The War Childhood Museum takes part in the MEMENTOES project by partnering with the indie video game studio Charles Games from Prague. Together, we are developing a game that focuses on the effects of war on children. Additionally, the museum plays an important role in another part of the project, which focuses on collecting evidence of the impact of MEMENTOES games as both entertainment and learning experiences.
Toys
MEMENTOES is an EU-funded project that brings together teams of experts in museology and history with video game developers to create video games that carry important historical lessons to a wider audience, particularly younger generations. As part of this project, the War Childhood Museum and Charles Games studio are jointly developing an educational research video game titled “Toys.” The game is based on the testimonies of individuals who grew up during wartime, which are part of the War Childhood Museum’s collection. “Toys” is one of the three video games currently being developed within the project.
“War Childhood is, unfortunately, more and more topical today”
The Charles Games studio has extensive experience in creating video games with social impact. According to Lukas Kolek, the Chief Executive Officer of Charles Games, their participation in MEMENTOES is a natural extension of that.
“We are happy to be in tandem with WCM. It handles topics that are (unfortunately) more and more topical today. The strong overlap with current events is what motivates us, but also brings with it a lot of responsibility. We have to represent everything very precisely, and sensitively. That’s another part where WCM’s help is indispensable,” emphasizes Kolek.
Collaboration between museums and game developers
In addition to developing educational games, this project aims to evaluate the MEMENTOES games as tools for education, empathy building, learning about historical events, attitude change towards social issues, as well as entertainment. Furthermore, the project seeks to produce guidelines for collaborations between museums and game developers.
Some small-scale studies, where students played games previously developed by some of the project partners, have already been conducted. Data collection took place last year in high schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, and the Czech Republic, in order to measure attitude change, game quality, and historical awareness and empathy, respectively.
“The primary objective of these small-scale studies was to evaluate the effectiveness of the MEMENTOES game quality evaluation methodology and its associated tools. Through this assessment, we seek to improve our research design and the planning of future, larger studies, which will be testing the three video games developed within the project,” says Fernanda Flores from the War Childhood Museum.
Participating in such an important pioneering project is an opportunity for the War Childhood Museum to enhance its educational activities using innovative tools in global peacebuilding.
The MEMENTOES project will last until the end of September 2025.
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
