The Museum of Modern Art has acquired fourteen video games to display in one of its galleries next year, and Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, says that they hope to acquire more. In fact, the museum's “initial wish list” has 40 titles on it, which sounds promising when some are still reluctant to call even a single game art. The first fourteen of these games are:
•Pac-Man (1980)
•Tetris (1984)
•Another World (1991)
•Myst (1993)
•SimCity 2000 (1994)
•vib-ribbon (1999)
•The Sims (2000)
•Katamari Damacy (2004)
•EVE Online (2003)
•Dwarf Fortress (2006)
•Portal (2007)
•flOw (2006)
•Passage (2008)
•Canabalt (2009)
The announcement comes with a long explanation of how and why video games can be included in the realm of things considered to be art, and it's really worth a read. Antonelli also discusses the way in which some of the games will be displayed. Some older games will be represented by interactive emulations so that the original cartridges don't have to be used. Time-consuming games will be represented by a video much like a demo. And for games like EVE Online, the museum hopes to set up virtual guided tours.
So, are there any titles on that list you disagree with? And what do you think some of the other 26 might be?