Hovering above a pit of plastic balls, a pair of industrial robotic arms, with a different player controlling each joint, whirs to life as teams struggle to coordinate their movements to scoop balls into a scoring bucket at the City University of Hong Kong’s “The Power of Play” exhibition.
Buckets of Fun is a real-time collaborative robotic game in which two teams compete to scoop balls and deposit them into scoring buckets. Instead of giving one player full control, each player uses a custom haptic dial interface to control a part of the robot, providing a first-hand demonstration of how essential coordination and collaboration are.
Just Brain-Rotting Entertainment?
Running until October 25th at the City University of Hong Kong Indra and Harry Banga Gallery, “The Power of Play” is the gallery’s latest exhibition, curated by Professor Espen Aarseth, Dean and Chair Professor of the School of Creative Media. It explores the connections between games, art and technology and the common misconceptions surrounding gaming culture.
“It’s trying to convey the message that games are not usually just brain-rotting entertainment”, says Nyoman Cmpak Bunga, a Year 2 student at CityU and exhibition helper, gesturing at the visitors playing together. “It can also be about team building, a medium to practice your teamwork”.
Games in Hong Kong
Games and video games have long been an everyday form of entertainment in Hong Kong. In 2025, Hong Kong’s toys-and-games exports rose to 18.56 billion HKD, a 36% increase from the previous year, and video games experienced a 110% growth, according to the Hong Kong Trade Statistics, Census and Statistics Department. Many use games as a form of escapism, especially in the midst of Hong Kong’s fast-paced environment, as it allows people to experience so much more in the comfort of their own homes. As gaming shifts from casual entertainment to a global competitive phenomenon, the attitude towards gaming also changes.
For visitors like William Ho, games are not just a testament to their aesthetics, but can include social commentary through interactive experience.
“I recently played Cyberpunk 2077. In the game, everything is polluted, the environment is destroyed, with subscriptions everywhere,” says 23-year-old William Ho. “We start to see this approach in economics and our society, with how the more money you have, the more valuable you are. The game gives a warning on what happens if we put too much emphasis on material value rather than human life.”
From Ancient Board Games to Global Esports
The exhibition begins with Reimagining Senet, one of the world’s oldest known board games, dating back 5000 years to Ancient Egypt. Next, it takes us to Lost? In the Labyrinth, with a VR section to allow visitors to navigate their way through three classic labyrinths. Labyrinths are some of the oldest games and were often mythical – even today we use them as metaphors for uncertainties and hardships in life.
Moving on, visitors feel almost immersed in a video game as they walk along the dark corridors lit up by an artificial neon glow. They enter a section that then asks a fundamental question: Good, Bad, or Innocent Fun? This section dives deeper into the relationship between games and education, as well as examining the gambling elements and violent characteristics found in games. It displays physical copies of games such as Mortal Kombat and Fallout on the walls.
“People would portray games as something brain-rotting, addicting, and overall negative, especially to the older generation, says Bunga. “But it can actually be used to teach in schools, to allow people to discover new things.”
Further along, the corridor opens out to 2 rows of gaming stations equipped with individual monitors. From Gaming to Esports allows visitors to try out two of the classic games from the era that transitioned casual gaming to global competitions and fanbases.
Memory and Minecraft
The last section includes a large interactive screen that showcases a recreation of Hong Kong in Minecraft. Build the Earth: Hong Kong in Minecraft is a project with contributors who build their homes, favourite streets, restaurants, one block at a time. Many districts like Central, Wan Chai, and Tsim Sha Tsui have already been brought to life in this project. Contributors also recreated buildings that had been demolished or damaged in real life.
“If you had something like Minecraft, where you were able to represent the physical world as it was back in the past, you could create models of how things used to look like, and keep that memory somewhere,” says Ho, while using the controller to move around in the BTE Minecraft world.
Back to the 1980s
One of the most popular sections was the Retro Room. Under the bright magenta neon sign “Time Travel”, visitors take a trip down memory lane to the 1980s. Retro Room is a replica of what a Hong Kong home might have looked like years ago. A vintage CRT television flickers with the pixelated graphics of a classic fighting game, and the rapid clicking of buttons fill the air as visitors focus intensely on the game. The bulky frame of the television and the classic game “Street Fighter” are the kind that populated Hong Kong’s gaming scene in the 1980s.
For many visitors, the Retro Room brought back memories of a previous time.
“It’s very nostalgic; seeing a lot of consoles from when I was younger evokes a lot of emotion,” says Ho. “I was surprised to see physical consoles, like the original PlayStation 1, and the Nintendo DS.”
Changing Minds about Gaming
As visitors navigate the twisty hallways, stumbling upon new sections and experiencing new games, the exhibition’s core message becomes clear. Games go beyond just surface-level fun and can be representations of culture or wider social implications.
”I hope people take away that gaming culture is not necessarily a bad thing,” says Bunga. “Hopefully after this exhibition, they can be more open-minded about what we can actually do with games and how we can be responsible as a gamer.”