The retro gaming geeks responsible for the annual Classic Gaming Expo want to build a comprehensive museum covering the history of games, and they want your help to do it.
Videogames entertain billions of gamers, pull down tens of billions of dollars annually, and provide employment for the most attractive, urbane people in the world. At this point it’s just baffling that no physical structure exists to catalogue and document the industry’s vast history.
Enter: John Hardie, Sean Kelly and Joe Santulli. These three men have spent the last two decades educating others on the antediluvian lore behind the gaming biz. Since 1999, they’ve hosted the annual Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, a gathering self-described as “the world’s first and largest event paying tribute to the people, systems and games of yesteryear.”
Now the trio have set their sights on a more permanent, indelible history lesson: the creation of a museum in California’s Silicon Valley dedicated to videogames. From the project’s Kickstarter page:
The videogame industry is double the size of the music industry and while there are several music “halls of fame” and museums, there isn’t a single dedicated videogame museum. It’s time! The time has come to take steps towards creating a physical museum to honor and archive the history of the videogame industry and John Hardie, Sean Kelly and Joe Santulli are the right people to do it.
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The museum we envision will be all-inclusive, comprehensive and interactive. Unlike some of the other efforts we’ve seen put forth which have a limited focus, our intention is to cover it all! Every game made for every system, every piece of promotional material made for each game, every revision of every console with specific notes as to the differences, the design progression, etc.. As it stands today, our collection is well on its way to achieving this goal, but there are holes that can only be filled by making more and more people aware of our archive.
The three men are seeking $30,000 in donations via the Kickstarter page, and so far things are progressing nicely. With 51 days left in the fundraising drive, the project has already received support from 45 backers to the tune of $5,825.
Before I temper our collective excitement with brash pessimism, I want to state, for the record, that I am fully in support of this idea. Gaming history needs to be preserved, and a museum is the best way to do that.
That said, my enthusiasm could very well be the result of my profession. News like this is guaranteed to impress people who write about games for a living, but what of the common man? The proletariat?
Do Joe Sixpack and Jane Femaleanalogue care about the Commodore VIC-20?
Source: Kickstarter
