Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape
July 11, 2023 4:46 AM Subscribe
An Alarming 87 Percent Of Retro Games Are Being Lost To Time [Kotaku] “The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) partnered with the Software Preservation Network, an organization intent on advancing software preservation through collective action, to release a report on the disappearance of classic video games. “Classic” in this case has been defined as all games released before 2010, which the VGHF noted is the “year when digital game distribution started to take off.” In the study, the two groups found that 87 percent of these classic games are not in release and considered critically endangered due to their widespread unavailability.” You can read the full 50-page study on the open repository Zenodo.
“One example from the paper is 2006's Yakuza on PlayStation 2. It’s been remade in the form of 2016's Yakuza Kiwami, which was hailed as excellent. But as the VGHF specified, Yakuza Kiwami “is a complete remake from the ground up and should be considered a separate title,” especially since the original game is no longer in print. This is what the VGHF is arguing for. “For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: Seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or… piracy,” VGHF co-director Kelsey Lewin wrote. “None of those options are desirable, which means most video games are inaccessible to all but the most diehard and dedicated fans. That’s pretty grim!””
“One example from the paper is 2006's Yakuza on PlayStation 2. It’s been remade in the form of 2016's Yakuza Kiwami, which was hailed as excellent. But as the VGHF specified, Yakuza Kiwami “is a complete remake from the ground up and should be considered a separate title,” especially since the original game is no longer in print. This is what the VGHF is arguing for. “For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: Seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or… piracy,” VGHF co-director Kelsey Lewin wrote. “None of those options are desirable, which means most video games are inaccessible to all but the most diehard and dedicated fans. That’s pretty grim!””
Fuck Nintendo and their complete and utter disrespect for video game preservation history. They are responsible for so much bullshit.
posted by Fizz at 4:51 AM on July 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 4:51 AM on July 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
I know that every time I download a digital game, I'm essentially just “renting” it on a particular device until that device becomes obsolete or is "deemed" obsolete by the company making that device b/c they want to sell you more capitalism on the next big thing. I don't think I'm alone in double or even triple dipping certain games b/c I want to be able to enjoy and play them on a modern device. I think its just kind of normal if you want access to certain older titles. Either you spend out of your pocket OR you become a pirate. And going the pirate route doesn't mean that said thing is easily available/accessible.
posted by Fizz at 4:59 AM on July 11, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 4:59 AM on July 11, 2023 [9 favorites]
Fuck Nintendo and their complete and utter disrespect for video game preservation history. They are responsible for so much bullshit.
Them and the IDSA/ESA.
posted by Dysk at 5:17 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Them and the IDSA/ESA.
posted by Dysk at 5:17 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
The study will be used in a 2024 copyright hearing to ask for exemptions for games. Lewin said she’s hopeful that progress will be made, suggesting that, should the hearing go well, games could be available on digital library apps like Libby.
That would be a trip. You'd have to package it with an emulator, I suppose?
But it really is incredible that so much art is being lost or has already been lost. Partly it's the problem we had with early television and film -- it's not considered "serious art" by people making these decisions, so it's not considered worthy of preservation.
The added wrinkle is described in the article -- games companies are making bank with remasters and re-releases of a small number of games and don't want to give up that potential revenue stream. Frankly, I think that's mostly a non-issue. People willing to shell out $40-80 for a remaster are probably going to buy it anyway, if only for the convenience of playing it on the latest console.
Letting libraries preserve and share old software is probably a win-win, ultimately. We regain access to historical software, and publishers find out which games are worth re-releasing with a few extra bells and whistles (or even as-is, to give players the option of avoiding whatever wonky emulators would be involved).
posted by uncleozzy at 5:18 AM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
That would be a trip. You'd have to package it with an emulator, I suppose?
But it really is incredible that so much art is being lost or has already been lost. Partly it's the problem we had with early television and film -- it's not considered "serious art" by people making these decisions, so it's not considered worthy of preservation.
