operation of the script content is not the focus of the museum side. Excavating the story behind each cultural relic in an authorized way is one of the main forms of "living" of museum cultural relics in recent years, and belongs to the "controllable range" of the museum from the perspective of project feasibility.
However, another form is gradually forming a new trend, that is, museums not only need to provide script content, but also provide real-life project operation space. This space can either be integrated with museum exhibitions, or a new scene can be created to independently operate the script killing project, which is the fusion form of museum and script killing that this article wants to focus on. This form has gradually emerged since the Shanghai Museum of Glass began the first museum live-action script killing project in 2019, and in the past two years, riding on the rapid development of the script killing industry, some state-owned museums have tested the waters and formed preliminary experience. The combination of these two methods is that both the museum and the script have the characteristics of "immersive experience", using story thinking to drive the experiencer from the fragmentation of information reception to systematic presentation.
The current major museum live-action script killing repertoire | The image comes from the same thing
List of major projects | The image comes from the same thing
Judging from the current museum live-action script killing projects, it is basically opened in first-tier economically developed cities, and Changsha, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Jiangmen all have rich museum resources and economic strength. In the context of the museum gradually becoming a "punch card" and parent-child study scene for young Internet celebrities, the museum visitors and the script killing consumer portraits have a certain overlap. China Merchants Securities' 2021 script killing industry report shows that more than 75% of the cities where the script killing players are located are concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, and the proportion of users 26-60 years old accounts for more than 75%, while 19-25 years old also occupies about 15%, basically covering 90% of the script killing user group.
Secondly, the museum script killing projects that have emerged at present have more prominent local characteristics, and the script killing activities in the state-owned museum highlight the characteristics of public welfare rather than profitability, and the price of the for-profit museum script killing project is also within the acceptable range of the script killing most consumers, and the script killing type is also mainly brain-burning reasoning.
Located in the capital of overseas Chinese in China, Guangdong Jiangmen Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum, in 2021 has successively launched two original museum live-action script killing products of the Patriotic Love family series, the products are free and long-term operation, and the third project is currently in the script creation stage. The two products of "Chinatown Fengyun" and "Homeland" are based on the story background of overseas Chinese struggling and entrepreneurship, and the first "Chinatown Fengyun" is based on the cultural relics and story prototypes of Mr. Situ Meitang, the leader of the Chinese Zhi Gong Party, which immediately became a blockbuster product when it was launched in July.
At present, the museum is gradually changing from static display to dynamic three-dimensional presentation, digital, scientific and technological, interactive elements have been embedded in the museum's various services, but what currently plagues the museum is that the museum can become a "punch card place" but can not only pursue the "punch card place", how can the educational function of the museum be realized? How can a museum become a place of value for cultural heritage and a place of expression of urban character?
Answering this question well is why museums are constantly looking for innovation. The interactive part of the script killing and the plot elements through puzzle solving stimulate consumers to further explore the ability, so that consumers can obtain a deeper sense of experience, which is an important factor to attract the museum to take the initiative to contact and integrate with the script killing industry.
This also allows for some deeper thinking from scene theory. Different scenes have specific unique value orientations, and the museum live-action script killing project is not only a museum display space, but also a consumption space. It is possible to feel the real experience of cultural consumption practices at the spatial level here, and also to provide a deep emotional experience throughout the immersion process. As the main body of the activity, people (audiences) reflect their personal aesthetic tastes, cultural values and everyone's lifestyle in the process of visiting (consuming).
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There are puzzle books in the front, and there are live-action scripts to kill after
"Story Thinking" cultural and creative products in the museum
Maturity in the process of building
The cultural and creative development of museums is transitioning from living cultural and creative products to immersive, interactive and interesting cultural and creative product development. In fact, "story thinking" is more and more obvious in the cultural and creative products carried out by museums, and the elements of the "script" concept + interactive games have a bright performance in the physical deciphered book products developed by many museums.
In 2018, the Palace Press and the Mystery House released the interactive game puzzle book "Mystery Palace Ruyi Linlang Picture Book" (that is, the "Mystery Palace" series) to quickly raise 1 million yuan in 10 hours by crowdfunding to trigger a small wave of domestic museums to develop puzzle book products. The "Mystery Palace" series takes books and props as offline entities, and has developed a game APP online as a story aid, and has also formed an immersive scene space of "online + offline".
