Preservation

In Real Life

Do You Think Video Games Are Worth Saving?

10:00AM December 23, 2011 | Jon-Paul C. Dyson

In Real Life

U.S. Senator Mad That Your Tax Dollars Saved Video Games

5:00AM December 22, 2011 | Brian Crecente

Video game preservation, educational robot dragons and Department of Homeland Security Sno Cones are just some of the “outlandish” federally funded projects called out in U.S. Senator Tom Coburn’s annual big book of wasteful government spending this week. More »


In Real Life

Is The PC Key To Preserving Our Console Gaming History?

3:20AM March 10, 2011 | Mike Fahey

In today’s Speak-Up on Kotaku, commenter Pixiebutt salutes Sega for making its classic console titles available on Steam, and dreams of a day when other present and former gaming hardware companies follow suit. More »


News

Just Who Is Preserving Gaming History?

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10:00AM June 16, 2009 | David Wildgoose

Old books are collected in libraries. Old art in art galleries. Old music on commercial FM radio. But what are we doing to hang onto our old games? More »


News

Saving Our Past: the UK Video Game Archive

5:30AM November 17, 2008 | Maggie Greene

I’m an archive junkie — I consider it a side-effect of my profession, since we spend half our lives in temperature-controlled buildings with lots of old stuff. So I watch the growth of the video game archives across the globe with no small measure of excitement — not only does my little historian heart go pitter-patter at the fact that people are being so proactive in figuring out how to preserve our beloved medium for future generations, but it means a couple more places to poke my head in when I have a good excuse. The recent announcement of the UK National Video Game Archive has led to some fruitful discussion on how to preserve games — not just in terms of the hardware, but also as a culture. Which, of course, is a hell of a lot harder than making sure books don’t rot:

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Uncategorized

Preserving MMOs: An Archivist’s Challenge

4:30AM August 11, 2008 | Maggie Greene

Preservation of ‘new media’ has gotten some attention in recent months — a lot of venerable collections are moving to figure out the best ways to preserve games and gaming media in an archival setting, while building useful collections for the future. The University of Texas at Austin was recently awarded over $US 250,000 to study the collection and preservation of MMOs. In addition to the obvious bits of preservation problems — software and the like — the project is also pretty broad in scope, including an oral history component, as the project head Megan Winget explained:

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Uncategorized

Preserving Our History: Good Games Never Go Out of Style

2:30AM June 30, 2008 | Maggie Greene

Rob Zacny has a thought provoking piece up at the Escapist: on the whole, we’re the worst genre when it comes to preserving our history, even the great classics acknowledged as ‘great.’ In a society — never mind technical area — where progress and marching forward is the name of the game, it’s not exactly surprising, but a problem nonetheless. And not just for the history buffs among us:

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