The added wrinkle is described in the article -- games companies are making bank with remasters and re-releases of a small number of games and don't want to give up that potential revenue stream. Frankly, I think that's mostly a non-issue. People willing to shell out $40-80 for a remaster are probably going to buy it anyway, if only for the convenience of playing it on the latest console.
Letting libraries preserve and share old software is probably a win-win, ultimately. We regain access to historical software, and publishers find out which games are worth re-releasing with a few extra bells and whistles (or even as-is, to give players the option of avoiding whatever wonky emulators would be involved).
posted by uncleozzy at 5:18 AM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's kind of crazy how digital Piracy became so important to preservation, not only of video games but also music and films. I have stuff that I've pirated 20 years ago that today i would have absolutely no clue on how to obtain legally at a decent price.
posted by SageLeVoid at 5:22 AM on July 11, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by SageLeVoid at 5:22 AM on July 11, 2023 [19 favorites]
I have a box of old PC games on CD-ROM and floppy disk (!) that I am loath to just throw away, even though I doubt I have a working computer that will run any of them (and in some cases, no longer really am interested in playing). I wish there was a museum or something I could donate them all to.
posted by Gelatin at 5:48 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 5:48 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
@Gelatin, if you email info_at_gamehistory.org someone can probably point you in the right direction as to where to possibly donate an old game. Many universities also have archives and preservation programs, it might be worth seeing if your local college or university has a collective or archive that needs some adding to.
posted by Fizz at 5:57 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 5:57 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Piracy isn't stealing if buying isn't owning
posted by scruss at 6:35 AM on July 11, 2023 [71 favorites]
posted by scruss at 6:35 AM on July 11, 2023 [71 favorites]
The Video Game History Foundation also has a great podcast, and this week's episode was about the study.
posted by gc at 7:06 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by gc at 7:06 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Thanks for sharing that pod link gc!!
I always forget they have a pod, I need to add that into my gaming pod rotation mix.
posted by Fizz at 7:08 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I always forget they have a pod, I need to add that into my gaming pod rotation mix.
posted by Fizz at 7:08 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I would like to do a violence to Apple
Blame developers for abandoning their applications and therefore customers.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 7:25 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Blame developers for abandoning their applications and therefore customers.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 7:25 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Basically all Windows games from prior to Windows Vista.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:26 AM on July 11, 2023
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:26 AM on July 11, 2023
It’s tempting to compare games to books, but they’re more like cars or airplanes. They were created for their time. We don’t need to hang on to a working model of every plane that was built and flown, having pictures and the occasional set of blueprints is record enough.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:34 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:34 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
What was old is new again. Piracy is the only way 8-bit cartridge games are preserved and distributed as well.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:34 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:34 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
> Blame developers for abandoning their applications and therefore customers.
Oh hell no you don't with that garbage take.
Apple constantly updates their operating systems for their own purposes so that perfectly functional apps are no longer usable and perfectly cromulent hardware is essentially bricked. I didn't break my software, Apple broke it. Everything I've ever released for iOS is dead to the world, not because I made shitty software, but because Apple refuses to create compatibility shells in their inexorable insistence that you upgrade your hardware so they can make another big slice of profit.
I have games I released in the 1980s that are perfectly playable now thanks to DOS emulation, but all the stuff I released for iOS in the 2000s has been essentially vaporised. It's why I won't develop for iOS any more. I won't walk on their bullshit treadmill of needing to rewrite/refactor an app every two years. I got other shit to do with my life.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:40 AM on July 11, 2023 [46 favorites]
Oh hell no you don't with that garbage take.
Apple constantly updates their operating systems for their own purposes so that perfectly functional apps are no longer usable and perfectly cromulent hardware is essentially bricked. I didn't break my software, Apple broke it. Everything I've ever released for iOS is dead to the world, not because I made shitty software, but because Apple refuses to create compatibility shells in their inexorable insistence that you upgrade your hardware so they can make another big slice of profit.
