Cultural venues leap on whodunit wagon

Wu Yusheng remembers visiting the Nanjing Tangshan National Geological Park Museum in Jiangsu province in November 2021, not just to tour the museum, but also to participate in a special role-playing murder mystery game, or jubensha, called Missing Password.

She was one of 40 players, mostly university students, who had been divided into groups of four and tasked with unmasking the perpetrator of a murder set in a fictional primitive society thousands of years ago. The first group to find the killer was the winner.

"What impressed me most while playing the game was the sense of immersion," Wu says. "The clues in other murder mystery games are usually presented in the form of text. This game was different. While I searched for clues on my own, the game was so immersive that I even forgot to take photos."

When murder mystery games meet museums, the journey of knowledge can be full of fun.

These jubensha (literally "script murders") are a form of role-playing game in which the players unmask criminals by collecting information and cracking the case, much like actual detectives. Museums are taking advantage of the trend by using their valuable collection of relics and the stories behind them to attract more visitors.

Since 2019, dozens of cities, including Shanghai, Luoyang in Henan province, Changsha in Hunan province, Beijing and Chongqing, have launched their own museum murder mystery programs based on their collections.

Apart from physically taking place inside a museum, the scripts of these role-playing murder mysteries are based on the museum's area of interest.

For example, players were asked to answer questions about geological exhibits in the Nanjing Tangshan National Geological Park Museum, while in the murder game set up by the Luoyang Museum of Ancient Tombs, players had to be able to recite classical Chinese poetry correctly in exchange for clues, according to online posts.

"Murder role-playing games in museums are a good combination of historical elements and entertainment," says Xiang Yue, a postgraduate student in Shanghai, who participated in a game called Awakened Brewmaster at the Qingdao Beer Museum last year.

"If the game is set up cleverly, players can enjoy themselves while they walk around and learn about the museum, which gives them a stronger desire to explore more," she adds.

Wu says she feels similarly. "During the game, I was even out of breath because I was walking around the entire hall looking for clues. I was constantly rushing because of the limited time we had," she says. "But by interacting with the NPCs (non-player characters) while playing a game that was closely connected to the exhibits, I learned a lot."

Zhang Zheng, an associate professor of cultural and creative industries at Tsinghua University, says that participating in murder mysteries that incorporate stories based on the museum's exhibits can create a more immersive experience for museumgoers than a standard visit to an exhibition. "This added emotional immersion also enhances understanding of the artifacts and cultures on display," Zhang adds.

He believes that the continued trend toward role-playing games in museums is widely recognized but says that the degree to which the market and consumers welcome these games has yet to be explored, and adds that the answer to this question will be decisive to the further development of the sector.

"If we can cultivate a niche market for jubensha in museums, create a regular group of players, and commercialize operations, then considering that there are thousands of museums in the country, this should be a very promising market," he explains.

Tours for parents and children, night visits to museums, even spending the night in museums, all these recent innovations are efforts to tap the fun-seeking museumgoer market, and to test the waters of market preferences.

"For museums, this is a challenging opportunity. They should not only highlight the attraction of their exhibits and create their own signature intellectual property, or IP, based on their area of expertise, but they should also have a high ability of operation, as well as creating suitable storylines," says Zhang.

Yuan Yilang, who also played Awakened Brewmaster, came away with a relatively poor impression of the experience because of broken devices and annoying teammates. "I would gladly pay for the immersive experience of playing a murder mystery game in a museum, but there's still a lot to improve upon," she says. "Museums need to do more customer research to help improve visitor satisfaction."

For her part, Wu expects better options, such as more time to solve the case, and a reduction in the number of players for each game.

"I will be more conscious about choosing well-set and thematic scripts for museum murder mystery games," she says. "Interesting themes, logical plots, and a high degree of interactivity are the three features that I prefer the most."

Guo Wenqing contributed to this story.