“Are video games art? Sure they are, but they are also design, “MoMA said. There was a setback:” Gamebollocks, “one art critic complained.” A work of art must be an act of personal imagination. .. the worlds created by electronic games are more like playgrounds ”.
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ACMI Director of Experience Seb Chan says video games cross borders. “We’re preserving a work of art, a cultural moment, and the documentation of what it was like to make art at that time,” he says.
Goose Game was a “global phenomenon” that captured a moment with its launch in 2019: the intoxicating, fertile year leading up to the Melbourne pandemic.
“It was so quirky that it captured people’s imagination,” Chan says. “This local gaming scene had really grown: I see it as Australian music somehow, there are local scenes that emerge and explode into the global scene. And games are the new pop music.”
Museums and archives don’t want to, and can’t, capture everything, he says. “It’s about finding representative works, and I don’t think there is a better representative work of the recent scene than Goose Game. It’s also very rare to be able to work with developers, the creators of the game so early in their useful lives. “
ACMI is doing a lot of work preserving computer games, but that often means struggling with old technology or emulation software to recreate a lost platform.
In this case, they get live software that runs with current technology, as well as documentation and early versions of the development process, to provide information on how it was done.
However, they cannot be put in the hands of all the code: modern software is a network of proprietary libraries and frameworks that cannot be acquired.
“Once things become a cultural phenomenon, the ability of institutions to work with manufacturers to ensure their preservation is very important, but it is also very difficult,” says Chan.
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Each of the three institutions will use acquisition in their own way, probably in exhibitions that explore the creation of the game. Lisa Havilah, CEO of Powerhouse, says keeping technology alive is one of her key challenges.
“There’s amazing, creative content that is developed, but then the technology moves forward and is left behind,” he says. “I think as important as picking up innovation and technology is picking up our Australian social history.
“This game made some people go through the blockade. Games like Pac-Man, or this one, are connected to how we move through our lives. Technology has become almost a part of us. Games and the way technology works on our screens, in our hands, they are a big part of our social life. And documenting that is very important. “
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