Here's how many people saw The Smithsonian's Art of Games [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2012/10/jet-set.jpg (http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/01/heres-how-many-people-saw-the-smithsonians-art-of-games/)
The Art of Video Games (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/06/smithsonian-art-of-video-games-winners-announced/) exhibit just concluded its run at The Smithsonian and the final number of visitors is in: 686,406. The exhibit ran for six months, from March 16 - September 30, so that's well over 100,000 people per month critiquing the art from such games as BioShock, Diablo 2, Donkey Kong, Fallout 3, Goldeneye 007, Doom 2, Minecraft, Jet Set Radio Future, Shadow of Colossus, Star Fox: Assault, Zaxxon and tons more, all chosen by fans via some smooth Smithsonian voting.

For reference, 686,406 people is slightly more than the entire country of Montenegro, more than six Grenadas, or 617,765 dollar-store items in Grenada (10 percent sales tax).http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/feedlogo.gif (http://www.joystiq.com)Here's how many people saw The Smithsonian's Art of Games (http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/02/heres-how-many-people-saw-the-smithsonians-art-of-games/) originally appeared on Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com) on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds (http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/).

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[RCM]

I went to see this exhibit and came away less than impressed. I appreciate the effort, but it wasn't worth the trip from the NYC area. Luckily this exhibit wasn't a central component of my trip.

[j_factor]

Some of the inclusions are kind of puzzling. GoldenEye? When I think of "the art of games", movie adaptations don't come to mind.

[BHvrd]

I was hoping to see more classic work like the great After Hours, depicting Donkey Kong and Mario after a long days work:

http://i.imgur.com/B9osw.jpg

Or the more conceptual, yet cutting edge Lady Gaga does Street Fighter:

http://i.imgur.com/wwxCj.jpg

Though in all honesty I didn't go to the event, so I have no idea what i'm talking about. :D

[RCM]

Some of the inclusions are kind of puzzling. GoldenEye? When I think of "the art of games", movie adaptations don't come to mind.

Yeah, totally. I believe they had screens from three different Panzer Dragoon games (Zwei, Saga, and Orta) too. I love that series more than most, but no way it deserved so much real estate in the face of so many puzzling omissions. That's what happens when you let the public vote on what should go in an exhibit like that. Also, I don't believe there was any representation from the GTA series which there should have been.

The playable kiosks were pretty unspectacular and catered from the obvious (Super Mario Bros.) to the eye rolling (Flower).