Japanese Gaming Event Hits London

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Japanese Gaming Event Hits London
This month, London gets to see some pure Japanese gaming culture at the ‘Hyper Japan’ event.

The gaming aspect of this show that highlights lots of Japanese culture takes place at on the 21st of February, 6:30pm at The Japan Foundation Russell Square, London.

The organisers say, “Japan is known as a leading country in the culture of Video Games, but it was only in May 2010 that the Agency for Cultural Affairs in Japan started making preparations for a Video Game archive, in association with the National Diet Library. These developments raise some important questions - given that there has been much criticism of Video Games as potentially harmful things, some people would wish to ask 'Why we should archive them?'.

“Have Video Games in fact taken root in Japanese and other societies to such an extent that they need to be recognised as a form of culture that is something approaching equivalent to Cinema or Literature? More practically, how can an archive of Video Game culture be made and what should be archived? Consoles? Softwares? Game Magazines? Finally, how should the Video Games industry, government and academia work together within this archiving project?

“The Japan Foundation have invited Prof Akira Baba from the University of Tokyo - the chairperson of the committee on Video Games within the Media art archiving project of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs - to take part in a lecture event alongside Prof James Newman from the University of Bath, who is leading a similar initiative here in the UK. They will examine the current situation and issues that are arising from these efforts to create Video Game Archives in Japan and in the UK.”

More info here.

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