The Science Museum has received further international recognition with two more awards for its innovative online game Launchball.
The game, developed to accompany the museum’s recently reinvented interactive gallery Launchpad, has won both ‘Best Innovative Site’ and overall ‘Best of the Web’ at Museums and the Web 2008 – the international conference for museums and heritage online in Montreal, Canada. Launchball had already been named ‘Best Game’ and ‘Best in Show’ at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.
Each year Museums and the Web recognises the best in museum web design and development in the ‘Best of the Web’ competition – the most prestigious international web awards for the museum sector.
Judges praised Launchball for its enjoyable addictiveness and “very intelligent scripting,” “impressive array of interactive and very stimulating games” and “superb graphics and multimedia integration.”
Launchball is an online game aimed at 8-14 year olds which incorporates the rules of physics and ties in with the content of the museum’s new Launchpad gallery. The game is a collaboration between the Science Museum and online gaming company Preloaded.
Daniel Evans, Launchball’s Project Director and Head of Web at the Science Museum said, “Launchball has really captured popular imagination and we’re very proud that it is now a multi-award winning game. It’s amazing to see how popular the game has become – getting 1.7 million players and a community of 100,000 users creating their own levels and swapping them with their friends. The key to our success is largely due to Preloaded’s understanding of the game genre combined with the Science Museum’s understanding of its audience.”
Emily Scott-Dearing, Launchpad Project Leader said, “We’re putting players’ physics know-how to the test because whilst the game feels like addictive fun, key messages about the laws of physics underpin every level. That’s why Launchball, just like the gallery Launchpad that inspired it, is a great educational tool as teachers can incorporate the game into science lessons via their interactive white boards.”
The new Launchpad project has been made possible by support from principal sponsor Shell, major sponsor Nintendo, major funder The Garfield Weston Foundation, with additional support from The Zochonis Charitable Trust. Andrew Eddy, Director, Shell UK said: “For Shell, it is imperative that we engage young people in science and encourage them to discover how the world works. The Launchball game is a wonderful extension to the Launchpad gallery; it allows children throughout the world to learn the principles of physics and develop their problem solving skills.”
In the two months between the game going live and the Launchpad gallery opening in November 2007, Launchball attracted over 1 million online visitors. It also featured on the front page of news website Digg and was projected on to the side of the Shell Bank Centre on London’s South Bank.