Videogame Arts Around the World in 2024

We’re back with a fresh edition of GAIN’s annual roundup newsletter, first launched in 2016 to annually spotlight and celebrate game art events from around the globe!

This year, we’re thrilled to share highlights from 22 events across 14 countries, featuring everything from trailblazing pioneers to emerging voices, and from grand festivals to intimate pop-up gatherings. María Luján Oulton returns as editor, reaching out to friends, colleagues, and like-minded communities to collect their favorite snapshots from the game art events and projects of 2024.

If you enjoy this roundup, please share the link and let us know about any events, projects, or people we may have missed—we’d love to include them in future editions.

PLAYTOPIA – South Africa (Capetown)

Their Festival Director Dominique Gawlowski tells us “We could see a major uptick in attendance and interest in the event compared to previous years. We are extremely pleased with how this event has evolved over the years from a small low key indie fest to much higher level of production standards, larger attendance and much more industry support. 

We had over 80 games on exhibit in our main arcade from around the world with a focus on African made games. Our Indie Planet has also grown! We have begun to develop relationships with other similarly minded festivals such as Bitsummit (Japan), Now Play This (UK), A.Maze (Germany) and Freeplay (Australia) and showcase their best in shows for South African audiences. We had two large rooms filled with both international and African made immersive art installations and two days of talks at our Playtopia summit with special guests coming to speak about the craft of making games and the creative process.”

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ZONA WARPA (Italy)

From Italy, Matteo Lupetti, game, art critic and member of Collettivo Warpo writes: “Zona Warpa is the travelling festival of rebel videogames. We wanted to build a non-corporate event for videogames developed outside the mainstream AAA and indie industry and catch a glimpse into a possible gaming scene with no economic, educational, architectural and geographical barriers. There’s no entry fee (Zona Warpa is mostly funded through donations and has no sponsors) and local game developers can come and show their games for free. Zona Warpa suggests a possible future in which knowledge is freely shared and games aren’t consumer goods but playful creative tools capable of bringing people together as a community. The stages of Zona Warpa are usually hosted in squatted social centers, zones of freedom outside the capitalist cycle of production and consumption: as we reclaim the videogame medium we also want to reclaim the urban space. Furthermore, this offers the opportunity to bring gaming and radical communities in contact with each other. In the afternoon, game developers and visitors can play and attend talks and workshops focused on topics such as DIY culture, free software and intersectionality. In the evening, we have performances and music shows, often with chiptune music and live-coding. During the first edition in 2023 we toured together with Argentinian studio Videogamo and their party game Dobotone from Milan, in Northern Italy, to the Southern city of Naples. For the second year of Zona Warpa we organized three 2-day main events in Rome, Bari and Milan and a series of smaller events, and in 2025 we are going to follow a similar format. If you want to know more about Zona Warpa, I wrote a longer article for Container.”

Zona Warpa 2024 at Cascina Torchiera (Milan)

ARCADIA (Dundee, Scotland)

Malath Abbas, festival director, provides the following overview of the event: “Arcadia Festival 2024 was a spooky and heartfelt celebration of creativity, innovation, and collaboration within our local game arts community. This year’s event was intentionally lowkey, creating an intimate and welcoming atmosphere where developers, artists, and audiences could connect and share their passion for games as an art form. Highlights included interactive workshops for the public, community-led discussions, and games exhibitions that celebrated the incredible talent within our region. Key to this year’s success were our partnerships with Creative Dundee and Hapworks, whose support and collaboration helped us secure space to deliver meaningful experiences tailored to our community. By focusing on local talent and grassroots initiatives, Arcadia 2024 fostered a sense of belonging and inspiration, demonstrating the power of games to bring people together and spark creativity in everyday spaces.”

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PH: Erika Stevenson

MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL – ITALY

Scholar, artist, writer, curator, publisher, and translator, Matteo Bittanti summarizes the 2024 with the following words “In March 2024, we hosted the seventh edition of the Milan Machinima Festival, held alongside the inaugural Fotoludica conference on in-game photography at IULM University in Milan, Italy. Both events received exceptional attendance. In December 2024, Marco de Mutiis and I published The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos through Mimesis International. This book, based on our ongoing project, is the first in a series of in-depth studies examining Grand Theft Auto V‘s impact on the visual arts. Following the success of the 2024 MMF, Season 5 of VRAL launched shortly after and is currently ongoing as I write this. In September 2024, I moved back to the States – and specifically, Los Santos – to continue my research on video games and contemporary art.”

