Boston’s Museum of Science is making the leap into the metaverse.
The Museum of Science is teaming up with Roblox to launch Mission: Mars, an immersive online game where players can solve engineering challenges as they navigate the red planet.
Museum President Tim Ritchie said this is all part of the museum’s plan to increase the number of people it serves.
“When I joined the museum about two-and-a-half years ago, one of the challenges that I brought to the organization and encouraged us to do was to go from reaching about 5 million people a year to 100 million people a year by 2030,” Ritchie told BostInno. “Not knowing exactly how to get from here to there, but knowing that what we had to offer was something the world needs.”
In Mission: Mars, players can land on the red planet and explore in their survival suit and Mars Rover. The challenges they’re asked to navigate are similar to those presented to real-life astronauts and scientists, such as discovering past evidence of water, collecting samples of water ice and (perhaps more science fiction than fact) rescuing fellow explorers. Participants will also be able to design and create new vehicles as they play.
Ritchie said Mission: Mars uses data provided by NASA from its missions and was developed in partnership with Filament Games, a game-development studio based in Madison, Wisconsin.
This metaverse experience isn’t what people see on TV, Ritchie said, with people wearing VR headsets and disconnected from the world around them. He said this is a more “expansive version.”
“To me what the metaverse stands for is, you’re basically taking yourself from one place to another and you still retain yourself,” Ritchie said. “In that way, Roblox is a great example of the metaverse because it’s not exactly isolating yourself in a virtual world.”
Ritchie said Mission: Mars will be free to schools and individuals. The museum plans to provide instructional materials and supplemental support for teachers who want to integrate the game into engineering and science lessons. He hopes that making this available on the Roblox platform will be a way to break down barriers to education access.
Despite all the recent advancements in digital technologies, Ritchie said some people are still skeptical about the effectiveness of translating building and design work into the metaverse. Will students learn as well as they would constructing something on a shop floor at their school? Ritchie thinks so.
“I think you can build and design and use your heart and your mind and your hands, so to speak, by building things and designing things in a digital world. And in fact, it’s a lot less expensive to do so. And you can reach people all over this country and all over the world,” Ritchie said.
Ritchie said the museum first connected with Roblox through Rebecca Kantar, the company’s vice president of education. Kantar’s edtech startup, Imbellus, was acquired by Roblox. Kantar, who dropped out of Harvard, is a member of the museum’s board of trustees.
“She got to know us, and she realized that the very thing that (Roblox) wants to do in terms of education is something we could help them do,” Ritchie said.
The Mission: Mars project received funding from the Roblox Community Fund, a $10 million fund to provide grants to education organizations to develop learning experiences and curriculum using Roblox’s platform. The Museum of Science is the first recipient to launch its experience since the fund was launched in November 2021.
The Museum of Science plans to continue exploring the metaverse. Ritchie said the museum’s entire senior team will gather for an offsite retreat to discuss possibilities of the metaverse to expand its uses at the museum, in schools and online.
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