Museums in the Future as Depicted in Popular Videogames: Looking Forward to Visit or Better Run-run Away?

This article relates to the envisioning of museums in popular videogames as a possible indicator of how museums may or may not function in the future. In terms of popular videogames, data were collected from the ‘The Museums in Popular Videogames' research project at the Museology Lab, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece. Taking into consideration that science fiction literature is strongly linked with visualising aspects of the future, we use its genres to classify the museums in videogames. Twenty-nine videogames with forty-two museum settings were identified and discussed. Museums were grouped and analysed by four museum-oriented aspects to further understand their nature in future settings: location; the museum as a building and as an institution; the museum exhibits, their nature and their state of care or preservation; museum visitors that the game character may encounter. This research has indicated that the speculative creativity of videogame developers concerning museums in the future is likely to be diverse, within cityscapes, into the ocean or in the sky, fully functional with different interiors, preserving objects of the past and offering shelter to humans, or destroyed because of natural disasters, external attacks and/or human actions.