Museums and galleries across the globe have opened their collections to online visitors. However, for creatives who prefer a more hands-on approach to art appreciation, a multiplayer world-building game is enabling them to conjure up the galleries of their dreams.
Available for free via Valve’s Steam platform, Occupy White Walls allows art and architecture enthusiasts to build and curate their own gallery spaces. Players can select from 2200 architectural assets and over 6000 artworks, guided by an artificial intelligence assistant. Furthermore, they can add or remove wings, acquire new pieces, and teleport to other galleries to observe peers’ work. If inspired, players can leave comments in the guest book situated at a gallery’s reception desk.
The game went live in open beta in November 2018. However, it has recently attracted hordes of new users—10,000 in the past month, marking a 25% increase—as lockdowns have spread around the globe. “We observed about a 40% increase in playtime and new players, particularly from hard-hit countries,” comments Yarden Yaroshevski, founder and CEO of StikiPixels, the London-based start-up behind Occupy White Walls.
While COVID-19 surely influenced this surge, Yaroshevski is quick to highlight that the company also launched significant updates around the same time. Nonetheless, the game appears to resonate well with a house-bound audience. “We organized a mosaic competition based on the theme of social distancing, which attracted many incredibly creative submissions,” he mentions.
In the coming weeks, hopefully by the end of May, StikiPixels plans to introduce art uploads. This feature will enable any artist to make their work available to in-game gallerists for a nominal fee. Additionally, the game’s art discovery AI will promote the pieces, and each artist will have access to their statistics, which will be updated in real-time.
“We aspire to support artists by helping them find an audience,” Yaroshevski expressed in an interview with It’s Nice That in March. “No matter how obscure, the art will find fans here.”