ViGaMus: The First Videogame Museum in Europe

[Greg Tito]

ViGaMus: The First Videogame Museum in Europe

Representatives of the Italian videogame industry announced they are building the first videogame museum not on American or Japanese soil.

Marco Accordi Rickards, the president of the Italian Videogame Developers Conference (IVDC), said that the ViGaMus, which I assume is a shortening of VideoGameMuseum, is a project of the Italian Association for Interactive Multimedia Works. The museum will reside in Rome's Piazza Mazzini, less than a mile from Vatican City and it will house exhibits that concentrate on the history of videogame development in Italy and around world, while also hosting seminars and conferences. Rickards plans to open the ViGaMus in spring 2011 but more complete information will be unveiled at the IVDC on December 3-4.

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"ViGaMus is the first of a raft of ambitious projects which sees the Italian videogames industry, Italian government and private investors working closely together towards a common goal," said Rickards. "Building enterprise, skill sets and inspiration into the Italian videogames industry, ViGaMus sends a message to the world that Italy is confident, innovative and open for business."

It seems the ViGaMus and the IVDC are all parts of Rickards' plan to invigorate the nascent videogame industry in Italy. "Overall, the ViGaMus project is a clear indication of Italy's ambition within the videogames industry," Rickards said. "We need good and great ideas for the industry to move forward and projects such as ViGaMus will work very well to help provide the necessary inspiration."

While I think it is a great idea to foster videogame development in Italy, Rickards could have really come up with a better name for the ViGaMus. Especially one that doesn't sound like a certain part of the female anatomy.

Source: Next-Gen [http://www.next-gen.biz/news/first-videogame-museum-in-europe-announced]

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[zenoaugustus]

Cool idea, awful name. Jesus, be creative with it. For a medium that's trying to sell itself as new, creative, and interactive, that name sounds boring and as you point out in the article, borderline humorous, and not in the good way.

 

[Mr. Omega]

*Tries not to laught at name*. Cool. Now I have another excuse to try and go to Italy. I hope there will be more photos on the site soon.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

ViGaMus? Seriously? Can you imagine telling your friends: "I'm going to ViGaMus, wanna go with me?".

Other than that, great idea.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Italy and around world,

You might want to fix that.

 

[mikemart]

hell yes this is one of the many reasons i love being Italian...

would love to visit it if i ever went to Italy..

 

[Bobby_C]

It's not the first. There already was one in Paris

http://www.museedujeuvideo.com/

 

[Kris015]

Uhm.. Denmark has a videogame museum.. It's very small, but it's there

 

[BobisOnlyBob]

I think "ViGaMus" sounds significantly better to the Italian ear than it does to the majority of Anglophones....

 

[Therumancer]

The establishment of Video Game museums is not a bad idea, as it will help cement the idea of games as culture, even if they begin very small.... and that is pretty much how they will need to start because honestly there just isn't that much history of video gaming yet.

In the future though it will be interesting if the subject becomes as heavily travelled as things like painting or sculpting, where you might see entire wings dedicated to specific creators, or perhaps especially influential games. Imagine 100 years from now a "Hall Of Activision" complete with a giant marble statue of Bobby Kotick in the grecian style, created based on photographs of him from the media.

Oddly, given their involvement with free speech in video games, imagine a display of stuff from Anonymous, and a time when those Guy Fawkes masks from 4-Chan are on display... with perhaps people associating them with the group to the point that their popularity being largely due to the "V For Vendetta" movie becomes an obscure fact. >

 

[Electrogecko]

What would be sweet is if customers could actually PLAY the games in the museum.
(As long as everything's plati-wrapped)

 

[ckam]

How ironic that neither Japan or America made it there first.

 

[The Random One]

There is an Italian video game industry?

 

[Trivun]

Aside from the one in Paris, it still isn't the first. Although it deals more with film and TV, there's the National Media Museum in Bradford, north England (just half an hour from me by train!), which has a section devoted to videogames and their history. Free entry, it also includes a little arcade with retro games like the original Sonic and Mario Kart and Pong and Tetris and so on... (though you do have to pay like 10p a go on each game, it's worth it ).

 

[Ziggybee]

There is an Italian video game industry?

Aside the low-cost mobile one (see Darkwave and its Master of Alchemy), some indies and Milestone, there's almost nothing. But don't forget we have lots of highly valued professionals in lots of European software houses (I was (am?) one of them, too)!

ViGaMus is doing a bit exaggerated bona-fide marketing to raise money from investors, I think. It's common in Italy to super-promote projects and products.

I'm from Rome and I went to see the building where the museum should be opened: it's a very big site for this sort of exposition and, even if I think the final architectural impact wouldn't be like the one in the pictures, the building in itself looks promising.

I have to agree that claiming to be the first EU VG Museum is a bit ankward, since the one in France is very good and already opened, but looking at the prospect of potential contributors the museum is more than qualified to be something special!

Just to be clear: I've nothing to do with ViGaMus.

I'm one of the founder of an high-profile italian blog (and podcast) about video game culture, so it's natural for me to be excited at the idea and taking sides

 

[smelldredge]

Not that others haven't been mentioned, but the classic arcade museum at funspot in laconia new hampshire also already exists. Though i'm not sure if the arcade focus and lack of free games put it in the same scope as a full fledged museum about the industry.

I was also unclear about the thrust of the article, the tagline "Representatives of the Italian videogame industry announced they are building the first videogame museum not on American or Japanese soil." seems to suggest it's the first worldwide, which it isn't, let alone the first one in europe.