The National Videogame Archive Mission Statement
The National Videogame Archive will collect, interpret, make accessible for study and research and, where possible, exhibit videogames and the associated ephemera of videogame cultures. The Archive aims to preserve, analyse and display the products of the global videogame industry by placing the games in their historical, social, political and cultural contexts. This means treating videogames as more than digital code that can be dissected and emulated or as a system of rules or representations. At the heart of the National Videogames Archive is a respect for the material form of the game as well as the boxart, manuals, advertising, marketing and merchandising materials that support it and that give it meaning and context.
In addition to collecting, curating and archiving these vital parts of popular culture, the ongoing collaboration between the National Media Museum and Nottingham Trent University is oriented around exploring and devising innovative and engaging ways to exhibit and analyse videogames for a general audience. This involves considering the interpretation and display of videogame experiences for diverse audiences that might include adepts and non-adepts alike, and exhibition in environments such as museum galleries which are not normally conducive to videogame play.