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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

"hardware will eventually die, and video recording will become more and more important, but that doesn't mean they will still exist 100 years later."

In the minds of many people, gaming is a very new industry, but it actually has a history of several decades. The games produced over the past few decades are vast, and there are many famous masterpieces that newcomers have never heard of, as developers leave, change careers, die, companies go bankrupt, acquired, and various copyright, privacy protection issues. Many of these games are gradually lost in the long river of history. In recent years, many people have begun to pay attention to the topic of preservation of old games, or try to save old games themselves, but the intensity of protection is far from catching up with the fast-growing industry itself.

Andrew Berman, director of the digital games museum at the strong National Museum (The Strong National Museum of Play) in Rochester, New York, which focuses on game preservation, said: "We need more people, more time and financial support. As more and more games come out, we certainly need more hands and time to preserve them."

Berman has worked for the museum for five years, but for the past 20 years, he has been working on preserving old games. The museum has a collection of about 65000 game-related items, including thousands of magazines, books, catalogs and other printed materials. He believes that with the rise of digital games, game custodians will face a series of new challenges.

"if you look at physical retail games before the PS4 or Xbox One era, people have preserved them quite well and a large number of copies can be found on the market. Of course, there are exceptions, such as some offering only digital versions, but in most cases, physical games will be preserved and will not disappear completely."

The strong National Museum, which has a collection of hundreds of thousands of pieces, is dedicated to collecting and preserving games and focusing on the challenges posed by digital distribution of game history. "Today, some physical games do not provide full content. Instead, players are provided with an activation key for downloadable versions, or by downloading constantly updated versions." "this means that physical copies are no longer a magic tool for saving games," Berman said. "

Chris Young, director of the Sedbolton Collection (Syd Bolton Collection) at the University of Toronto, Missouri, Canada, feels the same way. In 2018, after the death of game collector Sid Bolton, the campus of Mississippi bought the collection. So far, the library has about 14,000 games, more than 5000 magazines and a large number of other materials that have not yet been recorded.

"in the past, all you had to do was get a cassette or CD, but now it's much more difficult to keep the old games." Yang added, "the environment has changed and the game is almost always updated." To some extent, given the changes in games over time, it is almost impossible to keep them intact. For example, a mobile game that has been around for 10 years is likely to look very different from when it was first released, because the development team has updated it countless times, adding new patches, storylines, interfaces, menu systems, and so on. "

Even if developers have backups of all the versions on hand, if the hardware or software that supports the game is replaced, it will be difficult to save and reopen it. "developers mentioned to us that many API have retired from history, and even if they have source code and other raw material, they will probably not be able to make the old games work properly because those services no longer exist." Berman said.

Yang is sorting out game tapes, and because of the venue and the epidemic, the Sedbolton Collection currently only accepts appointments to visit and deal with lawyers. When these museum institutions try to preserve the old games, there is another question to consider. That is whether game companies will think that this practice infringes on their intellectual property rights.

Yang said this is the biggest problem he faces right now. "the situation is getting worse and worse because many games have to be played online, and once the game company shuts down the server, all players will be forced to go offline. From a legal point of view, if individuals or organizations try to build their own servers, they are often classified as illegal."

Berman mentioned that there are exemptions in the Digital Millennium copyright Act in the United States, such as when a company is no longer running an official server, researchers can circumvent copyright protection and get the game running again. Tron Evolution is an example, but this is rare. "We can circumvent restrictions at the legal level." "but it's technically too difficult, it's time-consuming and laborious, and it's a problem in a lot of games," Berman said. "

In the United States and Canada, laws seem to allow scholars to make copies of games for learning and research purposes. However, Yang said that this right has not yet been proved in court, and people engaged in game protection work do not dare to take risks. Unless enough institutions do so and are not sued (or won), no one can guarantee that this will work.

How online games can be perfectly preserved has always been a perplexing question. Game history is at risk of disappearing. Berman specifically mentioned the difficulty of preserving mobile games.

"A lot of people start from scratch when they change their phones, so that no matter which games are installed on their phones, they will disappear completely. It is already quite difficult to get data, not to mention that there are so many different brands of phones on the market, which are unique in many ways. For example, the way to get data from Thundersnake and LG chocolate phones is very different."

New technologies such as cloud games further increase the complexity of preserving old games. However, Berman seems to have accepted the fact that he thinks there is no perfect way to preserve all the games. " If the goal is to keep the runnable version of each game, then we have already lost. We have realized that we may never see some games again, and we won't be able to save a cloud version of a game unless we work with developers. But even if you get a copy from the developer, the experience of using the local machine is different from that of the cloud. "

The result is that in the future, people will probably not be able to actually play certain games and will only try to understand what the game will look like in 2022 under various restrictions.

Saving the game itself is only the first step, and it is more difficult to restore the game devices and scenes at that time. "for protectors, because we are unable to adopt the usual methods in the past, it will be much more difficult to save the game." "I think over time, history must be preserved in a variety of different ways, such as recording videos, writing oral history, and so on, to help people understand the current gaming industry 20 or 30 years later," Yang said. "

Berman feels the same way. " Video will be a powerful tool, especially for games that can't run on the simulator, which is better than nothing. Of course, I want to save all the playable versions of the game, but that's not realistic. 100 years later, watching videos may be the easiest way for people to learn about a game. Many games are not very popular with players, no one wants to play them again, maybe only the video can be circulated for a long time. "

In fact, part of Berman's idea has been realized, and now on the Internet, you can find a clearance video of an unknown game in the red and white machine era without too much trouble. This may be enough for the preservation of most games. But Berman thinks more.

