The video game that is also an art museum
On The Zium Society’s itch.io page, the word Zium is given two definitions. “A virtual gallery game, composed of eclectic and wonderful things,” reads one. “Kind of like a zine, but the museum video game version,” reads the other. In other words, at the center of the Venn diagram between galleries, museums, and games, you might find a Zium.
Curator Michael Berto released the first Zium, the Zium Museum, in 2017. “I really love art galleries,” he says, almost immediately when we start talking. A straightforward enough inspiration, but many others ended up layered on top, too. “I was definitely inspired by stuff that was happening in games, particularly things [game designer] Pippin Barr was doing. Really deconstructing what an art gallery is.” For example, Barr had recently released a virtual gallery that displayed dozens of water textures pulled from other games and asset packs from the Unity game engine.
Other games were also playing with the concept of museums as a part of their bigger whole. In one ending of 2011’s The Stanley Parable, the player can find a museum that showcases the game itself, giving it a meta twist. “That just blew me away,” says Berto. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’d love to do something like that.’”
And so he did. With the freedom of creating his own digital gallery, he was also able to draw from the inspirations he saw every day. “One of the core drives for it was just looking on Twitter and seeing [artwork] that I was very enamored with. …They’d show a gif of a 3D model, and I’d say, I want to look at that in every facet.” TheZium Museum was a way to achieve exactly that, with players able to walk around the space and see these digital artworks from any angle.
Since the Museum, Berto and dozens of
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