In what is shaping up to be potentially the most exciting week for videogames in Melbourne’s history, Games Masters, ACMI’s new exhibition, launched yesterday and will shortly begin its program of public events.

My full thoughts on the exhibition will be published shortly, but I thought it would be remiss of me to not note in advance what’s going on today and tomorrow for anyone who’s so far missed it.

Warren Spector, of Deus Ex, Wing Commander, and System Shock fame, is in Melbourne to present some of the public events, as is Tim Schafer, of The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Psychonauts fame. There’s a two-day forum event that encompasses panels on a wide variety of topics (Games and Cultural Spaces, Story, and Commerce). There’s also some one-on-one events with Spector and Schafer for deeper discussion. I’ll be covering as much as I can here at Game On (with the exception of one panel, which I’m lucky enough to be chairing with Tim Schafer, David Surman and Ian Gouldstone from Pachinko Pictures, Scott Reismanis from Desura, and Phil Larsen from Halfbrick).

The full schedule is available here. I also highly recommend visiting the exhibition, though, as I noted, my full review (and interview with ACMI Head of Exhibitions, Conrad Bodman) is incoming. And finally, I also highly recommend the Games Masters exhibition booklet, which has some pretty impressive essays from local games academics and curators, David Surman, Christian McCrea, and Helen Stuckey.

I’m also going to keep this post as a hub of sorts for my Games Masters content—if you’re interested in all of my write-ups of the complete event, keep checking back at this post where I’ll be indexing it all.

GAME MASTERS INDEX:

  • ACMI curator Conrad Bodman speaks about videogames in galleries
  • Warren Spector, the film critic who became a game designer
  • EXHIBITION REVIEW: Game Masters, Australian Centre for the Moving Image