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FOTOLUDICA DAY 1

From left to right (standing): Jonathan Carroll, Cat Bluemke, Kieran Nolan, Marco De Mutiis, Matteo Bittanti, Joseph Delappe, Laura Leuzzi; (sitting) Gina Hara, Florence Smith Nicholls; (forefront): Adonis Archontides.  Photo credit: Marta Merlino (Università IULM)

ARSGAMES – Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Donosti, Tokyo & ingapore) 

ARSGAMES – Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Donosti, Tokyo & Singapore) 

ARSGAMES co-director Luca Carrubba offers the following highlights: “this year we have continued to generate exhibitions and non-conventional playful exhibition experiences of various kinds. Our exhibition “The Visible City / The City at Play” has traveled from Barcelona to Madrid and finally to Donosti. Both in Centro Centro (Madrid) and in the Instituto de Arquitectura del País Vasco, this exhibition invited the public to think and imagine the relationship between digital games and the contemporary city, how video games contribute to build the urban landscape and how the urban is represented and reconstructed in game environments. In conjunction with this exhibition, Arsgames curators Luca Carrubba and Eurídice Cabañes have brought to Asia the highlights of Spanish contemporary production, in an exhibition entitled “Present and Future of the Spanish Video Game” . During its itinerancy at Instituto Cervantes Tokyo, the expo served to become a space for dialogue with Japanese creators such as Yoshikata Amano, Ryuichi Nishizawa and Ikumi Nakamura.  While in its itinerancy in Singapore it was able to get in touch with the professional environment of the Asian country. Finally, 2024 has also seen the launch of the first edition of our biennale for VR, a space for exhibition and experimentation of playful art for virtual reality.”

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Masters of Digital Art: Dialogue Between Japan and Spain with Yoshitaka Amano and HeroBeat Studios.

NOW PLAY THIS (London, UK) 

This year Luján Oulton joined the NPT team as Artistic Director for their 10th anniversary. Luján summarizes the edition as follows: “Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Now Play This returned to Somerset House as part of the London Games Festival, bringing together art, games, and academia to explore interactive and playful works by game-makers and artists. This year’s festival embraced the theme of liminality, diving into the margins and transitional spaces as opportunities for dialogue and creativity. We hosted a vibrant mix of events, including a physical exhibition, hybrid and on-site talks, participatory play sessions, workshops, walks, and, for the first time, an academic strand in collaboration with Cologne Game Lab and British DiGRA, uniting artists, designers, and theorists to play, collaborate, and share ideas. The works on display were as diverse as they were inspiring, spanning from globally networked arcade cabinets to alternative controllers, AI-powered storytelling and larps. We also worked on a collaborative commission with A MAZE and in partnerships with NextLevelDigital (Germany) and Playtopia (SouthAfrica) to showcase a selection of games and activities during their festivals.”

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PH: Ben Catchpole

A MAZE FESTIVAL (Berlin, Germany)

Thorsten  S. Wiedemann, founder and artistic director of A MAZE Festival breaks the year down like this: “2024 we really had a cool run and so much fun. Let’s start with A MAZE. / Berlin and the 13th festival edition, which featured an amazing selection of arthouse games and playful media works onsite and also on our first ever Steam featured event page including a retrospective of the nominated games at A MAZE. from 2012 to 2023. Amazing – here the link: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/amaze-berlin-2024. Not to forget our specially curated “Enchanted Controllers” exhibition highlighting the very active and inspiring global alt.ctrl scene. Link: https://2024.amaze-berlin.de/exhibitions/altctrl/. Then during 2024 we had the opportunity to travel with our game portfolio to Sonar Festival in Barcelona, A MAZE. / Sheffield –  GLUM Special Party Edition, Link: https://sheffield.a-maze.net, and the A MAZE. Digital PlayGround at gamescom in Cologne, Link: https://gamescom.a-maze.net. In this sense, let’s rock 2025! The next A MAZE. / Berlin is on May 14-17, 2025.”

