Played for Game of The Week 09/05-16/05/2023

The Bird Museum is an interesting experiment. Artist and Musician Louie Zong[1] made a call on a twitter post for "BAD CROWDSOURCED BIRD ART"[2]. Overwhelmed by how many entries were submitted a cutoff point was set that same day to limit the amount of bird pictures[3], which ended up being over 1000[4].
As the Kotaku Article points out, virtual museums are nothing new[5], nor are crowdsourced ones at that. The article mentions the Crows Crows Crows community museum (though this is not bird themed, its just the name of the dev which made the Dr Langeskov game). Which I also played cause its not as if the Bird Museum is particularly long. Although I suppose it depends on personal bird art satisfaction.

Essentially the selection of paintings is randomized to about 50 from the 1000 total, you can reset the museum at any point to reshuffle the selection of paintings but not the 3D modelled statues[5]. It strikes a nice balance in curation between the designer and the random number generator. I suppose it means that if you really truly wanted to "complete" the Bird Museum it would take a while because there is no mechanism to prevent repeats (nor do i think it should, I think the experimental, random nature of the selection is entirely appropriate and intentional) and in the 3 resets I did I see a couple of duplicates.

If there is something to criticise I would say the postprocessing effects are both ugly and against the whole purpose of displaying the crowsourced art, filtered by awful visual filters. Another thing I sort of appreciate but also dislike is the sprint function. I was walking around with a slow speed I thought was deliberate to emulating how one explores physical museums but no, you press shift and get to zoom along. I suppose we need not necessarily be shackled to the limitations of the real world but personally I thought the slow walking speed worked, the museum is small anyways. I should mention the game is free but invites us to donate some money to the audubon charity.

Crows Crows Crows Community museum starts us off opening our eyes in a vast empty-ish space with the titular museum behind you, sitting as a giant rectangular block with the title written on it. Its rather far away and before long you close your eyes and are teleported to it. Its much more elaborate than the bird museum and honestly resembles a real life gallery/museum. Now, I might be off base here, but I think CCCCM is supposed to be a satire of museums? I think Id like for others to play it but a few things, namely the plaque with the history of the museum and a few other things tipped me off to this idea; although if its the case its kind of falling into the trap of becoming the very thing its parodying.
I will say CCCCM is worth playing just for the method of quitting the program. I got a good laugh out of it. And the Bird Museum is worth a look also, i saw a fair few highlights in my brief time playing it.

1. https://www.louiezong.com/about
2. https://twitter.com/everydaylouie/status/1177742077280436224
3. https://twitter.com/everydaylouie/status/1177745589850689536
4. https://twitter.com/everydaylouie/status/1237175112895352832
5. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-bird-museum-is-louie-zongs-free-collection-of-crowdsourced-bird-art?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Reviewed on May 09, 2023


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