Two decades ago, back when Fortnite was just fortnight spelt oddly, the Barbican Centre mounted Game On, an interactive touring exhibition looking at the history and culture of computer games.
For its first port of call outside London, the show headed to the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh, where it settled in for a 16 week stay in October 2002, the same month local games creators Rockstar North released Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Since then Game On has toured the world from east to west and north to south, stopping off in places both likely (Tokyo, Hong Kong, techy hot spot San Jose) and unlikely (the Cureghem Cellars in Brussels, site of a 19th century cattle market). Having looped the globe the exhibition has now returned to Edinburgh where it opens to the public on June 29, offering old hands the chance to reacquaint themselves with the games of their youth – and letting their kids marvel slack-jawed at the 8-bit sound effects and primitive graphics of, say, shoot-em-up 1970s arcade game Space Invaders.
“You can essentially play your way through video game history,” explains Dr Geoff Belknap, the Museum’s Keeper of Science and Technology. “There are about 120 games and the real selling point is that they’re all original games and original gaming consoles. So when I say you’re playing Pong, you’re playing it on the original format, whether arcade or machine. You can play a Maganvox, an early NES and different games like that. So it really showcases the whole history of video gaming from the 1970s to right now. It’s a very interactive experience.”
As well as Magnavox, the first commercially available home video game console, and vintage games from Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the show’s highlights include original arcade or console versions of games such as Pac-Man, Super Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog and Tetris, which turns 40 next year. Alongside those are 21st century stars such as Just Dance, first introduced for Nintendo’s Wii platform in 2009.
“Our real focus for the version of the exhibition in Edinburgh is the Scottish gaming industry,” adds Dr Belknap. “Everything from the big giants that everyone will likely know through to the really independent gaming industry. We have a whole area dedicated to independent Scottish games.”
Among those giants of the gaming industry are Rockstar North (now part of New York-based Rockstar Games) and Dundee-based 4J Studios. The list of games developed by those companies includes landmark titles such the aforementioned Grand Theft Auto, the Red Dead series and a little known game called Minecraft.
READ MORE
A fitting - if teary tribute - to a lost Scottish comedy great
But Scotland is also home to a wide range of smaller companies and developers and Game On showcases their work as well. Among the Scottish or Scottish-themed games featured are The Longest Walk, nominated for a Scottish BAFTA in 2022, and A Highland Song.
The first is the brainchild of Alexander Tarvet and as well as featuring beautiful graphics it has a serious intent. Developed in conjunction with Abertay University in the gaming hotspot of Dundee, it tackles the issue of mental health issues and was inspired and influenced by Tarvet’s father’s experience of living with depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
A Highland Song, meanwhile, has been developed by Cambridge-based Inkle Studios and allows players to take teenage runaway Moira McKinnon on a magical and at times surreal trip through the Highlands, one drenched in fragments of Scottish poetry, history and mythology.
Of course even one year is a long time in gaming, so 22 years is quite literally a lifetime. Consequently, much has changed in the industry, says Dr Belknap. The rise of esports, for example, which has increased in popularity exponentially over the last decade and is now worth £3.4 billion a year.
He lists technological and software development as key drivers of this change, but adds a third in the way those two things interact to shape the experience of gaming by offering more and better detail.
“They quite literally put you into a truly immersive space that takes away all other barriers, so that you can really get into the story,” he says. “But the other thing that’s really important is that the craft of storytelling in gaming has really evolved. Games have always been very immersive stories, but many of the games we have now are hundreds of hours of play. They’re more advanced than any movie in terms of the narrative and the storytelling craft and the impact you get out of bonding with the characters and the changes they experience.”
If it’s another 20 years before Game On returns to Scotland, it’s safe to say the world of gaming will have seen further exponential leaps in the experiences it can offer up. Artificial Intelligence will doubtless have a role to play in the industry, and we await the roll out of what’s known as Web 3.0, the next iteration of the internet.
“Games are the biggest entertainment industry in the world but they also have a massive impact on our lives, whether that’s through their storytelling or the ways in which we understand how we play and communicate, and the connections we make,” says Dr Belknap. “The role of this exhibition is to help us think about those things.”
Game On opens at the National Museum of Scotland on June 29 and runs until November 4 (tickets £8-£13, children under five free)
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here