A walk through the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington these days might yield a look at a few familiar faces for gamers. The Art of Video Games exhibit doesn’t actually deal with any art in the ornately framed, neatly mounted sort of way. Instead, it’s about viewing games as art in their television displays and their path toward the realization that they can be just as fetching as their classic counterparts.
As Chris Melissinos, the curator of the exhibit pointed out, that’s intentional. “If you look at other exhibits about games, there’s a blown up still from Metal Gear Solid, it might look cool but, in the end, you’re just looking at it. You can look at it all you want, but you’re flattening [the experience],” he continues, “Together, games become greater than their parts.”
It’s quite clear that history is an important part of understanding how the exhibit was meant to be experienced. Everything is sorted into different eras down to the specific console and finally split into four genres: action, target, adventure, and tactics. There’s a very distinct effort to make the exhibit accessible to those who don’t know about games, while, at the same time, not dumbing it down so that it becomes offensive toward gamers.
The exhibit is laid out in such a way that as you make your way around the room, you’re able to map how the game's creators realized they were able to achieve more and more of their vision with the technology available to them as games progressed. For Melissinos, that was the goal. “You’re looking at an artist trying to convey their vision in an industry that didn’t yet have the tools to accurately convey that.”
Each console has its own display –starting with the Atari VCS (1977) and continuing up to current generation consoles– that houses insight on the four most culturally significant games for that specific console. With this presentational approach you’re able to see what the talented game designers were able to come up with while working within each console's technical constraints.
There are only five playable games at the show: Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower– all meant to educate the uninitiated. They’re easily accessible and show a wide range of gameplay styles for the uninitiated.
At the time of their creation, each one upped the level of play, not only for players, but also for game creators. They realized that games could be something more than a way to pass the time, but a serious medium for narrative-driven storytelling.
It also gives people another way to experience games as art, outside of the curated experience, by giving them the chance to make their own experience. Watching someone pick up a controller for the first time and float around in Flower is one of the best experiences that the exhibit can provide.
In an industry that doesn’t take much time to reflect on the past, often drooling over the next big announcement, it can be incredibly rewarding to take a look back on the path we took to get here. Without these creators doing something drastically different, we’d be stuck in the same monotonous rut of overambitious thinking held back by technology, and that’s good for no one.
While the exhibit itself is strong, it’s the atmosphere that surrounds it that makes it worthwhile. Walking around, you can’t help but reminisce about the first game you've ever played or the time you stayed up all night to beat that one boss battle. It’s a conversation starter, and in the end, that’s what art is all about.
The Art of Video Games runs until May 12, 2013 at the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington. More information can be found at the museum's official site.
Alex Rubens is a freelance writer based in Seattle who spends too much time talking about Star Wars and The Fast and The Furious. Talk to him about it on Twitter at @alexrubens.
Source : ign[dot]com
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