V&A display showcases ‘vital design medium’ video games

Tech: Museum tight-lipped over whether show will come to Dundee

An exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum on video games will explore “one of the most important design disciplines of our time”, its director has said.

Videogames: Design/play/disrupt will open at the V&A in September.

Whether or not the showcase will travel to the new museum in Dundee, a city synonymous with computer game invention, is not yet being revealed.

The exhibition will examine video game design since the mid-2000s and consider issues such as race and sexuality while “delving into the notebooks and hard drives” of the designers.

Big names such as Minecraft and Nintendo will be represented while other works include Phone Story, a satirical game for smartphones which explored the “dark side” of the supply chain behind mobile phones.

Curators said the game, which included references to child labour, was banned by Apple from its App Store partly because of how it depicted children,whichraised“questions”about what subjects can be reflected in games.

Another game, How Do You Do It?, puts players in the role of an 11-year-old girl exploring the idea of sex using her plastic dolls.

Nina Freeman’s 2014 semiautobiographical game, which “allows the audience to understand the discovery of sexuality from the perception of a young girl,” will be playable at the exhibition.

Objects on display will include Magritte’s 1965 painting The Blank Signature, which inspired 2013 adventure game Kentucky Route Zero, and footage of the Minecraft construction of the continent of Westeros from TV hit Game Of Thrones.

The museum’s director Tristram Hunt said that video games are a “vital design medium”.

Minecraft, the console editions of which were developed by 4J Studios in Dundee.