The successful case of the Forbidden City has directly driven the enthusiasm of major museums in China, and fully copied the crowdfunding method in the process of creating puzzle book products. The Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum created "Ask Qin", Zhonglian Baiwen, Shaanxi History Museum, Shaanxi Normal University Publishing House and Box Lightning Jointly launched "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau: Endless Collection", the National Museum of China launched "Bole Lantern Xingle", Suzhou Museum "I.M. Pei's Architectural Code" ...
These puzzle books have a certain collection value for these products with their distinctive characteristics of packaging, design and content, and high printing quality. In the exchange with Teacher Wen, a senior practitioner in the script killing industry, he laughed and said that "the problem of puzzle books meets the requirements of both puzzle solving and museum historical knowledge reserves, and in most cases, people who can play without understanding knowledge and understanding knowledge will not play, so the balance between knowledge and fun is a major difficulty in developing this product." ”
This also resonated with me, as one of the consumers of the Forbidden City's "Mystery Palace Ruyi Lingliang Book", after purchasing, I was first amazed by the "grade" of the printing quality, and after struggling for several hours in the actual puzzle solving process, I gave up exploring due to insufficient knowledge reserves, and then this product changed hands to friends who I think have a strong knowledge reserve, and learned in the follow-up understanding that she sealed the puzzle book as a collection because she did not have the "meaning" of personal play.
It has to be said that puzzle books and scripts are similar in genre and characteristics. Although puzzle books lack the interaction and sociality between people compared with script killing, and at the same time, unlike the current popular script killing immersion method, the effect of puzzle books needs to rely on self-expression and is highly susceptible to interference from the surrounding environment. But this means that the museum started from the puzzle book products, and the ideas and paths of creating cultural and creative products have gradually shifted to the characteristics of story mining and immersive interaction.
On the other hand, the museum's increasing attention to the killing of live-action scripts also reflects the reflection on the museum's reconstruction of the exhibition method and the sense of atmosphere and experience of the museum space scene. All this is to the public to express the transformation of the museum's thinking and active attempts at operation, and the activation and excavation of cultural relics resources has moved from basic information and cultural connotation to cultural stories and cultural IP.
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epilogue:
Don't follow the trend, the museum live-action script kills the project
Challenges and risks cannot be ignored
Undoubtedly, in view of the vulgarity and homogenization of the quality of script content in the script killing industry, the museum has a good filling effect on the creation of script killing content, which can not only lead the values of content creation, but also has certain advantages in creating immersive scene atmosphere, but it is still not advisable to follow the trend.
This is based on the current situation of unbalanced development in the construction of museums in China, and also stems from the greater test of operating costs, operational levels and service quality brought by the museum's live-action script killing project to the museum. In the era of experience economy, the pursuit of a good experience is the ultimate goal and value of products and services in this era, but for both museums and scripts, both are now facing the dilemma of poor experience.
Suzhou Museum West Building | Image courtesy of @Suzhou Museum
For most small and medium-sized museums in China, there are great challenges in terms of project fund support, museum operation and management, and whether the aesthetic ability and consumption level of local audiences can be converted into scripts to kill project consumers. Operating a sustainable script killing project not only requires site space, but also requires high-quality and iterative script content to enhance consumer viscosity, and must also have a DM with rich management and operation experience, which also puts pressure on general museums on personnel costs.
Therefore, combined with the current general development of museums in China, the combined model of providing content services based on the authorization model is more reliable for most museums.
Of course, it is also necessary to analyze the specific problems from the positioning and function of the museum and the different situations of each museum. But the most important thing is to take into account the red line of cultural relics safety, and take the safety of cultural relics as an important criterion for whether you can carry out live-action script killing projects.
On the evening of September 2, 2018, a fire broke out on the first floor of the National Museum of Brazil
For cultural relics, the first thing the museum does is to protect, and only by realizing protection can we leave room for exploration and revitalization. Museum script killing is a kind of cultural and creative product with emotions, because the audience is very easy to immerse in the plot and the emotions are not controlled by themselves, thus forgetting the real social characters with the development of the plot, if there is an excessive action in the museum display space, will it bring safety risks to the cultural relics? This may also be one of the reasons why many museums keep their distance from live-action scripts.