Museum visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy the interactive aspects of the exhibition. For art and design connoisseurs, “XYZ” provides a diverse and expansive picture of the art of game design, and offers even seasoned gamers new insights into what games are and can be. The show will include not only familiar mainstream games, but alternative genres such as art, independent and documentary games. “XYZ” includes a broad spectrum of works representing a legacy of alternative visions that demonstrate the capacity of game design to convey a wide range of ideas, experiences and emotions.

The aim of “XYZ” is to celebrate women’s contributions to the advancement of the video game medium by highlighting their influence and accomplishments. Every piece in the show has been wholly or partially created by women. Today, women comprise only 10 to 15 percent of the gaming industry, and the percentage of those participating in the actual design process is even lower. Nevertheless, women continue to serve as major creative influences in the mainstream video game industry as well as in alternative genres.

“XYZ” is being developed in partnership with Georgia Tech’s Experimental Game Lab and Digital Media Graduate Program, both in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and is curated by a team of world-renowned game curators: Celia Pearce, director of Georgia Tech’s Experimental Game Lab and co-founder of IndieCade, the international festival of independent games; Cindy Poremba, internationally recognized game artist, member of the art game collective Kokoromi, co-curator of the international experimental game showcase Gamma and co-curator of “Joue Le Jeu/Play Along,” a landmark exhibition of video games held at the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris in 2012; John Sharp, Associate professor of Games and Learning, School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design, co-founder of Art History of Games, conference co-chair for IndieCade and curator of Spacewar! At the American Museum of the Moving Image; Akira Thompson, a former Disney Imagineer, game designer and director of game maker relations for IndieCade; and Adam Rafinksi, associate curator, artist, theorist and founder of the GameLab Karlsruhe at the German art and technology center ZKM.