Players will be able to enjoy difficult-to-access titles, compete against world record-breaking speedruns and more at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image’s (ACMI) next exhibit, Game Worlds, from September 2025.
The exhibit will be in Federation Square, Melbourne and will showcase 30 iconic video games from the 1970s to today, with 20 of them playable for visitors. The exhibit will also include concept art, behind-the-scenes looks and demos. So far, World of Warcraft, The Sims and Neopets and upcoming Australian games have all been announced to be part of the exhibit, but more will be announced leading up to the exhibit’s release.
The exhibit has been created by ACMI co-curators Bethan Johnson and Jini Maxwell. Game Worlds is the third major games-focused exhibition from the Centre, following Game On in 2008, and Code Breakers in 2017.
It also follows exhibits in the smaller gallery 3, like Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Videogames, which follows a group of players finding the boundary of the game world in Red Dead Redemption 2 and last year’s Honk! Untitled Goose Exhibition explores how the successful Melbourne-based game Untitled Goose Game was created. ACMI’s permanent exhibit, The Story of the Moving Image, also includes a variety of Australian-made playable games.
ACMI Director and CEO Seb Chan described the exhibition as “celebrating the continuous evolution of this century’s defining artform”. “It builds on ACMI’s multi-decade experience in making videogame exhibitions, and our long-term support of the Australian videogame sector through preservation, education, industry partnerships and our dedicated Games Lab.”
Co-curators Johnson and Maxwell also said “Game Worlds celebrates the groundbreaking feats of engineering, design and artistry that bring videogame worlds into being, and the communities and creativity that then bring them to life… We can’t wait to invite you behind-the-scenes of some of the world’s most iconic games in September”.
Alongside Game Worlds, ACMI will be commissioning Australian game creators to develop a series of microgames. Commissions of up to $10,000 will be available to create browser-based games that will be playable in ACMI’s public spaces for the duration of the exhibition. More information about the commissions is available here.
Game Worlds will run for six months from 18 September 2025 to 8 February 2026. Presale tickets will be available from 3 July, and visitors can join the waitlist at acmi.net.au.
About the Author
Cass Barkman
she/they
Cass is a lecturer in Media and Communications at The University of Melbourne with a personal/academic love for experimental narrative videogames, complex cinema and having a little nap.
