WikiAsteroids: Bringing Wikipedia to Life in an Arcade Cabinet

“Well, why don’t we have a game where you shoot the rocks and blow them up?”
— Lyle Rains, co-developer of Asteroids

Introducing WikiAsteroids

I recently launched WikiAsteroids (asteroids.wiki), a browser game that takes the classic arcade space shooter concept and adds a Wikipedia twist: each time someone makes an edit on Wikipedia, a new asteroid spawns. The size of the asteroid corresponds to the size of the edit. Blue asteroids represent edits with a net increase in content, while red ones indicate a net decrease. A new article creation spawns an extra life, and new user registrations spawn one of several possible power-ups (such as a shield, faster shooting, or slow-motion).

As the player destroys asteroids and collects power-ups, the corresponding articles and new users are added to a log. After the game, one can scroll through the history of all the on-wiki actions that drove their gameplay experience.

Once the player loses their lives and gets a Game Over, they can see which article spawned the asteroid that destroyed their ship. After I released the game, users on social media started sharing fun instances of the article that caused their demise.

I learned how unexpectedly fun it can be to see your fate decided by unpredictable waves of Wikipedia edits. A new user registering can give you just the power-up you need to get out of a sticky situation. An on-wiki editing spree could spawn a slew of asteroids that lead to a rapid unplanned disassembly of your ship.

Once while testing, I noticed a swarm of edits to National Register of Historic Places lists. It turned out to be a large series of edits by Steven Pruitt, one of Wikipedia’s most prolific editors. The integration with Wikipedia’s recent changes feed makes each game unique and provides a strangely captivating window into the frequency of edits that create Wikipedia.

Building the WikiAsteroids Arcade Cabinet

A browser-based game is great, but I wanted to go a step further see how WikiAsteroids might come to life as a physical arcade cabinet. At SXSW 2025 in Austin, Texas, I helped host the Wikihaus, a space dedicated to open knowledge events supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, Creative Commons, WikiPortraits, and Wikimedia NYC. This was the perfect opportunity to put together a WikiAsteroids arcade cabinet.

I came prepared with a Picade, a mini arcade cabinet that houses a Raspberry Pi. I put it together on the eve of the keynote Wikimedia Open House, though it turned into an all-night debugging adventure that included a bizarre glitch in which plugging in a keyboard turned the screen entirely off.

By 6 a.m., we had a functional little machine. I added a custom 3D-printed WikiAsteroids logo to give it some extra flair, and voilà: the WikiAsteroids arcade cabinet was born.

We debuted the machine to Wikimedians and curious visitors at the Wikihaus. It was nice to see people—especially non-Wikimedians—play the game and get excited about how the game was driven by real-time Wikipedia edits from around the world.

The high score of the day was 332, courtesy of a devoted player determined to survive the onslaught of Wikipedia’s recent changes.

The cabinet did more than just amuse our guests. It demonstrated a new way our encyclopedia can become a fun, engaging, and even social experience in a physical space. There are creative ways to connect the digital and physical worlds and get curious humans interested in what goes on behind the scenes of it all.

Inspiration and History

The inspiration to build a Wikipedia-themed arcade cabinet goes back to the Internet Arcade, located in the foyer of the Internet Archive in San Francisco. This physical arcade cabinet lets you explore the archive and play a slew of classic games. My friend Kolby Webster and I discovered this cabinet while attending WikiCredCon 2025, a gathering of Wikimedians focusing on credibility in the Wikimedia ecosystem. We were inspired by this physical manifestation of a digital institution.

Kolby is a fellow arcade fan, resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is currently working on rebuilding Dreamland, a Black-owned theater that was lost twice—once during the 1921 Tulsa massacre, and again in the 1950s to make way for an interstate. He understands the value of creating shared spaces that enable in-person interactions and experiences. Kolby suggested that, “Facts should occupy more physical space in our lives.” How could we bring Wikipedia into the physical realm in a similar fashion to the Internet Arcade?

There have been a number of wiki-powered games developed over the years. Wikiracing is a perennial classic in which people compete to navigate from one Wikipedia article to another as quickly as possible (fun fact: I won the international Wikiracing competition at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore!). Another favorite of mine is Wikitrivia by Tom Watson, a browser game that has you place cards in chronological order on a timeline. The game pulls data from Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Most recently, Maya Claire released The Museum of All Things, a virtually endless digital museum in which every exhibit represents a Wikipedia article. Much like you would in a regular museum, you can walk through and read excerpts from each article, and spend time admiring images that catch your eye.

There have also been a number of fun visualizations built over the years. WikiGalaxy by Owen Cornec is one of my favorites, turning the web of Wikipedia articles into a massive 3D galaxy you can explore, as highlighted by Wired magazine (unfortunately it no longer appears to be online at the time of this post). Another favorite of mine, Listen to Wikipedia by Hatnote, is a real-time audiovisual representation of Wikipedia edits. It takes live edit data from Wikipedia and converts it into an ambient soundscape, where each edit is represented by a musical note or sound effect.

These sort of Wikipedia visualizations and games got me thinking about what a Wikipedia-inspired arcade-style game could look like. As I was staring at Listen to Wikipedia for inspiration, I thought about how we could gamify each live “edit bubble.” I thought back to my collection of Atari 2600 games and Asteroids came to mind. And so the idea for WikiAsteroids was born.

Conclusion

Simple games can provide a playful glimpse into the collaborative hum that makes Wikipedia the amazing project that it is. We have a history of community members creating games and visualizations that serve as innovative ways to explore and interact with the encyclopedia. I hope we can continue to build fun, public engagements that get curious people interested in learning more about how our projects work.