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NEXT LEVEL, Germany (Dortmund)

Festival Producer Viv Lennert writes: “NEXT LEVEL took place in 2024 for the first time in years in the city of Dortmund, Germany. The decentralized festival for games culture, digital theater and interactive arts presented a wide range of contemporary positions and invited 78 Artists to contribute to the happening. At several venues spread across the entire city, both independent titles as well as established names of the new arts were represented. With workshops, talks, performances, a media art exhibition and a games pavilion with over 20 games, NEXT LEVEL was aimed at the curious newbie as well as an experienced scene audience. NEXT LEVEL is dedicated to the juxtaposition of tryout and gloss, playing for fun and and the experiment in interaction as well as the subsequent pressing political questions and new narratives that we encounter through technological progress. It is open to contributions, impulses and ideas to carry this magical constellation into the future. For the production and curation Viviane Lennert and Lex Rütten took over for the 14th edition.”

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PLAY2. GERMANY (Hamburg)

The PLAY – Creative Gaming Festival has been around for 17 years and focuses on art, discourse, and education in a mix of open stages, labs, and exhibitions. Taking place in Hamburg amid an old, converted department store, researchers, artists, kids, and all lovely humans interested in playful media were invited to (mis-)use games in a creative way. Likewise, the Creative Gaming Award honored works allowing players to interact creatively within them. 2024s topic was “You Got the Power – Games & Politics,” which was not only about works with political content, but more about how interactive art can shape social power structures and public discourses. 

We always had political topics, but interestingly, putting it on the label made politicians join for many program points throughout the week. It was also the second year, where our youth team was active: a group of young adults curating their own area and programs. With PLAY’s continued hybrid concept including digital connections, virtual exhibitions, twitch-streams and VR-hikes, around 9000 guests on-site and 750k online opened up this important discussion not just between generations, but between people from countries all over the world.

🌐 https://www.playfestival.de

📺 https://youtu.be/wWgL-rr9GKQ
📸 https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBRyz2

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PH: Miguel Ferraz Araújo

TALK & PLAY . Berlin (Germany)

Lorenzo Pilia, founder of Talk & Play sends the following recap of the year “an event about games for everyone that has been running every couple of months since 2013. We took a long break due to covid, timidly restarted in 2023, last year we got back to full speed with 5 editions that featured over 70 projects being showcased and a variety of short presentations and community announcements. We’re asking all attendees to wear a mask and don’t sell or allow alcoholic beverages to be consumed at our venue — this probably angers some potential attendees but who wants that kind of people at their event anyway? The event is free to attend and runs on a very tiny budget — while Berlin has changed a lot in the past few years it’s still possible to find venues in central locations that provide their space at no cost.”

Talk & Play 45 photo by Julian Dasgupta (1)

PH: Julian Dasgupta

OVERKILL. Enschede (Netherlands) 

Marie Janin, co-director of The Overkill festival shares a recap: “In 2024 with the theme “Radical Joy Resistance” the festival looked into the role of play in movements of resistance. Curious to find out how a certain lightness, alternative rules, humour, joy and pleasure can be of support when going into the street, countering official narratives, refusing institutionalised violences. The festival started in front of the city hall with a performance of women led by LasTesis, followed by a playful march of resistance through Enschede. The festival included an interactive exhibition, workshops, hosted film screenings, a day of interactive talks and panels, a karaoke of resistance and an experimental music program. With the works of Juliette Lizotte, Melanie Hoff, Molleindustria, Madison Bycroft, Rafif Kalantan & Ashraf Abi Said, Nathalie Lawhead, Afrah Shafiq, Sondi, Pablo F. Quarta and many more. The program has been curated by Marie Janin and Aike Lutkemoller, directors of the festival with the support of Zuraida Buter, Erik Peters, Resistencia videoludica, Jugar Juegitos and JacqNoise. The festival is produced by Sickhouse. The next edition of The Overkill Festival “Return to Dreamland” is taking us in an exploration from #CalmTok to rest as resistance. It will be held from 19 to 23 November 2025, in Enschede.”

The Overkill pict1 @tessaWiegerinck

BOZAR ARCADE, Bruxelles (Belgium)

Curators Isabelle Arvers and Laurent Mbaah introduce the Bozar Arcade project, launched by Bozar to bridge traditional art and contemporary digital storytelling. As part of the Afropolitan Festival 2024, the initiative features independent video games that challenge Western cultural imperialism by promoting themes of cooperation, symbiosis, and collective understanding. Moving away from violence, hypersexualized bodies, and destruction, Bozar Arcade envisions a new global perspective rooted in community, benevolence, and meditation. The project also raises awareness of post-colonial social, political, and environmental issues, encouraging players to reconnect with sensitivity and emotions. Featured creators include Danielle Udogaranya, Twin Drums, Akwasi Bediako Afrane, Henri Tauliaut, Sylvain De Vresse, and Momo Pixel.

