Franklin Institute Game Masters Exhibit
There’s currently an exhibit in the Franklin Institute Museum in Philadelphia called “Game Masters.” This exhibit is supposedly about some of the most popular game creators and features playable versions of some of the games they’ve created.
Tickets were $20 so a friend and I decided to go check it out. While I didn’t really have very high hopes for this exhibit, it was actually much worse than I could have ever expected.
There were three main parts to the exhibit which I’ll just call the first room, the second room, and the third room to make it simpler.
Room 1
The first room was by far the best part of the whole exhibit which probably isn’t the best way to set it up because everything is just downhill from there. In this room there were roughly 20 arcade machines, each with a different game. Some of the more notable titles featured here were Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Missile Defense just to name a few.
However, there were just as many games that nobody had ever heard of. At first this may seem like a good thing, except when you realize that all of the well-known games have lines to play them.
Really, instead of having 20 different games, they should have probably narrowed the list down to 5 of the most influential arcade games and had 4 machines for each one. This would have more evenly distributed the lines between the machines and also made it easier for people in groups to play the same games as each other and then discuss them.
Room 2
Moving on to the second room, there were 3 main parts. The first section of this room was devoted to Blizzard. That’s fine I suppose, but I’m actually not a fan of any Blizzard game so I didn’t care much about this section.
My friend, however, mentioned that if he wanted to play something like Starcraft 2, he’d just go home. There was no reason for newer games such as those in the Blizzard section to even be in the exhibit.
The next section of this room was devoted to Sega and featured things such as one of the old Sonic games. At first glance this seemed to be an improvement, but then we noticed that it was mostly bad Sega games including one of the new 3D Sonic games.
The third section of this room included what appeared to be a mix of indie and simulation games. It’s cool that there were some small indie games featured, but they weren’t any games that anyone had ever heard of or that had made some big improvement to the game industry.
The simulation games, however, should never have been there in the first place. This section included things like Sim City and Spore; games that you don’t just try out for 5 minutes, but rather sit and play for hours at a time.
Room 3
Finally, we move on to the third room. Honestly, I expected this room to be bad from the start, but it still disappointed me despite my mental preparation. This was pretty much the main attraction room and included games such as Just Dance, Minecraft, and Angry Birds.
There was a long line to play Just Dance, a game that many of the people there probably already owned at home. And the Minecraft and Angry Birds sections were taken over by children 6 and under as you would expect.
The fact that there were FREE mobile games featured in this exhibit actually made me angry. If I wanted to play those then I would just download them onto my phone right where I stood.
Issues and Improvements
So what were the real issues with this exhibit? In order to explain these, it may just be simpler to list some of the improvements they should make (except my suggestion for fixing the arcade section since I already went over that).
First, where was Pong? You know, the first video game. How can you have a video game exhibit and not even mention Pong?
Second, it really seemed like the exhibit was sponsored by Sony. The only Nintendo game was the Donkey Kong arcade and the only Microsoft game was Minecraft (because they needed that to attract kids).
Further, all of the Sega and indie games were being emulated on Playstations and using Playstation controllers.
Third, where was Nintendo? Arguably the most well-known and important company in the entire video game industry only had one arcade game in the whole exhibit.
There was no NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, etc. which are some of the defining systems for video games. Further, although they had Mario themed decorations around the exhibit, there was no actual Mario game.
Oh, and no Nintendo means no Legend of Zelda, one of the highest rated game series ever created, either.
My next complaint goes hand-in-hand with the Nintendo one. Where were the other influential companies and systems? Where was Atari? Where were the Sega consoles (there was a single Saturn that you could look at, but not play) even though there was a Sega section? If a game wasn’t available on a Playstation, it likely wasn’t featured at all.
I didn’t actually check, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Minecraft was being played on a Playstation rather than an Xbox, which is owned by Microsoft, the company that owns Minecraft.
While I have other issues with the exhibit, I’ll just mention one more. This complaint is one I can understand more than the others due to the current political climate, but I still think there should have been some mention of the First Person Shooter genre.
FPS games are what I mostly play so sure, I have a bias, but I also think it’s pretty naive to completely ignore one of the biggest genres of games. I’m no PC gamer, but Counter Strike is a pretty influential game.
I would have at least expected to see Halo: CE there, but no.
Conclusion
So what have we learned from this exhibit? Being sponsored by Sony and attracting large numbers of children by featuring Minecraft and Angry Birds is more important than making a true video game exhibit.
We also learned that with the exception of the arcade machines from the first room, my friend and I could have put on a more expansive and true Game Masters exhibit with just the games and systems owned between the two of us.
Save your $20 and just play the games you own at home. Chances are you have a larger and better selection of both new and old games than this exhibit anyway.
