Exhibition Review: The Art of Videogames

Today, I took a trip to the American Art Museum to check out The Art of Videogames, and here is what I found:

I was expecting a somewhat larger exhibit than what I ended up finding, but overall it was still interesting. The first of the three rooms gives an overview of the history of videogames. In the second, one finds 4 iconic titles to play as well as a fifth game called Flower, which is more art than game. Finally, the last room has every major console from Atari to Playstation 3, each with clips from four games.

My recommendation for the first room is to go slowly and watch the videos. There’s not a whole lot of text, so that’s where you learn the most about the exhibit. Here, they break the history of videogames into 5 major eras: Start, 8-bit, Bitwars, Transition, and Next Generation. This is also perhaps the most interesting feature of the exhibit. There are five screens side-by-side which show specific game-play elements have changed across the eras. It is striking to see how jumping, for example, has changed in 40 years, and a clip from each era plays simultaneously to highlight that progression. There are also interviews with luminaries in field about how they see videogames maturing as a medium for artistic and narrative expression.

The second room is the interactive one, with a game from each era that visitors can play. Four are classics: Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, Myst, and The Secret of Monkey Island. However, the fifth was one I had never seen: Flower. It came out in 2009 and is more of a pleasant, relaxation activity than a game. In it, the player is a gust of wind that goes around picking up flowers in a pleasant 3D world with soothing music that responds to the player’s activity. For me, this is the epitome of an art game.

The largest portion of the exhibit was the final room. Here, twenty game consoles are presented in chronological order and each has its most popular game in the genres of Target, Action, Adventure, and Tactics (full list here). For those who have been gaming for a while, the room provides a walk down memory lane with classics such as Sonic, Zelda, Tomb Raider, SimCity, Mario, and others. Take as long as you want in this room, there is a lot to take in. Then, just before the exit is a video discussing more of how videogames are coming to be a more important cultural force.

Overall, I enjoyed the exhibit, and the most interesting takeaway was seeing the progression of videogames all at once (specifically the 5-era display at the beginning). In fact, I wish I had spent more time in that first room watching the videos there. I especially recommend the exhibit for those in our class as an opportunity to see many of the games and consoles we discussed earlier in the semester when we went through an early history of vidoegames.

Finally, here are some pictures I took of the exhibit.

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