I have games I released in the 1980s that are perfectly playable now thanks to DOS emulation, but all the stuff I released for iOS in the 2000s has been essentially vaporised. It's why I won't develop for iOS any more. I won't walk on their bullshit treadmill of needing to rewrite/refactor an app every two years. I got other shit to do with my life.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:40 AM on July 11, 2023 [46 favorites]
So I released a small iOS game a few years back, and it didn't exactly jump to the top of the charts. That's fine - I didn't really expect it to. But a few months ago I hit a reckoning point where I realized I was paying Apple to keep it on the store, but was not ever going to recoup any of that money. So, the obvious option was to take it off the store (which left it playable for people who had bought it, but it won't ever get updated), but that would mean nobody who hadn't already seen it would ever get a chance to play it. Functionally, it wouldn't exist anymore.
Again, I wasn't expecting to make a ton of money here, but I hated the idea that a game I'd created was just going to be wiped from the record unless I kept paying Apple forever. Fortunately, it was built in such a way that my co-developer was able to put together a functional, passable desktop version which we were able to put up on Itch. Not every game dev has that option without doing a lot more work, and that's not their fault. It's a really hard choice to have to sink a lot of time and energy into simply making sure something you created isn't wiped from existence because of the actions of giant, faceless corporations.
posted by Zargon X at 7:59 AM on July 11, 2023 [17 favorites]
Again, I wasn't expecting to make a ton of money here, but I hated the idea that a game I'd created was just going to be wiped from the record unless I kept paying Apple forever. Fortunately, it was built in such a way that my co-developer was able to put together a functional, passable desktop version which we were able to put up on Itch. Not every game dev has that option without doing a lot more work, and that's not their fault. It's a really hard choice to have to sink a lot of time and energy into simply making sure something you created isn't wiped from existence because of the actions of giant, faceless corporations.
posted by Zargon X at 7:59 AM on July 11, 2023 [17 favorites]
It’s tempting to compare games to books, but they’re more like cars or airplanes. They were created for their time. We don’t need to hang on to a working model of every plane that was built and flown, having pictures and the occasional set of blueprints is record enough.This is an odd comparison to make. The scalability and physical space required to preserve automobiles and aircraft are very different than what would be required for archiving and preserving video games and console/machines. I get that it would be very difficult to preserve every physical airplane or car created in the history of automobile or aviation history.
And for sure, there's going to be a similar discussion regarding the logistics of storing gaming cartridges and physical gaming consoles/systems. But preserving video games history is absolutely worth doing and important to our culture and for future generations of gamers and game creators/developers.
This type of framing also further diminishes and stigmatizes the entire video game industry as something that is not worthy of preservation or historical note. As uncleozzy referenced up above, there's this tired and ignorant idea that gaming is "not serious" art. Which is fucking bullshit. We can be better than this.
posted by Fizz at 8:01 AM on July 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
It’s tempting to compare games to books, but they’re more like cars or airplanes. They were created for their time. We don’t need to hang on to a working model of every plane that was built and flown, having pictures and the occasional set of blueprints is record enough.
I went to graduate school for archival studies. This is neither how, nor why, archivists make appraisal decisions about what to archive and preserve. Video games are significant artifacts, as well as reflections, of our cultural history. Yes, it is an archivist's responsibility to determine appraisal criteria, but that is often done in consultation with subject matter experts (which the archivist also needs to be, to a certain degree).
Stating that "video games were created for their time," doesn't mean anything - in addition to being dead wrong. Video games, like all cultural products, are created for many reasons. They are also unique cultural products. That, in turn, makes them even more special and necessary to archive.
