Video Games as Interactives in Museums

Video games have gone from a small niche in the entertainment sector to a cultural mainstay alongside film and literature in just a few decades. For the purpose of this paper, video games include arcade games with their own standalone cabinets, games played on both at home consoles and personal computers, and mobile games played on the phone. In 2021, the video game industry had an annual revenue of over 214 billion dollars, a number that is predicted to continue to rise in coming years. (World Economic Forum 2023) The cultural and economic impact of video games on today’s world cannot be ignored or denied. Given this significance, it makes sense that video games would be represented in museums. They also can unlock new opportunities for engagement and outreach that would have been out of reach without the influence of video games. Different museums approach having video games in their collection in a variety of ways, The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) incorporates them into their galleries, while the Coputerspielemuseum and the Strong Museum of Play have recreated arcades or other themed spaces for some of the games that they have on display. The approaches vary based on the hardware and requirements of the game themselves, as well as what the museums are trying to convey by displaying them and how interactive they want them to be.

Video games have value in museums in multiple respects. One of the things that make video games stand out from other artistic mediums is their inherent interactivity. Video games are meant to be played; they take the player and make them a part of the story. Because of this, in order to be best represented in a museum, video games should be playable to some degree. Video games are meant to be played; they bring people in on the experience and make their choices matter. While museums have made strides in increasing interactives in exhibits and museum programming, the fact that video games are made to be interacted with encourages further engagement from visitors. When interviewed about the museum’s Video Game Lab as Video Game Curator for the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Video Game Curator Arieh Offman, describes, “And it is this interactivity that is the crux of what makes games so appealing – you are not just watching or listening to stories but become part of them. You control the characters, you make the choices –they become your victories and your defeats, and the sense of achievement that a player feel is unique to the medium of videogames.” (ACMI 2023) The interactivity inherent to games is what makes them stand out from other forms of media. However, there are complications in having playable video games as a part of a museum collection, because of hardware and software limitations. Every playable game requires its own console or other device to be run on, in addition to controllers, displays, and of course copies of the game’s code. Museums would either need to limit the number of visitors who can participate at once, acquire multiple copies of the necessary hardware and software, or engage with emulators.

The Museum of Modern Art has a variety of video games in its collection, ranging from staples of the industry like Pac Man, to independently made games like Getting Over It. (Never Alone 2023) MOMA has addressed software concerns in the acquisition stage by ensuring that they also acquire the code for any games that they acquire in their original language so that they can be better preserved, even if the physical media fails, or if the game, console, or controller is too fragile to be interacted with regularly by visitors. They also use a case-by-case basis for how interactive they have the games on display be. Games that can be played in their entirety in a short time are available to be played as is, while longer or more complex games have smaller sections able to be played MOMA also uses emulators in cases where the physical media on which the game is stored is too fragile to be used. (Antonelli and Galloway 2023) Emulators are recreations of games, normally games that are older or no longer readily available to be played, that can be played on a newer device, normally a computer. (Wells 2020) However, most emulators available are fan made, and unofficial, and thus would call legal issues if they were a part of a museum collection without proper licensing.

In addition to MOMA, there are other museums that have already integrated video games as a part of their exhibitions, and in some cases are in large part dedicated to collecting and exhibiting video games and related media. One of the museums most focused on video games is the Coputerspielemuseum in Berlin, Germany. (Computerspielemuseum Home 2023) This museum is dedicated to electronic games, and many of their exhibits allow visitors to interact with and play some of the games in the museum’s collection. For example, one of their current exhibitions is called “Impact Games”. The exhibit has several reconstructed spaces showing how video games of different eras were played at the time. These include a recreated arcade and living room to represent the 1970s, when games first started to appear in homes, and bedrooms for the 1980s and 1990s. The goal of this exhibit is for visitors to see the development of video games over time, and how they were perceived and played by people at the time. (Computerspielemuseum Exhibitions 2023) These exhibits are a love letter to the games and the time that they came from; they work to recontextualize them for younger people. Beyond that, the Coputerspielemuseum also has art installation based around video games, including a giant controller for a Nintendo console that requires multiple visitors to work together to play and a specially modified pong table which punishes players when their opponent scores a point.