"at the strong National Museum, we tend to look at this from a longer-term perspective." "We often think about how researchers 100 years from now want to understand the games we are playing, the game industry, and other issues related to video games," Berman said. Based on this idea, in addition to the game work itself, the museum records players' reactions to the game, such as preserving things that can only be seen at the E3 exhibition.

"the hardware we use to play games will eventually die out, so video recording is bound to become more and more important. although there are many such videos on the Internet today, it doesn't mean they will still exist 100 years later."

The strong Museum is still expanding and will focus more on the display of video games and related technologies in the future for the sake of preserving games for profit. Of course, not every protector's plan is so big that it may be more important to take the first step first. Embracer Group, a Swedish publisher, launched its own game archive in 2022 and now has a collection of about 50,000 games, consoles and accessories. In order to obtain and keep physical versions of all the released games on the market, the publisher hired five full-time people.

"our venue is large enough because we are ambitious and want to collect a lot of games, game accessories and hardware." Embreather's chief archivist Natalia Kovalainen explained.

Unlike schools and not-for-profit museums, Embraser's project is run by a for-profit company, but Kovalainen said Embraser did not think about how to make money by building game archives. " In our view, we are trying to promote and preserve games, game history and culture, and someone has to do it. At present, this project will not generate any economic benefits, and we do not know whether we can make money from it in the future. This is not our original intention. We feel that it is no different from any other cultural institution or library. "

Berman is pleased to see that Embreather is interested in saving the game. On the one hand, he hopes that there will be more large game collections around the world to facilitate the work of researchers; on the other hand, he believes that the best heritage conservation often begins within the company. " In theory, they have established contacts with dozens or even hundreds of studios, with the aim of pooling all company files in one place to create something that is really impressive and important for preserving game history. "

Unfortunately, David Bostrom and Kovalainen, chief executives of the Embraser Game Archives, have repeatedly stressed that their project is still in its infancy and that all collections will not be open to the public or researchers. According to Kovalainen, in order to better preserve the game, Embreather's studio often communicates and shares experiences and best practices.

The Embraser archive is still in the early stages of construction, with the goal of collecting copies of each physical game. If Embraser is willing to carry out such an unprofitable project, why are other larger listed game companies reluctant to follow suit?

Maybe it's because these companies are based entirely on realism. "with the exception of typical cases such as Super Mario Brothers, they usually don't revive old games unless there are financial incentives." Yang said.

This is exactly one of the things that the Embraser Game Archives is doing. Bostrom revealed that Embraser had worked with several game companies to provide each other with high-definition scans of the covers of their old games, because developers often did not consciously save these things. There are also publishers who consciously save games, but Yang points out that in most cases, game companies tend to keep their work secret, let alone open their games and other materials to outside researchers.

Berman also believes that it is often not clear what measures game companies are taking to protect games, but he still welcomes such private measures. " There is evidence that companies such as Nintendo have built excellent game archives, but we don't have access to them. Many people don't see this as part of game protection, but it's still important. As long as game companies are willing to preserve history, we may have a chance to see it one day in the future. "

Yang also believes that the reason why many game companies are reluctant to share with the outside world may be that some dishonorable facts have had an impact on game development, such as workplace scandals, exploitative business models and so on. "journalists have recorded part of the history well, but they can't be expected to tell it by themselves."

Bostrom's office, full of gaming style, professional division of labor and cooperation although Embrazer and strong National Museum preserve old games in a completely different way, Berman welcomes "newcomers" to enter the field. "other organizations and teams have their own concerns, which will help people understand video games in a more comprehensive way."

Embreather focuses on collecting physical games, including versions of each game sold in different regions and in different languages. "in the long run, this will be one of our main strengths." "it's exciting for researchers to compare different versions of the same game," Kovalainen said. "

The Saide Bolton Collection focuses on games sold in the North American market. Chris Young said that the University of Toronto in Missouri particularly wants to collect "cultural relics" from the gaming industry in Toronto and Ontario, because the university believes that a rare game will often be pre-empted by other organizations. people prefer to chase popular collections, while far fewer people are willing to preserve the history of local game development.

The collection of the strong National Museum is more international. Berman points out that he has hosted some Japanese researchers who have found that the strong National Museum has a larger and wider collection of old Nintendo games sold in Japan's home market than domestic museums. At this stage, the museum focuses on collecting backup floppy disks and game design documents.

Every museum wants to have a rare collection, but it is more important to make its own characteristics, and different schools, museums and private institutions will work more closely together over time.

"for now, there are still too few institutions to carry out this work in any substantive way." "in other areas, such as books or films, more institutions are collecting old works, and more people are willing to donate generously," Yang said. they don't necessarily like these institutions, but since they are collecting, they are willing to provide some information.'" Such institutions and donors are also needed in the gaming industry.

Kovalainen believes that no matter how organizations preserve old games, collaboration is crucial. "it's very important for us to be part of the community because we need to work together and we can't do it alone."... no one can do everything at the same time, we have to work together. "

Berman added: "developers should keep the source code, design documents and videos of their works and contact specialized agencies instead of putting them on the auction website. We are happy to give advice and accept donations from developers. We're here to help. To preserve old games, we and the game industry need each other."

This article is compiled from: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ is-game-preservation-a-losing-battle

The original title: "Is game preservation a losing battle?"

Original author: Brendan Sinclair

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