Urbis’ Videogames Nation exhibition is, sadly, coming to a close this Saturday, 19th September. In closing, we took a final trip down there and had a quick chat with curator David Crookes about the performance of the exhibit and where he’s hoping to go with it in the future.
Cubed3’s Mike Mason: So, how successful has Videogame Nation been?
David Crookes, curator of Videogame Nation: It’s been extremely successful. We’ve had around 20,000 visitors, which has made it the most successful pay-for exhibition that Urbis has ever put on.
MM: I read the other week that you’d met your targets.
DC: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, to get that number in for an exhibition like this is extremely good, and we’ve had a lot of positive feedback as well, which has all helped.
MM: So it’s looking like there’s probably going to be a future for it, then?
DC: In terms of touring around? I think so, yeah. We are in discussions with a number of venues, but we can’t say too much just yet. But we definitely are looking to tour for a number of years at various places around Britain, keeping the focus obviously on British games.
MM: It’s very much something you’re invested in quite a lot for the future, then.
DC: It is, yeah. With the hard work we put into this – it took two years to get to this stage – we felt, not just on a commercial level but also on a creative level, that it should continue and it should be seen by as many people as possible.
MM: How would you have wanted to expand it if you could?
DC: I would’ve had as many games in there as humanly possible, but it all depends on the space you’ve got and the technological aspects of it as well. We were pretty much restricted in space at only having 50 games to play up there. Anything more, I think the technical people would’ve had a bit of a nightmare if things had all gone wrong, and [with] refreshing the screens and so on.
MM: Would you be looking at getting any more companies that were absent involved in sponsorship? SEGA weren’t sponsoring, were they?
DC: No, we didn’t approach SEGA to be honest. We approached three companies; Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. And they all said yes. We didn’t approach any others in terms of the main sponsorship for the show. Obviously we approached many publishers, many developers and they all helped out.
MM: Is there anybody who wasn’t involved this time round but expressed future intent based on coverage they’ve seen of it?
DC: Microsoft have been more interested and keen on getting more heavily involved with it, although they provided us with a hell of a lot of material. We’ve had lots of games, lots of consoles up there, screens and so on. I think Project Natal is something they’d like to showcase at future events. Blitz Games Studios as well, who’ve provided a lot of stuff already here, would like to push their 3D stuff at future ones.
MM: Yeah, the only things really on 3D are the notices at the end.
DC: I think one of the problems we had with the exhibition initially is that a lot of companies didn’t really understand what we were doing. We had a lot of them turn around and say “how much is it for a stand?”, and it was like “we haven’t got stands, it’s like putting your stuff into an art gallery”.
MM: It’s a museum.
DC: Yeah, and you say it’s a museum and they go “ooh, it doesn’t quite fit with what we’re after,” but it’s not like a museum, it’s like a mixture of all these different things.
MM: They got the wrong impression because of the connotations of the word.
DC: Yeah. Eventually, when we invited people to Urbis, they saw how impressive the building was, they saw the sort of stuff that Urbis has put on before and then they started to understand what we were doing. And then the help really did start to come forward.
MM: What’s been your favourite part of the whole thing?
DC: Just the whole buzz of seeing it come together really, from a germ of an idea which I had when I went around the Hacienda exhibition here. The idea was, I looked around the Hacienda and thought, well, Manchester always its music and its film, but it doesn’t really celebrate gaming, and we had this massive scene here with Ocean in the 1980s. So I proposed an exhibition, just a small exhibition, just looking at the Manchester scene here. It was going to be part of something else called Manchester On Screen, which is going to be another exhibition [at Urbis] later this year.
MM: You got too big for it.
DC: Yeah, as we started to discuss it more and I started to develop more ideas, I started to think maybe we should bring more of Britain in as well and really do a proper show. All the stuff that we were starting to get at that stage was just too much to fit into a small space. So we brought it onto the biggest floor and really went for this huge scope of contextualising everything really. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s anything else like this in Britain.
MM: Not as far as I know, no. The expo scene’s growing, but nothing like this, that celebrates games as art…well, just a legitimate form of media really. At the end of the day people say “it’s just games,” it’s not viewed in the same stead as music or films. Videogame Nation’s a step in the right direction, really.
DC: This is as much about the people behind the games as the actual games themselves. It’s a celebration of games as an art form and as an entertainment, and also of the creative talent that goes on them.
MM: It’s been backed up pretty well by the talks, too.
DC: Yeah, that was key for it. It was key to have an event program to back it up, because it’s all about the people, and you can’t have a show about the people unless you invite as many of those down as you can.
A huge thanks to David for both his time now and for his help in organising coverage throughout the entire program – the majority of which you are yet to see. That thanks also extends to the rest of the helpful staff at Urbis and everybody who has given a talk. Videogame Nation closes in just a few days, so if you’re in the vicinity of Manchester before Saturday you should definitely check it out at Urbis in Cathedral Gardens. It’s only three pounds!
