The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has acquired a selection of 14 videogames as part of a concerted effort to celebrate gaming as an artistic medium.
[partner id=”wireduk”]In a blog post by curator Paola Antonelli, it was announced that the museum has acquired and will exhibit games including Pac-Man, Tetris, Out of This World, Myst, SimCity, Vib-Ribbon, The Sims, Katamari Damacy, EVE Online, Dwarf Fortress, Portal, flOw, Passage and Canabalt.
“Are video games art?” asks Antonelli. “They sure are, but they are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe. The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design – a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity.”
The games will be exhibited as part of the museum’s Architecture and Design collection. It plans to add 26 additional games, to bring the total to around 40 in the near future, including Pong, Snake, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Minecraft.
The games are selected based not only on their visual quality, but the elegance of the code and the design of the player’s behavior. They were looking for games that combined historical and cultural relevance as well as innovative approaches to technology. The curators have consulted scholars, critics and digital conservation experts to understand how to display and conserve these digital, interactive artifacts.
“Because of the tight filter we apply to any category of objects in MoMA’s collection, our selection does not include some immensely popular video games that might have seemed like no-brainers to video game historians,” Antonelli explains.
The museum has tried to obtain copies of the games’ original software format – for example, cartridges or discs – and hardware (i.e., the consoles) where possible. It will also try to acquire the source code in the language it was written “so as to be able to translate it in the future, should the original technology become obsolete”. It must also work out complex rights deals with publishers.
Each game will be presented in a different way depending on what’s most appropriate. If the game is a short one, it may be available to play in its entirety. For longer games, there might be an interactive demonstration where the game can be played for a short while. Where games are too fragile or hard to find, they might offer an interactive emulation where the original code is ported to a newer platform. Particularly complex or time-consuming games might be presented in a video demo form. Massively multiplayer games such as EVE will be brought to life through guided tours, built in conjunction with players and designers.