Dottorato in Patrimonio Culturale e produzione storico-artistica, audiovisiva e multimediale

Mauro Mola is a researcher, game designer, videomaker who studied New Media at DAMS
and Cinema and Media as Master Degree in Turin at Università degli Studi di Torino.
He approached game studies during his last year as student, writing a Thesis about the
relationship between detective videogames and film noir.
After the Master Degree he attended a Summer School in Sardinia on "First Person
Adventure videogames" for the promotion of cultural and environmental heritage. During this
period he learned to use a software developed for point and click adventures.
In 2020 alongside the study of Analog and Digital Game Design techniques and their
application in different contexts, he started his career as researcher for Dipartimento di
Filosofia e Scienze dell’Educazione with a project about the evolution and the future of video
into e-learning: thanks to this job he approached and studied the importance of gamification
in the e-learning.
The next year he worked for Dipartimento di Chimica on "Digital Escape Room about
sustainability of the resources”: in this project he worked on brainstorming, creation of digital
materials to insert in the games and playtesting.
Recently he taught Audiovisual Languages in a High School "Istituto Fellini" and started a collaboration with the International School of Comics in Turin teaching Video Making.

Over the past few years it has become increasingly evident that the relationship between
young people and digital products is ever closer, and videogames play an important role into
the community.
The most popular games (AAA) or indie-games use the union between entertainment and
specific themes to create an experience that can increase the pleasure of knowledge
in the player.
Serious-games on the other hands, work to teach something to the player, focusing
on education instead of entertainment.
In both cases the relationship between games and learning is increasingly strong, and ludic
experience can be seen as important not only for students in school context, but also for a
broader cultural experience.
There are videogames built to enhance cultural heritage and videogames built to
increase the cultural experience into a museum.
With this project I want to explore the relationship between videogame and culture,
analyzing the genre, characteristics, mechanics, the balance of entertainment of
video games with didactic and cultural purposes. I will then focus on some museums
around the world to see how video games can make the player interact with them.
Finally, I will take all these data and develop a prototype that can be used for cultural purposes to create an innovative cultural-ludic experience.