

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

LONDON—Last Friday, I found myself in Room 48a of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in the shadow of some of the finest and most valuable works of art in the world: giant 500-year-old paintings by Rafael that would later be turned into tapestries that adorn the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel. In the centre of the room, simple wooden benches have been arranged like pews—but instead of an altar or some other religious transfixion, they face a brightly lit stage. On the stage is a long table, and at each end of the table there is a Surface tablet. Sitting behind one tablet is a professional e-sports gamer; behind the other tablet... oh, wait, that's me.

We're playing Hearthstone, Blizzard's rather popular collectible card game (CCG). The latest expansion, The Grand Tournament, has just been released—and honestly, while I played the game for a few weeks last year, I'm not very good. I should've done some more research about the new mechanics (Inspire and Joust). The professional gamer beats me easily. With a little polite applause from the audience, we get up and shake hands in front of the table. "Good game," I say, and then mumble something about drawing bad cards: the easiest (and lamest) excuse that you can always fall back on after losing at a CCG.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A), one of the world's largest (and best) museums of decorative arts and design, is definitely not the usual locale for an e-sports event. Once a month, on the last Friday of every month, the museum hosts a special late-night exhibition. In this case, the exhibition was called Pushing Buttons. "Explore the rebellious world of altgames through to the massive cultural phenomenon of e-sports," exhorted the promotional flyer—and so, of course, I did.

All of the usual exhibits and antiquities are still on display, but dotted around the museum—in alcoves, in corridors, or in the middle of larger rooms—are new and wonderful things, such as the Hearthstone stage. In the museum's main entrance hall—an atrium that extends upwards more than 50 feet to a domed ceiling—between two marble pillars, stands 65daysofstatic: the two-piece band that composed the original, endless, generative soundtrack for the upcoming game No Man's Sky. A huge crowd surrounds them; a few people are even dancing. I wonder how many people have actually heard of No Man's Sky, or indeed of the band itself.

In the corner of the "fashion and textiles throughout the ages" room there are three cosplayers, each dressed up as various JRPG and League of Legends characters, proudly showing off a half-dozen other outfits that they've made. In another giant room, beneath a replica of Michelangelo's David and beside an alabaster sarcophagus, industry experts speak about game design, nerd culture, and philosophy to a small audience. Upstairs, in a long and very crowded corridor, there's "Burn the Keyboard"—a hands-on exhibit where kids and adults alike can create alternative input devices out of salvaged electronics and chewing gum wrappers.

I won't mince words: It was intensely heart-warming to see video games take over an institution as popular and important as the V&A. At first I couldn't quite put my finger on why I loved being at the V&A that night, or why I kept spontaneously grinning like a fool whenever I saw a "normal" museum-goer interact with a gaming exhibit, but eventually I realised it was because I felt vindicated. After 25 years of telling people that games are cool, I could finally point to the V&A and say, "Look, I was right! All of those years spent playing and making games weren't wasted!" (Okay, so maybe those eight years spent playing World of Warcraft were a bit wasteful.)

Pushing Buttons was just a one-off exhibit, but it gave me a tantalising hint of what museums might be like in the future. There's no denying that video games are becoming a larger and more entrenched part of our culture. Right now, though, it's still rare to see the conversation around video games elevated to the same level as sculpture or painting or fashion. In 10, or 20, or 50 years, might we begin to see Super Mario Galaxy 2 or Portal 2 in the permanent collections of London's Tate Modern or New York's Museum of Modern Art?