Saturday 18 July 2015 – Saturday 19 September 2015
Free Admission
From ancient board games to retro video games, what truly defines a great game?
Warrington Museum & Art Gallery’s new exhibition, The Museum of Gaming, explores the history of gaming in all its variations.
Why do we play games and what makes a good game? A new exhibition about the history of gaming opens at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 18 July. The Museum of Gaming exhibition features all manner of games from ancient board games, to Victorian parlour games and not forgetting, retro video games – with some playable examples.
The exhibition explores how we have evolved to learn through play and how some of the games we still play now make active use of the evolutionary adaptations that we made more than 11,000 years ago. Long before games were mainly used for leisure purposes, they were used for educational purposes, for developing military strategy as well as for exploring morality.
In more recent times gaming has become a major commercial sector and is a part of many people’s lives. In the 1980s a generation of bedroom coders helped give birth to the video games industry – something that is enjoying a renaissance now with a new generation of games designers. The exhibition will also feature some recent work created as part of Priestley College’s BTEC ED Computer Game Design course. Some of the students have recently been shortlisted for awards at this year’s Young Game Design BAFTAs.
The exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Museum of Gaming, in Lancashire, which has kindly provided many of the items featured in the display. The Museum of Gaming, which is in Preston, currently exists as an archive which aims to illustrate the importance of games in the development of humans and the influence of gaming upon society.
The Museum of Gaming exhibition is on display at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery from 18 July – 19 September 2015. Admission is free.
The Museum of Gaming exhibition is located in Warrington Museum & Art Gallery.
Saturday 18 Jul 2015 – Saturday 19 Sep 2015
Free Admission
Warrington Museum & Art Gallery
Museum Street
Cultural Quarter
Warrington
WA1 1JB
Opening Times:
Monday-Friday, 10:00am – 4:30pm
Saturdays, 10:00am – 4:00pm
Last admission 15 minutes before closing time
Closed on Sundays and Bank Holidays.