An Australian museum has secured a £63,000 government fund to open an exhibition that celebrates the history and influence of racing video games.
Titled ‘REVolution: where pixels meet motors’, the exhibition at the National Motor Museum in Adelaide Hills will chart the impact of games like Gran Turismo, Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto.
Museum director Paul Rees explained that he first came up with the idea for the exhibition while watching his teenage son playing racing games at home.
Speaking to The Lead South Australia, he said: “I thought ‘this is part of motoring history – how people interact with motoring culture through video games, there’s an exhibition in this.’”
As well as examining the history of the games themselves, the exhibition will also look at how they have influenced and informed contemporary car design and the modern driving experience.
Run in conjunction with tech company Novus Res, the exhibition will also be used to teach groups of schoolchildren basic coding techniques so they can one day make games of their own.
“The idea is to introduce people to basic computer programming by saying ‘you can whip up a game here in five minutes’ and then allowing them to take that game home somehow,” he said.
Rees also hopes that the museum will help to give its more traditional visitors a better understanding and appreciation of video game culture and its wider impact on the world.
He added: “It’s really going to be for anyone who remembers the earliest games but I really think this is going to come into its own as an education program working with students.
“But also, there’s going to be a bunch of people who go ‘wow I remember this’ just like they do now when they come in and say ‘that was my first car’ now it will be ‘that was my first game.’”
Aiming to be on a much larger scale than any of the museum’s previous efforts, the interactive gaming exhibition is scheduled to open in December next year.
