It all started rather unexpectedly, as many great adventures do. Back in July 2008, Alex Handy, a tech journalist with a keen sense of lost treasures, stumbled upon some dusty but magical computer chips-those EPROMs-from the Atari and ColecoVision era at the Laney College flea market down the road. Not everyone would be excited about finding plastic chips that held ancient code, but to Alex, it was as if he’d discovered the Holy Grail of video game development. These chips had early, unfinished versions of games-a behind-the-scenes peek at how your favorite classics came to life, bug and all.
Rather than keep these treasures to himself-or sell them to the highest bidder-Alex had a different idea: what if people could pick up a game controller and actually play through history? What if digital art and video games were preserved, not as antiques, but as interactive artifacts? With the help of volunteers, he launched The MADE’s first collection at GDC 2011, showing off a big, colorful poster that traced the complicated family tree of the video game industry. Pros who’d worked at famed studios signed beside their old stomping grounds, almost as if superheroes were autographing the pages of their origin stories.
Securing a real home for the museum wasn’t exactly game over in the first level. There was a memorable journey through potential venues-including a spot once belonging to William Hearst, where the city’s newspapers thundered off presses by the ton. Eventually, with a little help from Oakland’s own City Hall, The MADE landed at 610 16th Street. But here’s a fun Oakland twist: their neighbors included the Mongolian Cultural Center and court-mandated anger management classes-so if someone raged while losing in a game, help wasn’t far away!
Preservation here isn’t just about gathering old games. The MADE’s partners-Stanford, MIT, Archive.org, and even the Electronic Frontier Foundation-teamed up on projects like reviving Habitat, the world’s very first graphical massively multiplayer online game. If you’re a gamer, think of it as the great-grandparent of the games you love today. The museum helped change copyright law, letting people legally restore old games after their makers vanished. Pretty heroic, right?
There have been some epic boss battles, too. In June 2015, the ceiling in The MADE’s classroom crashed down. That’s one way to test your reflexes! Undeterred, a Kickstarter helped relocate The MADE to a shiny 4,000-square-foot ground-floor spot on Broadway. The reopening in 2016 drew in crowds, eager to try hands-on exhibits and enroll in free programming workshops, from drawing 8-bit art to writing their own simple games using Scratch. On Saturday mornings, kids as young as nine tackle creative quests in code-no experience required, just a willingness to mash buttons and learn.
As every gamer knows, sometimes the real world throws in its own cheat codes. The pandemic hit in 2020 and forced the museum into storage, with classic consoles and rare arcade machines tucked away like items in a treasure chest. Instead of going silent, MADE’s team launched a podcast, drawing stories from legendary developers like Will Wright-the mind behind SimCity-and even found time for a cameo in a NoClip documentary.
In 2022, after two years in timeout, The MADE respawned in its new downtown Oakland home-right where you’re standing today. The reopening party sounded like a victory fanfare, with over a hundred visitors and industry stars like Diablo II’s Matt Householder signing items and swapping tales. In 2024, The MADE leveled up again: hiring its first full-time executive director, Mason Young. The mission? To keep digital art alive and playable for the next generation.
Every week, there are game jams, speaker events, and epic tournaments-where nostalgia meets new discoveries. Somewhere inside, the Neohabitat project lives on, rebuilding Habitat from scratch with the help of volunteers like you-yes, you! So, as you stand here, savor the energy of a place where preserving the past means holding a controller, hitting start, and saying, “Let’s play!”
