Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems
Research seminar with Ewa Anna Swietlik
New museology defines the contemporary museum as a socially engaged, visitor-centered, and participatory institution that moves beyond the passive display of objects toward critical interpretation, dialogue with the audience, and experiential learning. Modern museums focus on being open to everyone, working with communities, and recognizing digital and intangible heritage. They prioritize interaction, storytelling, and multisensory experiences over plain displays of material artifacts. Video game museums embody these principles, often emerging from communities of video game enthusiasts and retro-gaming practitioners. They also provide hands-on experience and position visitors as active users of the exhibition, thereby exemplifying a fundamental shift in contemporary museum practice.
Nonetheless, viewing video game museums as the definitive future of museology is a contentious perspective. Video games challenge the traditional notion of what constitutes a museum object. They are, in essence, software-dependent and performative rather than stable, material entities. Their preservation and exhibition create tensions between conservation and playability, historical interpretation and entertainment, and institutional authority and community-driven or fan practices. The difficulties of exhibiting gameplay in a meaningful way further complicate the integration of video games into established museum frameworks. On the other hand, treating them solely as collection items and focusing on the tangible side risks repeating the object-centric model that new museology sought to overcome.
This presentation by Ewa Anna Swietlik argues that video game museums can be considered experimental sites that reveal both the possibilities and the limitations of contemporary and future museum practice. The emphasis should be put on exhibiting video games according to their designed modes of interaction, drawing on affordance-based design theory to develop display strategies that bring up in an intuitive way what games enable visitors to do rather than what they are as objects. This approach reconciles presentation with play and can align digital heritage more effectively with the principles of modern museology.