The Coputerspielemuseum’s collection of video games, and related media is extensive, with over 35,000 storage devices containing video games software, 350 consoles and computers for playing the games, and 12,000 magazines. Their games are all stored in their original form, with no mention of emulators or similarly copied or reproduced games. They have also participated in projects to further research in the preservation of digital media. The Coputerspielemuseum not only has an impressive collection of video games, gaming hardware, and related media, but also shows dedication to having the games remain playable and interactive for visitors.

The Strong Museum of Play is another museum with a focus on video games. They hold the International Center for the History of Online Games, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, a Video Game Play Capture Project, and many permanent and temporary exhibits that are dedicated to video games. (ICHEG 2023) Some of these exhibits explore video games cultural impact, and their development, some are games made purposely for the museum to be interactive elements for exhibits, and others are dedicated to a single game, its development, art style, and the story behind it.

One of these is a permanent exhibit dedicated to the game series Age of Empires, a game series for the PC that falls under the category of RTS, or real time strategy. The game has players select an empire from various points in history and compete against another set of empires controlled by other players, or the computer. Players must build up an economy to unlock new technologies, create a powerful military, and defeat their opponents. There have been four games in the main franchise, with one spinoff titled Age of Mythology. (Age of Empires 2023) The exhibit at the Strong Museum of Play has a history of the games’ developer, an area with a throne where visitors can take a picture like they are leaders of their own empires, concept art of the games, a playable version of the original Age of Empires, and interactives and displays that go over how the developers incorporated history into the games and how it influenced gameplay. This exhibit explores every aspect of the game, not only allowing visitors to play, but also presenting various stages of the game’s development process, and the people who worked on it. (Age of Empires, The Strong National Museum of Play 2023) The thought process of game developers is something most people who play the games are not normally privy to. The Age of Empires exhibit is designed in a way where visitors can not only interact with the game itself but also get a look at how it was made and what choices went into those decisions. While most other exhibits dedicated to games seem more focused on broader categories of games, the Age of Empires exhibit is an excellent example of how to highlight the development and story of one game franchise in particular.

The Strong Museum of Play also has an exhibit similar to the Coputerspielemuseum’s Impact Play called EGame Revolution, which focuses on having video games from every generation to play though. This includes a large arcade space with over 48 arcade cabinet style games, home consoles with playable games ranging from Nintendo’s N64 to Sony’s PlayStation 3, as well as unique games, such as an oversized version of Tetris. (Egamerevolution 2023) Aside from providing context for these games, and allowing to see the progression of games over time, as previously mentioned when discussing the Coputerspielemuseum’s collection, eGame Revolution, and exhibits like it also allow for visitors to access a catalog of games that they would otherwise not get to see or play, especially in one place. The exhibit also discusses how video games evolved, and how they changed the way that people play.

Along with their video game collections like eGame Revolution, the Strong Museum also has a large collection of video games in storage. As with any museum, only a small portion of their collection can be on display at a time, and the Strong Museum is not solely dedicated to video games, so that collection can only take up a certain amount of space on the museum floor. But this collection still serves as a valuable academic resource, through the museum’s website, researchers can request to visit the museum in order to schedule a visit to the museum’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games where they can play games in the collection on-site. (The Strong National Museum of Play 2023) Since digital access for game collections can be a murky area, this allows for games that would be otherwise unavailable to be accessed by a much wider range of people.

Older video games are a storage and preservation concern for museums collecting video games. Floppy disks, which contain may older PC games, have an expected shelf life of 10-20 years, and CDs and DVDs, which were the main medium for PC and console games following the floppy disk era, have a listed life span of between 2-25 years depending on how they are stored. (Arcserve 2023) The limited shelf life of video games is not limited to physical hardware, it also applies to digital colonies of games and their marketplaces. Many consoles have their own digital stores that have gone through multiple iterations, removing older games as they go. Meanwhile PC games are sold across multiple marketplaces, leaving more room for redundancy, but there are still cases where games are lost, and only those that exist on a hard drive or disk somewhere remain. These losses can be accidental, with updated versions not being supported or a developer going under and no longer being able to sell the game, or intentional, as there are cases where for various reasons, developers have intentionally made games unavailable after their release.