There are video game development companies and publishers who hire professional archivists to maintain not only archival copies of old video games that were built for "obsolete" consoles or operating systems, but also to archive the content, story, lore, and cannon of those games. Why is this important? For so many reasons that I can't even begin to count, but among some of the bigger reasons: because our cultural history only survives if we choose to protect it. Because stories, especially stories that belong to video game series and franchises that contain several interconnected or sequential games, need to be documented so that the people who write and develop future games in those series can honor, respect, and accurately represent the series' lore.
Video games, whether you agree or not, are no less important or culturally relevant to preserve than television shows, radio shows, podcasts, movies, et cetera.
Just because one person does not see a personal need to archive an object, does not mean that object does not have important cultural or historical value within its specific domain or the community that cherishes it. We archive things because they matter to particular communities, not because they necessarily matter to everyone in the world.
posted by nightrecordings at 8:02 AM on July 11, 2023 [33 favorites]
I went to graduate school for archival studies. This is neither how, nor why, archivists make appraisal decisions about what to archive and preserve. Video games are significant artifacts, as well as reflections, of our cultural history. Yes, it is an archivist's responsibility to determine appraisal criteria, but that is often done in consultation with subject matter experts (which the archivist also needs to be, to a certain degree).
Stating that "video games were created for their time," doesn't mean anything - in addition to being dead wrong. Video games, like all cultural products, are created for many reasons. They are also unique cultural products. That, in turn, makes them even more special and necessary to archive.
There are video game development companies and publishers who hire professional archivists to maintain not only archival copies of old video games that were built for "obsolete" consoles or operating systems, but also to archive the content, story, lore, and cannon of those games. Why is this important? For so many reasons that I can't even begin to count, but among some of the bigger reasons: because our cultural history only survives if we choose to protect it. Because stories, especially stories that belong to video game series and franchises that contain several interconnected or sequential games, need to be documented so that the people who write and develop future games in those series can honor, respect, and accurately represent the series' lore.
Video games, whether you agree or not, are no less important or culturally relevant to preserve than television shows, radio shows, podcasts, movies, et cetera.
Just because one person does not see a personal need to archive an object, does not mean that object does not have important cultural or historical value within its specific domain or the community that cherishes it. We archive things because they matter to particular communities, not because they necessarily matter to everyone in the world.
posted by nightrecordings at 8:02 AM on July 11, 2023 [33 favorites]
here we have customers vs publishers with divergent interests.
going back to the car analogy, imagine the new car market if nothing depreciated or wore out, e.g. the 2000 Miata I got was as mint today as the day I drove it off the lot.
I've thought the same thing about TV shows too. Being a kid of the 80s I could spend months if not years just rewatching all the old stuff sitting in their warehouses.
I don't think this issue is because the publishers don't value history, it's because they don't want us to value it.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:05 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
going back to the car analogy, imagine the new car market if nothing depreciated or wore out, e.g. the 2000 Miata I got was as mint today as the day I drove it off the lot.
I've thought the same thing about TV shows too. Being a kid of the 80s I could spend months if not years just rewatching all the old stuff sitting in their warehouses.
I don't think this issue is because the publishers don't value history, it's because they don't want us to value it.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:05 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Being a kid of the 80s I could spend months if not years just rewatching all the old stuff
I tried re-watching Mr. Belvedere and, well, it really doesn't hold up.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:12 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
I tried re-watching Mr. Belvedere and, well, it really doesn't hold up.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:12 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Still gotta find my damn TRS-80 CoCo tapes and get them in the hands of archive before it's too late (though it probably already is...)
posted by symbioid at 8:13 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by symbioid at 8:13 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Basically all Windows games from prior to Windows Vista.
