Roblox is one of the world’s most popular online games for children and young people. In this game world, there is now a digital twin of the Hagfors railway museum: Railblox. This means that children and young people can both take a virtual tour of the museum and try out one of the mini-games. And regardless of the game’s potential popularity, the initiative has already attracted great interest in both the media and the visitor industry.
– The main aim is to reach new target groups and raise awareness of the museum. At the same time, it’s also about telling a local story, and the mini-games are linked to that story,” says Anders Solberg, Innovation Manager at Compare.
Can create increased interest in technology
In Hagfors, the municipality also sees broader opportunities around Raiblox. The Children and Youth Administration believes that the game can be a tool for stimulating children’s interest in technology, which can benefit the supply of skills to local employers. Among these is Uddeholm, which in a way forms the basis of the railway museum. At the end of the 19th century, the Uddeholm company built its own private railway – the Nordmark-Klarälven railways. A history that can now be relived both physically at the railway museum and in digital form.
https://dreambroker.com/channel/0xyytqoq/yke007g2
- Watch the film to follow the journey of how Railblox was created.
New entrepreneurs need to drive development
Anders Solberg emphasises that no perfect solution has been developed. Rather, it is about testing ideas that explore new opportunities in the hospitality industry. In the long term, he believes that both Railblox and other services that have been tested in the project need the support of independent entrepreneurs.
– “The project has helped shape system approaches and drive the pace of innovation, but we have also identified a gap. Many actors in the hospitality industry have neither the time nor the resources to drive the development of new services themselves. Therefore, it is about finding entrepreneurs who can take these solutions further and drive them up to benefit more actors.
Several tests in the project
Railblox Hagfors is part of the initiative “Innovation arenas for the tourism industry in Värmland”, a collaborative project between Visit Värmland and Compare. The initiative is supported by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, Region Värmland and the European Regional Development Fund, among others.
In addition to Railblox, several other ideas have been tested within the framework of the project.
One example is a digital platform where Swedish landowners can make beautiful places available for camping, in collaboration with a Värmland company. Another initiative is a venture where campsites, with the support of IoT technology, among other things, will be able to reduce their energy consumption by better guiding their guests.
- Read more about the project “Innovation arenas for the tourism industry in Värmland”
- Visit the railway museum digitally: Here you can try Railblox
