Skip to main content

National Videogame Museum opens in Sheffield

News
national videogame museum

The UK’s only permanent games museum celebrating videogames has opened in Sheffield. The National Videogame Museum (NVM) is run by the British Games Institute (BGI).

The National Videogame Museum features playable consoles and arcade machines. There are also exhibitions of studios, showcasing their games and how they are made. Exhibitions will look back to the history of video games, and also the future.

Key initiatives include Pixelheads which encourages 8 to 14 year olds to get into game design, and the Lab where visitors can see how the exhibits and experiments at the museum are created

The museum started life as the National Videogame Arcade in Nottingham that received strong review scores, consecutive TripAdvisor awards and 50,000 visitors a year. The BBC reports that the site closed because the building had become too hard to maintain.

Videogame creators meet players at Museum

Iain Simons, Culture Director of the BGI, said: “We’ve always tried to do more than just put out games for people to play. In our dynamic new space, we’re bringing videogame creators into the Museum to meet their players, showing visitors what games mean and responding to our community’s requests and ideas for new exhibits.”

“We’re delighted to launch a test lab with Boneloaf’s Gang Beasts and we’re talking to publishers and developers about showcasing their work to our broad audience.”

Kath Bidwell, founder of State of Play Games, said “I’m really excited about the launch of the National Videogame Museum at its brand new home at the heart of Sheffield city centre. The games industry is fantastically creative and culturally significant and now we have a great place to celebrate and embrace that.”

Ian Livingstone CBE, NVM Patron and BGI Chair, said “The NVM is the games industry’s own museum, celebrating our games, our studios and our sector’s achievements over 40 years. I invite anyone who cares about the cultural life of video games to join leaders from across the industry and support this amazing project with content, evangelism and funding to help expand the programme in the years to come.”

eSports a growing trend

Earlier this year, the V&A Museum, London, launched an exhibition called “Videogames: Design/ Play/ Disrupt”. The exhibition offered visitors a look at the creative process of developing games including The Last of Us and Kentucky Route Zero.

Blooloop recently looked at the future of the eSports experience here.

Share this
Michael Mander

Michael Mander

I am a journalist from Essex, England. I enjoy travelling, and love exploring attractions around the world. I graduated from Lancaster University in 2018. Twitter @michael_mander.

More from this author

More from this author

Related content

Your web browser is out of date. Update your browser for more security, speed and the best experience on this site.

Find out how to update