Beyond the Button

Too popular for their own good

I recently got to see a preview of the new hands-on interactive gallery at the Science Museum, London, called Launchpad. It looks like a fun and well designed space. The director of new media at the Science Museum London, Dave Patten, even has pictures up on Flickr of the space in construction (a cool move that I hope some more museums adopt).

To help promote the exhibit and to compliment the exploratory nature of the experience they built a really rad online flash game called Launchball. Sadly, this game quickly got picked up on digg and was swamped under the burst of traffic that digg can bring. It's been offline ever since. But hey, too much traffic is a good problem to have. I am sure they are working on a way to get it back up with more server juice behind it.

Wolf party at the zoo

WolfQuestI also just ran across this, in development, game from the Minnesota Zoo. They are building WolfQuest which seems like it will be a 3D first person game designed to give you a sense of what it feels like to be a wolf. I am curious to check this out when it launches. Will it be another educational "game" that feels a little too much like work, or will it be a unique multilayer environment that let's you play your way into knowledge. We shall see. There is lots of potential for this type of experience giving you a unique augmented sense of nature.