One of the most famous examples of a video game being intentionally removed from all digital marketplaces was a game, or trailer for a game, called P.T. This game was actually a trailer for a game that was never released, the name was an abbreviation of Playable Trailer. It was set to be the next installment in the Silent Hill franchise of horror games. The trailer consisted of a player walking through the same house in a loop. As the loop went on, the house got more decrepit, and more noises and scary imagery was put in until eventually a ghost would appear and kill the player. The game was set to have big names attached, at the end of P.T. It is revealed that the character the player controls is based on Norman Reedus, an actor famous for his role on The Walking Dead. Hideo Kojima, a famous game developer, and the director Guillermo Del Toro were also set to work on the game. Unfortunately, Kojima had a falling out with the developer Konami, the game was cancelled, and P.T. was removed from all online game stores. Some copies do survive. (Simelane 2019) Some players who had installed it made sure to not delete it off their systems, or it would be lost forever. Some copies survive to this day, one of which is in the Strong Museum of Play’s collection. The interest built around this game came in part from the big names working on it, and the excitement of a new installment of a fan favorite franchise like Silent Hill, but also because it was unique. Although game demos were not a new idea, P.T. was made and presented in a different way. Most demos were a level or two pulled from the game, but P.T. was as its name described, a trailer; it was its own self-contained content that just hinted at the story of the now lost Silent Hills –– a fully interactive hook to get people to want more. The trailer made the player a part of the story before the game was even out. The case of P.T. reflects why it is so important to preserve the interactive aspect of video games in museums, and how essential it is to fully engage with them.

Museums that display video games and have them available for interaction by visitors have different methods of access and what versions are displayed. Some museums, like MOMA not only do things on a case-by-case basis, but also create a smaller build or one manufactured to recreate a massive multiplayer environment, as they did with Dwarf Fortress. (Antonelli and Galloway 2023) Others like the Coputerspielemuseum (Computerspielemuseum Exhibitions 2023) and the Strong Museum of Play (Egamerevolution 2023) have some arcade games, in their original cabinets, but when it comes to home console and PC games, there are other issues encountered. As original hardware fails, having games, especially older or rare ones on display for public use greatly increases the risk that they can be lost forever. Emulation is one method to ensure that the game can be preserved or displayed beyond its original hardware, but it is frowned upon by the gaming industry. There have not been any legal cases regarding creation of emulators of games that are owned by the creator, but when it comes to the distribution of emulated games, especially online, charges of piracy come into play. Museums collecting video games are able to create emulations and recreations of games they own, though they can also work with developers to do this, but they cannot make them available online. This differs somewhat from the trend of digitization across the museum world, but where a painting or other form of more traditional art can have the rights regarding its online publication transferred to a museum when it is donated, unless a game is donated by a developer and consents, the same cannot be done for video games. This makes the Strong Museum’s collection’s availability for research access even more valuable.

Video games are an extremely varied medium that has expanded from a small niche in entertainment to a mainstay, a multibillion-dollar industry with countless titles released every single year. It is understandable that video games have an established presence in museums, from museums dedicated to video games to larger institutions that acquire them as a part of their collections. The innate interactivity of video games creates challenges and opportunities for their display. By design, video games draw the viewer, the player, in, and make them a part of the art and the story being told. They draw visitors in for an utterly unique experience. They also can be used to make unique art installations based around the games, from oversized games that require cooperation, or something totally new like Coputerspielemuseum’s Pain Station. (Computerspielemuseum Home 2023) Like all collection’s materials, video games have their own challenges in regard to preservation. Many older games are long past their expected shelf life and having them available for play puts them at increased risk of damage. Emulation is one method of further preserving and increasing availability of video game collections. As video games continue to be a part of museum collections, they will be used in new and interesting ways of expanding interactivity, and new solutions for preservation will be developed.