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From March 2012 to September 2012, the Smithsonian Institute's American Art Museum in Washington, DC will show an exhibit of video games, with an emphasis on their evolution and change over the generations. But with a limited amount of space, how will they decide which games are included in the exhibit? An online vote, that's how.

After registering an email address, anyone may vote for the games to be shown in the exhibit, with one vote per era per system per genre. Each category (80 total) has three choices, so the final exhibit roster will be 80 games from 240 total candidates. Virtually every major video game system since the Atari is included in the exhibit, with the notable exceptions of arcade games and handheld systems.

The four genres being implemented are Action, Adventure, Target, and Combat/Strategy. Most RPGs are included in the Adventure category. Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Chrono Trigger are all included as choices in their respective categories. So everyone, go forth, vote 80 times, and in about two months we'll see which games make it in.

Final Note - laszlow's quick 100% opinionated thoughts and prognostications:

Some of this categorization is puzzling. Platform games (Mario, Mega Man, etc.) are found in both the Action and Adventure categories, and shooting games (Doom, Call of Duty, etc.) are all over the place. I really don't understand the reasoning behind some placement choices. Most of the online forum buzz on the Smithsonian subject is complaints about why game X is in but game Y isn't. Cry me a river.

For now, I'll just talk about CoN games and their odds. Final Fantasy I is dead in the water - it's up against The Legend of Zelda. Nice knowing you. Final Fantasy VII is in a pretty good position - it's up against Lunar and Grandia, and is way more popular than either series. Final Fantasy Tactics is up against Red Alert, so here it comes up against which gamer demographic comes up stronger in the vote. I think that category is FFT's to lose. The SNES Adventure category is Chrono Trigger vs. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs. Earthbound. Three games with ravenous fanbases. I think it's a toss-up between CT and ALttP. If any of you are asking 'why didn't FF VI or FF IV make it in?' then there's your answer. They liked Chrono Trigger, Link to the Past, and Earthbound better.

Source: Art of Video Games

Interesting, and a sign that games are becoming more and mainstrea... Okay, sod it, sorry, can't say that with a straight face, they've been Mainstream since Mario, Call of Duty and GTA were outselling most movies short of Avatar.

But yeah, it does look to me like it's an exhibit about games by people who barely understand games, trying to get help from people who do, unaware it'll turn into a pointless popularity contest rather than a genuine reflection of the evolution of games. Count me out of...

Quote (laszlow @ 14th February 2011 21:30)

  Final Fantasy Tactics is up against Red Alert

...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH MOTHERLAND!

...What? I haven't played Tactics. Tank beats Archer.

You might be right that Tactics is going to lose. A niche fandom for the RTS versus a niche within a niche fandom for the tactical RPG. And that's kind of unfair. Red Alert was just C&C recoloured with many bells and whistles added. If anything, Tib Dawn should be in there instead. One of many somewhat puzzling choices from the look of it, so I can see why there is much gnashing of teeth and wailing.

Still, it's art. If it makes no goddamn sense, that's art. Some of this makes no goddamn sense ergo...

Meta. An art exhibition that is itself a form of art. Well played.

Edit

*Del knows nothing about art. Please do not try to correct him, he will merely use the corrections to be wrong in the future and refer to himself in the third person

This post has been edited by Del S on 15th February 2011 12:15

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I just went to the site and it says that they're experiencing technical difficulties due to the high response. Probably from all the CoNfolk flooding in to vote for the FF titles

Edit

And CT, of course.

This post has been edited by Death Penalty on 15th February 2011 15:35

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Wow, had to make some tough choices! Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda? Super Mario World or Donkey Kong Country?

I'm surprised they didn't have Wolfenstein for the DOS/Windows, or the first Sonic the Hedgehog instead of Sonic CD. I felt like I had to vote for Sonic CD just 'cause it's Sega and Sonic even though Earthworm Jim was clearly more of a work of art than a sequel to the Sonic series- this happened a couple of times, actually, where they'd force you to choose between a sequel to a main representative of a system, and an original work of art. Oh well, it looks like it might be a fun exhibit. I don't think I voted for, or even recognized any next-gen games- I guess I'm just that old...

