Videogame e museo. La rappresentazione dello spazio come strumento narrativo per il patrimonio culturale

The gamification of communication and the advent of New media, of which the video game is the emblem, have caused, in our century, a paradigm shift in the man’s ways of knowing and being in the world, inviting reflection on the role of the representation in the rethinking of the relationship among society, images and narration. The representation in fact, having always been a universal communication code due to its ability to translate complex meanings into a visual system of signs, is also used today by museums as a narrative language able to make its cultural heritage more usable. Its use, however, is often limited to the realization of spectacular images, reinvigorated by technologies, rather than orien-ted to its communication skills. This research, therefore, investigates the representation as a possible narrative strategy in video game. By analyzing new medium‘s distinctive factors, the central role of the representation of the space emerges as a tool to implement the narration underlying the game. The comparison between the experiential video game What Remains of Edith Finch and the cultural video game The Medici Game. Murder at Pitti Palace reveals elements and ways through which the spatial ima-ge can take action on the narration, stimulating the knowledge of the cultural heritage and so creating a connection between the video game’s open languages and the current role of the museum intended as an informal learning environment.