ROME’S GREAT GAME EXHIBITION
The newly opened Game Museum of Rome - GAMM - isn’t just the latest cultural institution to celebrate the deepening, evolving history of videogames. Its location at the heart of the Italian capital aims to put the interactive medium on the same cultural pedestal as fine and performance arts. Museum director Marco Accordi Rickards takes us on a tour
Marco Accordi Rickards, Director of GAMM
Can you share the vision behind GAMM, and how it builds upon the success of Vigamus? What new elements does GAMM bring to the table? The vision behind GAMM, Game Museum of Rome, is an evolution of the idea that gave rise to Vigamus twelve years ago, in 2012. Back then, the goal was to create a physical museum that would highlight the cultural and artistic significance of video games. In Europe, there was only the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, and the context was very different from what it is today. The aim was to create a “temple” for video games, demonstrating that this medium is not just a piece of technology, a toy, or mere entertainment, but an interactive work with a story, language, and cultural and artistic value comparable to that of older, more established media like literature and theatre, or newer ones
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such as cinema and comics. To musealise video games was to automatically attribute them cultural and artistic value. Vigamus became a kind of “home for
gamers,” an identity-rich place where video game enthusiasts could gather and assert their belonging to a group that had long been somewhat marginalised. However, today, gamers are numerous worldwide, belonging to every demographic, and contributing to the social and cultural value of video games, which now influence our way of producing art and culture. With GAMM, this vision evolves further. The
goal is to create something truly innovative, capable of addressing the main challenge of gaming: its rapid evolution. Video games change much more quickly than other media. As I explain in my book What is a Video Game,
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