Museum launches World Video Game Hall of Fame
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The Strong – a Rochester, New York-based museum dedicated to the “history and exploration of play” – announced that it will establish the World Video Game Hall of Fame. This new hall will honor electronic games, a broad category that includes console, handheld, mobile, computer, and classic arcade video games.
In order to be inducted into the hall, a video game must reach “icon-status,” have “longevity,” have a wide “geographical reach,” and exert a certain amount of “influence” on other games, according to a release from the museum.
“There is no other video game award and recognition program sucha s this, which focuses solely on individual game titles across platforms and their impact over time and across international borders,” said G. Rollie Adams, The Strong’s president and CEO in the release.
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The museum is already home to the International Center for the History Electronic Games (ICHEG) as well as the National Toy Hall of Fame. The ICHEG currently preserves a collection of over 55,000 video games and “related artifacts,” in addition to corporate records documenting the history of the video game. It’s quite a collection that makes The Strong “uniquely qualified” to celebrate “the most important games of all time,” Director of ICHEG Jon-Paul Dyson said.
Currently, the museum is accepting nominations for the hall’s inaugural class of honorees through March 31. For video game fans, the nomination process is a chance to celebrate the games they love in that nomination selections are not relegated to industry insiders – anyone can submit a game for consideration at worldvideogamehalloffame.org. The finalists will be selected by an advisory committee at the museum while final inductees will be selected by a group consisting of scholars, journalists and “other individuals familiar with the history of video games and their role in society,” according to the release.
The first-ever inductees will be announced in June during a ceremony at the museum.