This post has been edited by finalalias on 17th February 2011 04:58

Eh, online polls scare me. One minute you think it's okay, then in the nest minute, Halo has its own wing.

But at the end of the day (though I probably won't vote) it is cool to see the Smithsonian finally taking interest in games. I think it might be viewed as a significant milestone for games to get such recognition.

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Praise Be To Helix!

Quote (finalalias @ 16th February 2011 20:57)

I'm surprised they didn't have Wolfenstein for the DOS/Windows, or the first Sonic the Hedgehog instead of Sonic CD.

This.

For the most part I support the judges choices, but I definitely think Wolfenstein and Sonic should have made it.

Well, I'm going to rep the games we cover. Why not? Maybe it gets us another news post later.

Other than that, there are some BRUTAL choices in here. I have to choose between Half-Life 2 and Portal? That just hurts me in my soul. Space Invaders vs. Missile Command, Mega Man 2 vs. SMB3 vs. Metroid, Final Fantasy vs. Zelda vs. Shadowgate, oof.

You know what I love, though? Desert Commander on the list. Such an underloved game.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Call me a curmudgeon if you like but I'm curious; why should an "American art museum" be exhibiting games not made in any of the Americas? Shouldn't Mario, Final Fantasy, Sonic ect. be covered in an Asian art museum? It's not like they don't have 'em. I mean, perhaps there's some room for things of large scale cross-cultural artistic influence such as Pacman Fever or the Americans from Street Fighter. Nevertheless, I'm sure they could easily narrow down the list if they'd limit the coverage to their purported area of specialization. Just some food for thought.

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Role reversal at its finest.

Quote (Tonepoet @ 18th February 2011 07:12)

Call me a curmudgeon if you like but I'm curious; why should an "American art museum" be exhibiting games not made in any of the Americas? Shouldn't Mario, Final Fantasy, Sonic ect. be covered in an Asian art museum? It's not like they don't have 'em. I mean, perhaps there's some room for things of large scale cross-cultural artistic influence such as Pacman Fever or the Americans from Street Fighter. Nevertheless, I'm sure they could easily narrow down the list if they'd limit the coverage to their purported area of specialization. Just some food for thought.

Because if we only profiled good American games, you'd have huge gaps in the 80s and 90s, and 00's... Then you'd just have a whole bunch of FPS games.

The non-American games had an impact on US gaming culture. To not include them even if just looking through star-spangled lenses results in a false representation of American gaming history. Besides, it explores the 40 year evolution of videogames, not the 40 year evolution of American videogames. To do what you say removes culturally significant games from the running and results in an even more distorted exhibit.


This post has been edited by Del S on 18th February 2011 09:42

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I did it too, well aware that I'll never see the exhibition. I wonder if more than 2% of the voters will. Big decision on HL2 or Portal, but it had to be HL2 in the end. The Nintendo choices were easy, I picked Mario, Zelda and Metroid to see if only these games would be picked for Nintendo. It would be interesting to see the evolution of Nintendo as being how Mario, Zelda and Metroid games have changed over 40 years.

Is the Smithsonian a exclusively American museum? If it is then I agree with you Tonepoet it would make sense to only exhibit American games, or at least prioritise them. It might make for some gaps but they could easily be filled by mentioning the games that came before and how this one, say Deus Ex, fits into the evolution. The main problem is the question of what an American game is. Is it the funding, the staff nationality, the location of the design team, the location of the graphics team, production team...? These days a lot of game building is globalised. You could just as easily say Eidos is British, Japanese, Canadian, or even American to some extent. Out of the list I would say the nationality of the design team. The games industry doesn't have a lot of big personalities, or certainly as many as other massive worldwide industries. Highlighting the people with the ideas would be a nice change from just the company that made it. I hope the exhibition does this and then other museums will do it more.

