Museum-ifying the games in Code Breakers
Lets go behind the scenes of ACMI’s latest exhilarating exhibition Code Breakers: Women in Games. As one of the technical staff who’ve been putting this together I’m exhausted — but there’s a smile on my face and in my heart. Putting video games into museum exhibitions is a much more complicated process than it appears on the surface.
Months before opening — as the final architectural designs for the space were signed off — we began an intensive process of testing equipment. After a week or two of that I finally got to install some games and try these out.
That’s always a strangely great but critical moment. On one hand you get the secret joy of playing a game as part of your work but at the same time you’re critically assessing the game for its suitability in an exhibition — will it crash? what info will the visitors need to be able to play the game? what tech will be needed? are our computers fast enough?
Eventually all of this information is condensed into documents and fed it back to the curators, exhibit designers and the featured game developers. They make decisions and provide feedback, revise plans and software builds for testing and implementation. Then we cycle through testing until (hopefully before the installation in the gallery commences) and hopefully we’ve got a bunch of well-behaved games at the end of it.
There’s a series of magical moments when the building site starts to disappear and the exhibition grows out of the apparent chaos. Finally the lighting, signage, labels and furniture appear.
Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.
So how do we make games work in these exhibitions?
There is an extensive toolkit that varies from platform to platform and in this exhibition there’s a wide diversity including Playstations, a Mac and various Windows computers.
The guiding principle with all of these is to lock these down to ensure each work is focussed on the game to maximise the experience for the visitor. To that end we avoid networks where possible as these add a layer of complexity to creating a secure and rewarding experience for general visitors. If we need networking we spend time configuring firewalls and research the needed ports to restrict access to these without crippling the games too much.
Next we have to manage user interface hardware. This limits opportunities to exit the game and interfere with the operating system. Many PC games let you use controllers rather than a keyboard. This looks much cleaner in the exhibition, is a more natural fit for many games — and is much easier to lockdown than a keyboard.
We also work with the developers to ensure software builds that are museum ready — in Code Breakers we negotiated a special build of Need for Speed to remove in-app purchases. For Objects in Space which is still in active development — the final exhibition build was the fourth we tested to ensure a robust experience for a game still in production.
Next we do extensive testing before the exhibition installation. We run the games for several days and invite staff or others to play the games and try to get at least three people to play with a diversity of experience, age, gender, etc. From these ad hoc testers we seek feedback on technical issues and what they think that the visitor might need to know to enjoy the experience. This in turn leads to the additional requests to developers, device lockdowns, training for visitor service staff, exhibition didactics and ‘how to play’ documents.
Some of the most basic lockdowns we use on all devices are Parental Controls, disabling bluetooth and wifi and removing as much as possible from Desktops, menus, etc. On iOS devices we use the Restrictions settings to turn off as much as possible and Guided Access to limit the visitor to the specific game. A suitable physical case or mounting for the device that restricts access to home and power buttons is a must (although staff should be able to access these for remedial works!).
On Windows, the operating system offers lots of means for managing the device including visibility and feature access, local group policy and editing the registry. We use Basic Mouse for locking down keyboards, mouse and desktop components. These all work with subtle variations for Windows 7 and 10—obviously, its 2017, so we don’t use Windows XP!
For the Mac there are fewer third party solutions but the operating system offers some good tools. One of the best features in MacOS’ Parental Controls lets you specify that only the game application be available to the player — all other applications require an admin password.
For each computer we create a consistent folder structure which at minimum contains a production and clean folder. As much as possible all the game components are installed into the production folder and once the build is stable, this is copied into the clean folder. As part of start-up, a batch script runs that copies the contents of the clean folder into the production folder and runs the game from there. The beauty of this is that any buggy files are replaced with a known good version and the game is returned to its starting state — thus games that progress in difficulty return to the easiest level. Depending on the game it may save or store files elsewhere so it maybe necessary for the batch script to perform several copy or delete processes in different locations to successfully keep a system clean.
We also create at least three user accounts — a player account, a standard local administrator account for ICT staff and another local administrator account for local venue staff. At the beginning the player account is also a local administrator so that the game installation, configuration and the lockdowns described above can be performed.
One of the early steps of the lockdown is to remove the Administrator rights from the player account. At each stage of the lockdown, do a full restart and test. This is best done on the actual production equipment that will go onto the gallery floor.
Plan the lockdown process carefully and ensure you know how to go back at each step. It is possible to lock yourself in and thus have to start from scratch.
Backups using solutions like Symantec’s longtime Ghost, Carbon Copy Cloner or Clonezilla should be made at each stage so you can restore easily.
Software toolkits
Parental Controls are now common to many operating system platforms, typically available within System Settings or Control Panels. Some times located within User Account settings. It’s worth working your way through all these settings because here you’ll be able to turn off unnecessary services, features and components. Just test to make sure that your game is still running after tweaking each setting.
On Windows 7 and 10 you can access local Goup Policy through the application gpedit.msc.
We generally use the following policies;
- User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Ctrl+Alt+Del Options; Remove Lock Computer
- User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Ctrl+Alt+Del Options; Remove Change Password
- User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Ctrl+Alt+Del Options; Remove Task Manager
- User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar; Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart Sleep
- User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Desktop; Remove Recycle Bin icon from desktop
- Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon; Hide entry points for Fast User Switching
We’ve used local group policy instead of Active Directory due to network restrictions for this exhibition.
Game by game in Code Breakers
Note that unless otherwise stated, all games are on Windows 7 or Windows 10 computers.
Find out more about each game over on the Code Breakers pages.
Sparx and Heart Strings are installed on older Dell Optiplex 980s, However we acquired three Alienware Auroras for Armello, Ninja Pizza Girl and The Gardens Between as these needed the more advanced graphics cards.
Sparx was one of the few games that needed a mouse and keyboard we’ve applied the full lockdown re the tools above. Basic Mouse locks out the unused keys on the keyboard (all bar alpha numeric), right mouse click, task bar and start button. The Registry has edited to enable auto login by the cbplayer account. BIOS settings changed to auto start the computer at 7 am each morning and a scheduled task to shutdown the computer at 10 pm each evening.
The Gardens Between only needs an Xbox 360 controller to operate the game (although a mouse is available to staff as the game minimises after startup). Basic Mouse is implemented but only locks down right mouse clicks and start button access. Registry, BIOS and scheduled tasks as detailed for Sparx.
Objects in Space runs on a Mac Mini and uses keyboard, mouse and it’s own custom console. Similar to the Windows computers the Mac has scheduled start up and shut downs, the player account auto logs in and the game is set to startup automatically. The dock is minimised with only the System Settings and Objects in Space icons left available to the user. Icon size set to largest possible, no other items on the desktop. Parental Controls in System Settings restricts access to the game application only, anything else requires a password.
Ninja Pizza Girl has a mouse and Xbox 360 controller. The mouse is only required to start the game from a desktop icon (it’s possible to exit the game using the controller). While we don’t have a keyboard attached to it I’ve configured Basic Mouse to lockdown everything except the relevant keys that might be used in the game (Esc, shift, a, d, space, left arrow and right arrow). Registry, BIOS and scheduled tasks as detailed for Sparx.
Heart Strings only needs a mouse to play so Basic Mouse is just used to disable the mouse button right click, task bar, start menu etc. Registry, BIOS and scheduled tasks as detailed for Sparx.
Armello only needs a mouse to play so Basic Mouse is just used to disable the mouse button right click, task bar, start menu etc. Registry, BIOS and scheduled tasks as detailed for Sparx.