They're not as easy to play as DOS games, but there are definitely ways to play most of the single player games. There are wrappers like dgvoodoo or other things on that wiki, or you can load up a Windows 95/XP vm. Things may not work perfectly but that was just as true back then as windows compatibility was always a mess. But it's way better than IOS as others have mentioned. Retro steamers on Twitch like Macaw45 are good if you want to see old PC games.
posted by JZig at 8:15 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
They're not as easy to play as DOS games, but there are definitely ways to play most of the single player games. There are wrappers like dgvoodoo or other things on that wiki, or you can load up a Windows 95/XP vm. Things may not work perfectly but that was just as true back then as windows compatibility was always a mess. But it's way better than IOS as others have mentioned. Retro steamers on Twitch like Macaw45 are good if you want to see old PC games.
posted by JZig at 8:15 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Isn’t this true for all software? If the underlying technology, such has hardware, changes, and it will, doesn’t the software have to also change in order to coexist with the new technology? I guess games are different from word processors, given the level of creativity embodied in them, but tying your art to a medium that is highly unstable is a big risk. Either you deal with constant updates, or you move on to something else. As to evil corporations, you’re tying yourself to them too.
Art in general is moving into this ephemeral existence called “digital” where film, music, and books are tied into an ever changing technology. I can still read my over 200 year old books, but ebooks? No thanks. Creativity versus capitalism… a never ending battle.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:20 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Art in general is moving into this ephemeral existence called “digital” where film, music, and books are tied into an ever changing technology. I can still read my over 200 year old books, but ebooks? No thanks. Creativity versus capitalism… a never ending battle.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:20 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Retaining copyright on software should be contingent on the IP owner making the work available for a reasonable price. If it's not worth it for them to do that, then they're basically admitting the copyright is worthless and it expires.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:37 AM on July 11, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:37 AM on July 11, 2023 [16 favorites]
I would like to do a violence to Apple for the relentless murder of old iOS software.
During the pandemic I (legitimately) bought Dragon Age 2 for Mac, and it was hugely emotionally helpful during that solitary time. Then one day it just stopped working on my old machine. Now I have an M1 Mac and I can't play it at all-- I even bought the Windows version, only to find it wouldn't load in Parallels. I miss my spouses Fenris and Isabela.
posted by Pallas Athena at 8:37 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
During the pandemic I (legitimately) bought Dragon Age 2 for Mac, and it was hugely emotionally helpful during that solitary time. Then one day it just stopped working on my old machine. Now I have an M1 Mac and I can't play it at all-- I even bought the Windows version, only to find it wouldn't load in Parallels. I miss my spouses Fenris and Isabela.
posted by Pallas Athena at 8:37 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
DOS Box can explicitly run most versions of Windows up to 98/ME, including 3.1 and 95.
It does require the original Windows software, but it can run an emulation instance of DOS that is capable of running most software, including most games, on anything DOSBox can run on---which doesn't need to be an intel architecture either (DOSBox-X). There are WINE options too, but I personally haven't investigated those.
I think that problem is mostly solved and future proofed, though some challenges remain.
posted by bonehead at 8:56 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
It does require the original Windows software, but it can run an emulation instance of DOS that is capable of running most software, including most games, on anything DOSBox can run on---which doesn't need to be an intel architecture either (DOSBox-X). There are WINE options too, but I personally haven't investigated those.
I think that problem is mostly solved and future proofed, though some challenges remain.
posted by bonehead at 8:56 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
having pictures and the occasional set of blueprints is record enough.
No.
Some games MUST be preserved. So that future generations of game developers can learn the yes/no answer to the question: Does my game suck more than Firebird?
posted by rough ashlar at 9:20 AM on July 11, 2023
No.
Some games MUST be preserved. So that future generations of game developers can learn the yes/no answer to the question: Does my game suck more than Firebird?
posted by rough ashlar at 9:20 AM on July 11, 2023
I think that a lot of metafilter users, and their cohort, are going to have put hours of their lives into computer games, and will therefore see them as important cultural things. Unpopular opinion klaxon: computer games might not be important. Sure, the idea of playing games on computers might be… but the actual games themselves? Ehhhhh.
