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# In Kyoto, an art hotel treated games as social diagrams
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/in-kyoto-an-art-hotel-treated-games-as-social-diagrams/
- Published: 2026-09-18T01:40:45.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-18T01:40:44.000Z
- Description: art bit #6: Game Playing Society put HUMANITY, SCHiM and Coffee Talk beside Courtinat and Kihara
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: art bit, Hotel Anteroom Kyoto, BitSummit, TOMO KIHARA, SCHiM, exhibition, Japan, Installation, News

Kyoto has a standing answer to the question of whether games belong in galleries, and it just wrapped its sixth year. *Game Playing Society*, the latest edition of *art bit*—the exhibition series born when Hotel Anteroom's gallery met [BitSummit](https://bitsummit.org/en/about-2/?ref=killscreen.com), the city's independent games festival—ran May 16 through July 12 at Gallery 9.5, free to enter, everything playable. The premise this time: treat play not as an escape from society but as a way of modelling it. [The gallery's own announcement](https://www.instagram.com/p/DYv5LMOmCeF/?ref=killscreen.com) asked people to come and actually play, which sounds obvious until you remember how many game-art shows still bolt the controller to the plinth.

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From the introduction trailer for **SCHiM* (Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman, 2024), one of the playable works in **art bit #6*. Watch [the full trailer with sound on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1519710/SCHiM/?ref=killscreen.com).

The Steam wing reads like a syllabus on agency: *HUMANITY* turns crowd direction into a choreography of obedience, *SCHiM* builds a platformer out of shadows and attachment, *Coffee Talk* reframes service work as listening, *Craftopia* compresses farming, hunting and automation into one production sandbox, and *Relooted* turns museum restitution into an Afrofuturist heist. 

Beside them hung the game-art cohort—Mélanie Courtinat's *INDULTO*, Vincent Moulinet's *Daddy loves you too*, Sakiko Fujishima's *Digital Persona—Two Voices*, and Tomo Kihara's *What Plays You?—Game of Possible Lives*, which generates plausible biographies out of Japan's census data. ([We interviewed Kihara about that work in August](https://www.killscreen.com/tomo-kihara-game-of-possible-lives/).) 

What *art bit* models better than most institutions is its refusal to file indie games and game art as separate categories, the same argument we found in [Larry Achiampong's gaming rooms](https://www.killscreen.com/achiampong-the-gaming-room/) last month. A hotel gallery between Kujo and Jujo has been running that experiment quietly for six years. The seventh is worth planning a trip around—ideally the week BitSummit is in town.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/humanity-screenshot.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/schim-screenshot-1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/coffee-talk-screenshot.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/craftopia-screenshot.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/relooted-screenshot.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/schim-screenshot-2.jpg)

The exhibition’s playable wing, in screenshots via Steam: **HUMANITY*, **SCHiM*, **Coffee Talk*, **Craftopia*, and **Relooted*.

Radar covers the rooms where games and art stop pretending to be strangers—Kyoto included. Three short issues a week, free.

[Get Radar free ](https://www.killscreen.com/start/?ref=radar-cta)