**5.2 CHESS project**

*'Museums have graduated from the mere display and presentation of collections to the creation of experiences that respond to their visitors' evolving needs and expectations'. Katifori et al. [53]*

The second example only arguably fits into the game category. The Chess Project, however, has many of the characteristics of a game, such as challenge and completion. The CHESS project, situated at the Acropolis Museum in Athens (CHESS: Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling), is a longrunning, part EU-funded research project that seeks 'to enrich museum visits through personalized interactive storytelling' [54]. The project uses interactive narratives delivered *via* mobile-augmented reality to engage and educate participants about the historical artefacts on display, with participants being required to follow clues and locate physical objects in order to progress through the on-screen narratives. The story is intended to motivate players to explore the museum and gain a deeper understanding of the historical context of the physical exhibits.

What is of note here is the direct approach the authors took to the notion of challenge, and their evident desire to respond to each participant's individual level of prior knowledge and understanding. This recalls Nicholson's [16] concern that '*the challenge in creating something meaningful is that the concept of what is meaningful is defined by each individual'.* In the CHESS project, pre-engagement questionnaires were used to create personalised narrative experiences, designed to reflect the individual participant's interests and knowledge [55]. The designers used this mechanism to address the issue that level of difficulty is both individual and context-specific, as raised above. Using this approach, players were able to access tailored narratives that provided sufficient challenge to motivate, without being too easy or too hard, and took into account the varied ages, backgrounds, interests and enthusiasms presented by a diverse visiting public.

This reiterates the importance of challenge level for a challenge to be a motivating pleasure within gamified applications in cultural spaces. As per Nicholson: *'small differences in age or interests of visitors may have considerable impact on the appropriateness of the digital activities and the delivered experiences' (Ibid [55], p. 16).* Personalisation needs to be 'dynamic and highly targeted' to be effective which poses considerable challenges to designers as such a level of personalization can require detailed understanding of the age, interests and motivations of individual game players [56].