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Illustration: Water Divinity, a game installation by Henri Tauliaut (Martinique)

ECOJOGOS INMERSION. Rio (Brazil)

Isabelle Arvers and Livia Diniz organized a hands-on activity with children at the Museum da República’s Park as part of the “Beyond Green Games” initiative. Arvers explains: “Beyond Green Games is a disruptive, low-tech, and creative educational project aimed at raising environmental awareness through green games. By hacking video games, we encourage behavioral changes toward the environment, focusing on animist and Indigenous perspectives and addressing narratives tied to current climate challenges. These games prioritize responsible development with less technology, more diverse aesthetics, and mechanics that emphasize collaboration over competition.

At the Museum Futuros in Rio, we conducted augmented walks in the Museum da República’s Park, recording sounds, images, and 3D scans of trees, rocks, and other non-human beings. These were combined with eco-game sequences to create films made collaboratively by artists, game designers, teenagers, and children from favelas. The project culminated in a public event celebrating and showcasing the resulting sounds, visuals, ideas, and machinima, blending creativity, ecology, and digital innovation.”

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CIBERCIRUJAS (Argentina)

Hernan Saez, video game developer and part of the Cyberciruja Movement writes from Argentina “Cybercirujas (Cyberscavengers) is a movement against planned obsolescence, born in Argentina in 2019. Its main objective is to extend the life of electronic hardware that is no longer in use or about to be discarded, from a technopolitical view of the world, with free software as its banner, trying to provide an alternative to the current technofeudal system dominated by Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and X. Within this movement there are different groups and each one has a particular profile. Some of these cells (as they are called in the jargon) repair old computers, adding RAM, an SSD drive and Linux to improve their performance, and then donate them to those who need them. Other cells create their own servers and social networks so as not to depend on “The Cloud”. And others, for instance, use electronic waste to make games and alternative controllers, which are then presented at self-organized social events. Among these creations you can find stuff like a trackball controller made from a roll-on deodorant, a fan with LEDs on its blades that, when rotating, generates an interactive circular screen and has its own game engine, or a used a point-of-sale device with an arcade stick and buttons that runs id Software’s DOOM and allows you to open the game’s doors by just sliding a real credit card through the card reader. In 2024, the Cyberciruja Movement celebrated its fifth year of action and keeps growing exponentially, reaching other countries in the region and beyond.”

CIBERCIRUJAS PosDOOM

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ARGENTINA/BRAZIL

From Buenos Aires, Laura Palavecino shares the research, symposium and exhibit run between October and November 2024 when she settled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: “Bromeliads, birds and snakes, is a bioelectronic installation that mixes bioart with art games, thanks to the grant of the Presente Continuo Program of Argentina and the invitation of the NANO Laboratory of the University Federal of Rio de Janeiro. The project deals with the biodiversity of the Atlantic Forest, in South America, taking as its emblem the bromeliad plants, as organisms that constitute a habitat for others it contains, and the snake, a key creature to evaluate the health of ecosystems and a South American ancestral figure associated with the creation of worlds. The project has four main aspects: the development of an artistic-philosophical and environmental research; a wiki (which compiles the process of developments; an artistic installation (composed of a game console, plants and an art game); and a framework for the design of playful works in connection with communities. The advances of the project were presented at the Hipeorgánicos 11 Festival in a musical performance with dance and a symposium.” (link)

Bromelias BioElectronicProject LauraPalavecino

TOKYO INDIES – JAPAN (Tokyo)

KC is thrilled to share that “In 2024, the monthly indie game event Tokyo Indies started doing genre theme nights to have more members of the community showing a wider variety of games, including visual novel and puzzle games. We also had some games from the community being exhibited in Shibuya at the 404 NOT FOUND space.”

