CCP Games is pleased to announce that their Sci-FI MMO EVE Online is one of fourteen games accepted to the Museum of Modern Art. The permanent exhibition will initially include titles such as Pac-Man, Tetris, The Sims and Dwarf Fortress and will open to the public sometime in March next year. Through the exhibition, the museum hopes to study, preserve and showcase games.
The museum took a variety of factors into account when selecting the games that would be exhibited as “outstanding examples of interaction design”, with visual quality playing only a small part in a game’s selection. The curators also placed importance on how skillfully a game was coded and the manner in which each game influenced the player’s behavior.
In order to properly preserve the games deemed as the culmination of “historical and cultural relevance”, the museum is aiming to obtain original copies of the games (Or emulations when this is not possible), as well as the consoles or computers needed to play them. Curators are also hoping to obtain the source code of each title so that a game may be translated in the event that the original technology becomes obsolete.
Much thought has also gone into the manner in which each title will be showcased. For shorter games (Such as the five minute long Passage), the entirety of the game will be available in the exhibition. For longer games, several options have been explored. Some parts of the exhibition will allow people to play the game for a limited time, while others will use a video to explain the concept and characters of the game. Finally, massive games such as EVE Online and Dwarf Fortress will have guided tours built with the aid of the developers so that a casual observer may gain an understanding of the complex world in the game.
The CEO of CCP, Hilmar Veigar Petursson feels that to have EVE as part of the exhibition is an “indescribable honour…for everyone who’s ever worked on EVE” and is something that was is only possible due to the players of the game.
The 18th free expansion for EVE Online will be released on the 4th of December. Titled “Retribution”, more information can be found at this link For those of you wanting to try out the game, a 14 day trial period can be found here.
The official announcement by the Museum of Modern Arts is available on the museum’s site.
