The National Museum of Video Games and Popular Cultures

On the strength of its collection, one of the largest in Europe, and its experience in organising long-term exhibitions, the MO5.com association wants to offer digital and IT heritage a permanent place to be preserved and shared with the public.

Our ambition is to create a National Museum of Video Games and Popular Cultures, open to all and interactive, offering a chronological and thematic tour of digital technologies.

There is no major venue dedicated to video games and contemporary popular cultures in France, to the creative industries and to the foremost of them all, video games. By contemporary popular cultures we mean the mix of cinema, television, cartoons, video games, comic books, novels, music, internet creations and digital technologies that form a shared culture for our fellow citizens.

Yet our country has major assets in the field of creative industries and video games. It is unique in that it combines a very strong artistic culture with a strong technological culture. To name just a few areas, it has excellent training in art, computing, graphics, web design, comic strips, engineering and video games, producing talent that is recognised the world over and has led to the development of leading companies.

A wealth to be exploited

Yet France doesn't have the visibility that Japan or the United States do in these areas. Who knows that many of the American science fiction films of the 1980s owe their aesthetic to the series published in the French comic magazine Métal Hurlant? Who knows that France was at the forefront of 3D video games in the 1990s and is now a major player? Who knows that today France is literally flooding animation and video game studios around the world with its 3D designers and animators?
However, apart from occasional exhibitions in establishments dedicated to other subjects, video games and the associated popular culture are not presented on a permanent basis, and certainly not in the foreground. That's why we're proposing the creation of a new cultural institution in the Paris region.

What we are proposing is a major museum of video games and contemporary popular culture, combined with a creative industries campus. It would present, chronologically and thematically, the cultural productions shared by every generation of French people, from the 1960s to the present day. From the 1970s onwards, the backbone of the museum would be video games and digital technologies. There would be French productions and foreign productions that were successful in France. After all, you can't understand the children's TV shows of the 1980s without Japanese cartoons, just as you can't forget the hit French productions of the time, such as "Il était une fois la vie".

An interactive museum

The museum would be based on the "accessible museum" concept that MO5.COM has been developing for over 15 years in the video game industry. Everything will be done to ensure that everyone can access the objects on display. The video games will be playable in their original conditions on period hardware. This principle will apply to all media.

For comics, a dedicated room will display original albums in showcases and a comfortable reading area will allow visitors to consult the corresponding albums. In a room dedicated to the wave of disco music in France, seats equipped with directional speakers will allow visitors to listen to the records of the era, by Sheila, Claude François and others.

A family and intergenerational museum

It will be a family museum, with each generation being able to explain the content of its own period to other generations. It will also be a contextual museum, offering historical, aesthetic, economic and social explanations to help visitors understand the objects on display.

Collections already available

The MO5.COM association has built up the largest collection of video games and digital technologies in Europe, with a view to donating it when a national museum opens. Other collections already exist to complement it in related fields.

A successful theme

There have already been many successful exhibitions in this field, from the smallest to the largest: Game Story: A History of Video Games at the Grand Palais, A History of Video Games at the Musée de la Civilisation du Québec, GAME at the EDF FoundationGoscinny and the cinema at the Cinémathèque française, Barbie at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Miyazaki-Moebius dialogue between creators of worlds at the Paris Mint, etc.

A major venue, a new popular space in Paris

The museum will need to be on a par with the major establishments in the Ile-de-France region in terms of surface area if it is to offer attractive displays to visitors.

At the same time, the museum will open a specialised public library and will be staffed by teams of researchers (historians, ethnologists, art historians). All the components of a genuine creative industries campus will be brought together around the museum, including specialised schools, a start-up incubator, industry representatives, work tools for creators (library, games library, design library, archives, etc.) and a video game research institute.

The campus will become a showcase for France's creative industries and video game creation.

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