Speaking of which, I've seen something like this in the Edinburgh National Museum about 8 years ago. It was 8 years ago! And here's the link. It was a touring exhibition apparently. I really liked it, they did a really good presentation and you could play the games and read the information about what you were doing.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (sweetdude @ 18th February 2011 08:16)

Is the Smithsonian a exclusively American museum? If it is then I agree with you Tonepoet it would make sense to only exhibit American games, or at least prioritise them.

The Smithsonian is a collection of dozens of museums and centers for research and learning as a whole, but generally, this particular musuem is indeed dedicated to American art. Of course, it's only had the word "American" in its name for about thirty years, for what that's worth.

The museum's own site says this about its mission:

Quote

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation's first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character and imagination of the American people throughout three centuries.

Given that, I can see why they would be willing to put on a show exactly as they have proposed, because even if most of the games didn't originate here, the experience that Americans have had with games over the last 35 years is unique to America and is certainly not the same as it would be in Japan or Europe. I would hope that would be the focus of the exhibition as designed, anyway, whether it's semantic nonsense or not.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I'm almost positive the Smithsonian has Beatles memorabilia, and they're a British group. But they were very popular in America, so I would think that all of the big gaming franchises (Mario, LoZ, FF) made in Japan ought to be included since they're popular here. (Mario is guaranteed to be included).

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Praise Be To Helix!

Being forced to vote between FFVII, Lunar and Grandia is one of the most cruel things ever. Of course, I voted Final Fantasy VII, but it hurt me to deny Grania and Lunar.

Naturally, I voted for all the games represented here at the good ol' CoN. While I was unfamiliar with a lot of the older games listed (due mostly to the fact that I generally confine my game playing to RPGs exclusively), I voted for the ones that fit that definition: Skies of Arcadia got a vote, as did LoZ Ocarina of Time.

Newer games that earned my vote were Elder Scrolls Oblivion, LoZ Wind Waker, Minecraft, Final Fantasy XIII and, of course, Final Fantasy X. Woot for FF being the most represented series. I think.

Quote

Given that, I can see why they would be willing to put on a show exactly as they have proposed, because even if most of the games didn't originate here, the experience that Americans have had with games over the last 35 years is unique to America and is certainly not the same as it would be in Japan or Europe. I would hope that would be the focus of the exhibition as designed, anyway, whether it's semantic nonsense or not.

I agree with this statement as well.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Actually Zelda was the most present series, with six games to FF's five.

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I fear my heart and fear my soul
Life goes on, it surely will,
Without me and I wonder:
Will I ever see light again?

Life goes on...

Quote (Death Penalty @ 20th February 2011 15:34)

Being forced to vote between FFVII, Lunar and Grandia is one of the most cruel things ever. Of course, I voted Final Fantasy VII, but it hurt me to deny Grania and Lunar.

Based on the fact that this is a survey of notable visual styles, FF7 deserves to win.

But Lunar...

Lunar, I broke the rules for you!!

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"Cavefish is delicious, but only if cooked."

I just received an email saying that voting has been extended until midnight on April 17, so if you didn't complete your voting or didn't look yet, you still have an opportunity to participate.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Ha ha, I was just about to come post the same thing, Neal. Here's the bulk of the email:

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Thank you for voting to help us select some of the games that will be included in The Art of Video Games exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In response to popular demand, we have extended the voting period to midnight, Sunday, April 17, 2011.The winning games will be announced on May 5, 2011 at 1 p.m. EDT. Everyone who registers to vote with a valid email address by April 17 will be given the opportunity to find out the winning games before they are released to the general public! Be sure to cast all of your votes (note: there are four genres for each game system, click “next” to view them) and spread the word!

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

This reminds me of a videogames exhibit at the Ben Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA many years ago. Like 1997 or 1995 or so.

I was staying in the city for the summer, but hadn't brought any of my games with me. (Yes, I was still a wee lad back then.) This was a nice way to get my gaming fix.

I remember discovering Dragon's Lair there. The arcade version, where you have to press buttons in time to get different cutscenes. Also played a Sonic 3D game there, as well as some Gex.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

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