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CHICAGO GAME SPACE – USA (Chicago)

Chicago Gamespace Curator Jonathan Kinkley shares with us a summary of a quite busy year. “We presented another year devoted to the past, present and future of video games, as well as some incredible new media art. The year kicked off with a survey of vector graphics games from the late 1970s and early 80s in Vector vs Raster (March 3 – May 12, 2024). Then a game in development using the art nouveau style of Windsor McCay was exhibited in a project titled Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends (May 19 – June 30, 2024). This was followed by an AR art piece about bioengineering in Alina Nazmeeva: Bug In My Software (July 7 – September 1, 2024). Next, in partnership with Chicago Public Library, Time Machine Bronzeville (September 8 – October 27, 2024) featured a recreation of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood by artist Philip Mallory Jones. And from November 3 – December 29, 2024, Jordan Mechner’s 40 year old Apple II game that featured early rotoscoping — Digital Eclipse’s The Making of Karateka — was exhibited in a partnership with the preservationists Digital Eclipse. Finally, the history of Chicago’s riotous Midway Games was told in partnership with documentary filmmaker Josh Tsui in the Gamespace-organized Insert Coin: Inside Midway’s Arcade Revolution at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art (on view through February 15).”

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Left: Opening of Insert Coin, Middle: Alina Nazmeeva’s Bug In My Software,  Right: Karateka screenshot. 

PARIS, SAN FRANCISCO & ONLINE

Also from USA Allison Yang shares a variety of different projects in which she was involved:

“In March 2024, during GDC in San Francisco, I co-hosted Art Play Meet with the Museum of Asian American Art. We showcased the game How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car, attracting around 200 attendees, including GAIANS, in an electric atmosphere celebrating art and gaming.

In April, I collaborated with Alan Kwan at Paris’ Forum des Images, presenting Forgetter in a theater setting and participating in talks about art games, museums, and the political game scene in Hong Kong as part of the Portrait de Hong Kong series. We also visited TUMO Paris to engage with underprivileged teens studying digital media.

Later in the year, I mentored two projects through the She Got Game initiative: We Fight with Cloud, exploring climate change and queer futurism, and a prototype game about a young girl’s chaotic world. This mentorship emphasized the exchange of creativity and inspiration.”

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PH: Art, Play, Meet

NIGHT CITY New York (USA)

Emily Koonce writes “this past year Night City started diversifying its event output with more exhibitions, collaborations with other arts organizations, and engagements with the community. In March 2024, we ran “Idle Arcade,” an exhibition of games and other works centered around the concept of ambient play, inviting attendees to ‘passively participate’ in a variety of digital and physical experiences. In April, we hosted “ASK + GIVE,” an open mic networking event geared to asking and giving feedback to local designers in the community. We hosted 3 game jams with corresponding exhibitions including Print n’ Play, Indie City Allstars, and Chicaghoul in collaboration with Indie City Games. In November, we worked with Brooklyn-based event space boshi’s place to host Games Against the Empire, a panel and exhibition of independent games that mechanically or thematically examine imperialism, colonialism, oppression, and resistance. We ended the year with our annual Playtest Planet, an event for members of our community to playtest their games while we raised money for La Casa Norte to support their mission of providing stable housing to Chicago youth and families confronting homelessness.”

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LAUNCH PARTY. Canada (Vancouver)

Lan Roed tells us: “Heart Projector in Vancouver worked with daffodil, Weird Ghosts and Gamma Space to organize the launch party for daffodil and friends game STREET UNI X in Vancouver, BC, Canada this year! This event was a culmination of daffodil’s communities and their personal history of cares and game development achievements leading up to and including the release of their project of six years. Heart Projector and daffodil curated a pop up arcade focused around daffodil’s works, influences, community and peers. The event also featured performances from soundtrack artists Never Plenty, Emma Goldman, and Terrifying Girls’ High School.”

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AUSTRALIA

Helen Kwok shares a summary of the last artgame experience she ran alongside with Chad Toprak in Australia.  “The world is going through turbulent times. From the climate crisis to increasing racism and violence, institutional censorship to witnessing a genocide unfold before our eyes, everyday can be a rollercoaster of emotions. Transient Threads is a participatory installation by Helen Kwok and Chad Toprak (based in Narrm/Melbourne, Australia) to tackle, unravel, and capture these intense emotions.

In May 2024, participants were invited to reflect on their feelings in response to world events that had been happening over the last six months, weave their emotional journey around the six pillars of the pavilion, complete an intention card to take action, and watch the installation grow to become a visual snapshot of the community’s spectrum of feelings, captured one thread at a time.”

Transient Threads

If you enjoyed this roundup, you might want to explore the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, or 2023 posts! Do cool game arts stuff and would like to be included in a roundup next year (or possibly even this year, if we find the time to update this post)? Email us!