Checkpoint Festival caught my eye because it isn’t trying to be another loud expo full of merch and marketing beats. It’s a four-day boutique gathering at Rome’s GAMM Game Museum (Nov 13-16) that treats games as culture first and industry second – with talks on preservation, identity, inclusion, and the tech shaping the next wave of interactive art. Better yet, it’s accessible: €15 gets you in-person or a virtual ticket via Women in Games’ platform. That’s pocket change compared to the price of a single con day pass elsewhere.
Here’s the spine: Checkpoint Festival, presented by Women in Games, CSAI, and the GAMM Game Museum in Rome, runs Thursday-Sunday, November 13-16. The first two days are a curated conference at GAMM — also livestreamed via Women in Games’ RingCentral platform — followed by a weekend of showcases, interactive workshops, and community programming on-site. It’s a museum-led event, which instantly shifts the tone from product to preservation.
Keynotes set the framing: Ukie’s CEO Nick Poole opens with The Power of Play to Shape Society — essentially the case for games as cultural infrastructure, not disposable content. Then IIDEA’s Thalita Malagò digs into Elevating Italian Identity Through Games, which lands nicely in Rome. Italy’s scene has been quietly impactful for years: Milestone’s racing craft, Kunos Simulazioni’s sim cred, and Ubisoft Milan’s Mario + Rabbids work all point to a country that punches above its weight.
The preservation panel — featuring Andreas Lange (EFGAMP), Natalia Kovalainen (Embracer Games Archive), and Bartosz Kwietniewski (GOG) — is the one I’ve circled in permanent marker. Between storefront delistings, online-only DRM, and studios shuttering, we’re in a precarious era where “forever games” can vanish overnight. Getting EFGAMP and GOG in the same room to talk practical fixes (licensing pathways, format migration, public archives) is worth the entry fee alone.
Other sessions are tuned to real issues players feel: Kate Edwards on creating games in a polarized world; a localization/culturalization panel about translating worlds without sanding off identity; a talk on real-time emotion research; and a Women in Games-led focus on building inclusive communities that actually last. There’s even a peek at Milestone’s Screamer lineage — a nice nod to storytelling through heritage and tech.
We’ve all watched museums and cultural bodies catch up to games over the last decade — from MoMA’s design selections to the UK’s National Videogame Museum and The Strong’s expanding game archive. GAMM is Italy’s dedicated museum for interactive arts, and anchoring a festival there turns “games are culture” from slogan to setting. That context matters. A museum can convene policymakers, academics, and studios without defaulting to sales talk.
It also lands at a tense moment. Preservation is underfunded. Discoverability has cratered for small teams. Inclusion work ebbs and flows with whatever the quarterly reports demand. And yet players are hungrier than ever for games with a sense of place, history, and authorship. If Checkpoint can push the conversation from “should we preserve?” to “how do we fund and legislate preservation” — with action points shared publicly — it’ll be more than another smart panel show.
For €15, you can stream heavyweight talks without flying to a trade show. I wish the stream were on a more familiar platform than RingCentral for the gamer crowd, but if the VODs are posted after, it’s a non-issue. On-site in Rome, the weekend turns into something more tactile: showcases and workshops at the museum. The release doesn’t name the playable lineup, so temper expectations — this reads like curated experiences and hands-on labs rather than a giant indie mega-booth. Still, the museum setting suggests thoughtful curation over hype cycles.
Must-watch picks if you tune in virtually: Poole’s opening keynote for policy context; the preservation roundtable for tangible next steps; Kate Edwards on navigating culture wars without creative paralysis; and the localization panel if you care about how games travel across languages without losing flavor. If you’re attending in person, keep an eye out for workshop slots early — intimate festivals fill those seats fast.
Events about “culture” risk becoming echo chambers. I’ll be looking for outputs beyond applause: published recommendations on preservation funding, commitments to accessibility in archives, and practical toolkits for inclusive community building. Clear post-festival materials — slides, recorded sessions, a summary paper — would make the €15 feel like a steal and extend the impact beyond the room. Also, I want clarity on the weekend showcases: who’s showing what, and how interactive are the workshops?
The upside is the boutique scale. Smaller rooms mean real Q&A, fewer PR force fields, and cross-pollination between policy folks and devs who actually ship games. If Checkpoint sticks that landing, it could become a yearly touchstone like a mini-GDC Civic Track — just with Roman flair and better espresso.
Checkpoint Festival turns Rome’s GAMM Museum into a four-day conversation about games as culture, with €15 tickets, livestreamed talks, and a weekend of hands-on programming. The speaker list is strong, the focus is timely, and the museum venue gives it teeth — now it needs to back the dialogue with public, practical outputs. If you care about preservation, inclusion, and how games shape identity, this is worth your time.
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