I think we should games, only because well games are just like books or movies just more immersive.

Highlander2475

@bluetom00: I think you make a valid point, but I'd say the historian also has a responsibility for indexing what they preserve. This is the problem we see with the internet now - it's not that the content you want isn't available, it's all the crap you have to wade through to find it. If excluding some data allow the user to quickly find important, relevant works, then I'd say a valuable service is performed. But if you simply dump 1000s of ROMs in an archive and say it's the librarian's job (or worse, the end user) to sort the wheat from the chaff, then in most cases no one will bother to look at it.

It's always nice to see any treatment of interactive media as a culturally valid medium. Interesting article, nice discussion, good link.

Aleeightone

Protip: Anything download-only didn't happen.

...sucks for me because I'll happily pick up a 20 year old game and play it again.

fuchikoma

I have a whole slew of PC games with their boxes next to me right now. Mortal Kombat, Space Quest V, King's Quest V, Alone in the Dark, Inca, and a few others. My wife was going to throiw them out but I convinced her to keep them for posterity...for now.

lbogga1

They'd better have System Shock.

man_in_gauze

@bluetom00: I guess that's a long-winded way of saying, don't forget the crappy games just because they're crappy.

Yes, but still entirely valid. I agree, if we're archiving games don't throw out Fester's Quest just because popular opinion (and all objective logic yet devised by humans) suggests its not as good as SMB3, we're not really qualified to determine what if anything in an "archive" will be of use to our descendants, often the things we think are trash or useless will be crucial knowledge to them ;)

DaiMacculate

Hey, my college is doing something right for once! It almost gives me school spirit.

I would think ROMs would be the way to go. Or get a niche business selling a device that can play old games.

TheWP

Most excellent. I ponder of the day when I could take my grandkid to a video game smithsonian.

Fyren

This is a really good idea, although its a bit weird thinking we've come far enough to need to preserve the history of gaming. I know at times i have wanted to go back and revisit games i played when i was a kid, like kings quest, commander keen, escape from mars, stunts. And you can get some of these still on emulation if you look hard enough.

Crankyhobo

I think that if Libraries could both keep a stock of original cd/dvd/cartridges and allow library users to access roms to play from their catalog it could be a good compromise.
That way people at least get to play the games and can look at the originals(in whatever way the library chooses to show them).
I'm sure using the original pads through USB converters it would feel enough like playing the real thing.

TokeYo

There are other questions to consider: who decides which games get archived, and what criteria do they use to evaluate potential archive material?

Maggie, you're a historian, so you understand the epistemological dilemma of all archives: they're entirely artificial. Some person at some point decided that something should go in an archive; at the same time, that same person also decided that infinitely more other things don't belong in that archive. So in a sense archives come to reflect the ideas and values of the people responsible for putting them together. With the professionalization of the historical vocation in the early 20th century came the professionalization of archiving. Those early archivists infused their archiving decisions with their turn-of-the-century American bourgeois values. What this often meant was that the voices of "unimportant" people (i.e., everyone on the lower end of the socioeconomic and ethnic totem pole) were excluded. Sure, Teddy Roosevelt's private correspondence mattered, but the factory worker's and the sharecropper's didn't.

So what's the implication for the conservation and archiving of gaming? Honestly, I'm not sure. Much will depend on the resources available for preserving these things. If a university library can afford to purchase and preserve, for example, the motherboards of every known arcade game from the 1970s, then perhaps that archive will feel a little less artificial. But if the recent decision of the Smithsonian to preserve just a handful of early console games (I don't remember which off-hand) is any indication, then we may just end up in the conundrum of artificial archives once again.

I guess that's a long-winded way of saying, don't forget the crappy games just because they're crappy.

bluetom00

Yes, which games make the cut? Are we talking about ET or Mappyland here?

SSJPabs

Considering they implemente a law in the Digital Millenium Act about circumvencing (sp?) a system (aka emulation of sort) that if is for preservation in a library or achive if the original item is no longer manufacture or avaliable in the market...I can see that is probaly the way they'll go to let people 'experience them' while keeping the original behind glass or something as exhibitation.

Me and a friend (he has a near PHd in education and is using gaming as part of it) are writting a book of canon games in need of preservation. So information like this is always usefull :D

daknight

I think the experience is too individual to be archivable. Especially with multiplayer games.

DarkGildon

@Nobuyuki: I've never thought about that before. My experiences with Star Wars Galaxies were a lot better when I had a few friends playing it before the NGE. So will online games be preserved in every incarnation? As in every patch will be saved?
But I whole heartidly agree that these types of online experiences cannot be archived.

Impul5se

I definitely like this idea. One thing I wish they would do is make ROMS free and legal for emulators. I really don't understand the position of the ESA. Half the ROMS out there are no longer available anywhere. I really want to play the Super Mario RPG, but I don't really have a way of getting it. The way I see it is they are in fact holding game history hostage, and that just seems wrong to me.

Athest

This is really an exciting development, and only further legitimizes the video game industry as having a place among the traditional visual art forms.

JohnnytheFuture

Reading this article made me think for some reason of Ultima Online. That game still exists, technically, but the experience I had when I played it so many years ago is gone and irreplaceable. Single Player games can be archived and stored but I guess you can't match the experience and culture surrounding a multiplayer game at a given time, huh.

Nobuyuki

So who's down with the heist of these games? We'll need a safe cracker for sure.

thinkfreemind

@DaiMacculate: I think that part of the goal is to preserve/duplicate the original box as best they can, with emulation as a fall back.

ggodo

Perhaps some sort of standardised emulation technology that console manufacturers could get involved with? Of course they love selling old games to us again so this technology and the database of games would probably have to be limited to in-library use or only for academics.

I'm of course suggesting games become available on this system after X years which the industry agrees on, in a perfect world.

Kazzahdrane

I wonder how emulation can and does figure into this; if its important to experience the games in context, does that mean custom built reproductions of its original Hardware, or just emulation? I know playing King's Quest or something on an Apple IIe emulator doesn't quite match the experience of firing up the actual box and playing it on that dark little screen, for example. Very interesting topic, please keep us informed on what happens with it going forward.

DaiMacculate

I dunno, I'd say the physical copies are important simply to preserve the original medium as much as the original content.

Maldron

Will there soon be a museum of video games? Or a Hall of Fame?

PsycheDiver