Living Computers Museum + Labs offers free parking for visitors but that is not the only reason why this article came to be. Free parking is cool but they are had changed their name to such from formerly being known just as Living Computer Museum. Usually a name change means something and you will discover as you read through.
Why did they change their name?
One, because they can; and two, because they want to revamp their layout and focus how they teach computing history to visitors such as teachers, students, software engineers, hardware engineers, and the like and then ultimately use that knowledge into whatever the visitors are working on. Museums can teach us a thing or two with the visitors just looking at the display items. For Living Computers Museum + Labs, they have both museum and laboratory where you can actually try stuff out. A report from Gamasutra.com also states that the museum aims for a hands-on dev education.
For game developers, this is useful since the facility now offers not just a computer museum but a computer lab with VR and videogames you can tinker with and then afterwards bring home some ideas with you. Being a game developer is not just straight development, much of interaction is needed so that ideas can be conceived and applied. This is what Living Computers Museum + Labs' one purpose, to bring up ideas by offering both museum and laboratory experiences.
What's in there now?
Living Computers Museum + Labs' website describes: "A new main gallery offers direct experiences with robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, big data, the Internet of Things, video-game making, and digital art," the site also adds: "The main floor features education labs for learning new skills (or dusting off old ones)." So for those who are nearby Seattle, Washington, you are cordially invited to "Come in" and "Geek out"
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen established the museum in 2012, the main focus then was to exhibit old computers and make them available for visitors who are scheduled. The computers in the museum did their fair contribution on how the gaming industry came to be. Here's a quick tour of the museum:
