A large number of exhibitions worldwide deal with digital games, but curators lack a coherent understanding of the different aspects of games that can be exhibited or a clear vocabulary for talking about them. Based on a literature review on game preservation and visitor behavior in exhibitions, the paper makes an argument for understanding digital games on display as made up of object, experience, and context aspects. The study further presents a matrix model for understanding and working with games in exhibitions. The model makes for a more nuanced understanding of the different ways digital games can be exhibited. Additionally, it clarifies the position of games in exhibitions as socioculturally constructed through inherently ideological curatorial choices.

Niklas Nylund is a museum researcher and curator working for the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere, Finland. He is also working on a PhD on videogame heritage issues at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies at the University of Tampere. His research interests include game preservation, game history, exhibition design and questions of cultural heritage and inclusivity.

Patrick´s work centers around digital games as participatory culture. He has written his dissertation about co-creative game design and has given a Uppsala University TEDx talk about the topic. He has been working in a research project at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology and writes about participation in preservation and exhibition of games as cultural heritage. He is also serving as board member for the Cultural Heritage Incubator of the Swedish National Heritage Board.

In the early 1980s, digital games played at home were an unprecedented cultural phenomenon. In this article, I examine the ways computer fanzines and disk magazines from the 1980s write about games and game culture, and how they contribute to the process of digital game domestication. My sources offer insight on contemporary views on multimodal games, the qualities of good games, and the different ways game making and game playing are intertwined. It is in these fanzines and disk magazines that the cultural meaning of digital games played at home is dealt with for the first time, and they provide an unique view into a complex world in which the meanings of computers, coding, games, and gaming are constantly negotiated.

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