If you’ve read Don Quixote, there’s a bit at the start of book two where the author/narrator talks about impostors, imitators, and other made-up stories about the main character, Don Quixote. This is because people were so taken with the concept of a novel - Quixote being one of the first novels available - that they made up their own stories about this character. Do we know these stories? Not really. They’re mostly lost to obscurity. Maybe it’s the same for old iOS games and the like.
posted by The River Ivel at 9:22 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you’ve read Don Quixote, there’s a bit at the start of book two where the author/narrator talks about impostors, imitators, and other made-up stories about the main character, Don Quixote. This is because people were so taken with the concept of a novel - Quixote being one of the first novels available - that they made up their own stories about this character. Do we know these stories? Not really. They’re mostly lost to obscurity. Maybe it’s the same for old iOS games and the like.
posted by The River Ivel at 9:22 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
These articles make no case for preservation, instead, they completely take for granted the reader's own pro-preservation instincts, the reader's "I grew up watching video games grow up" nostalgia.
Because that is the situation. If you head to the library hoping to just grab even best-selling novels from the 19-aughts right from the shelf, you're likely to be disappointed. The library will have a relatively few titles that are, the conventional wisdom has decreed, culturally important. For every book they've got available, hundreds of others are forgotten. That's always what libraries have been about. They've never been a dumping ground for absolutely all human creative output, an archive of every written word. They're selective. This is a condition that is turning out to be common to video games and older media types, not a distinction between them.
Hollywood studios used to cheerfully recycle all the prints of old silent movies, to get the silver back. Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past? 90% of those movies were crap. 90% of old video games were crap, too.
We who grew up with video games do have feelings about them, of course we do. I absolutely cannot blame anyone who grew up through the dawn of video games for having nostalgic feelings about them. But those feelings aren't the same thing as big-picture historical import. The future is never going to be beside itself with gratitude that you've figured out how to run Night Trap on an emulator into perpetuity.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:28 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options ... Anyone should be able to easily explore, research and play classic video games, in the same way that they can read classic novels, listen to classic albums, and watch classic movies.There's some funny business here around the word "classic" here. The writer is conveying "merely old video games" on the one hand and "class-defining, timeless novels, albums, and movies" on the other hand.
Because that is the situation. If you head to the library hoping to just grab even best-selling novels from the 19-aughts right from the shelf, you're likely to be disappointed. The library will have a relatively few titles that are, the conventional wisdom has decreed, culturally important. For every book they've got available, hundreds of others are forgotten. That's always what libraries have been about. They've never been a dumping ground for absolutely all human creative output, an archive of every written word. They're selective. This is a condition that is turning out to be common to video games and older media types, not a distinction between them.
Hollywood studios used to cheerfully recycle all the prints of old silent movies, to get the silver back. Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past? 90% of those movies were crap. 90% of old video games were crap, too.
We who grew up with video games do have feelings about them, of course we do. I absolutely cannot blame anyone who grew up through the dawn of video games for having nostalgic feelings about them. But those feelings aren't the same thing as big-picture historical import. The future is never going to be beside itself with gratitude that you've figured out how to run Night Trap on an emulator into perpetuity.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:28 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Do we know these stories? Not really. They’re mostly lost to obscurity. Maybe it’s the same for old iOS games and the like.
This isn't an argument that games aren't worthy of preservation, this is a statement that we fucked up with a lot of 17th century writing. Why fuck up again, out of a sense of tradition?
The library will have a relatively few titles that are, the conventional wisdom has decreed, culturally important. For every book they've got available, hundreds of others are forgotten. That's always what libraries have been about.
Yeah, lending libraries. And even then, there are things like Project Gutenberg. In the digital domain especially, you just don't need to be picky with what you keep in the same way either.
posted by Dysk at 9:31 AM on July 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
This isn't an argument that games aren't worthy of preservation, this is a statement that we fucked up with a lot of 17th century writing. Why fuck up again, out of a sense of tradition?
The library will have a relatively few titles that are, the conventional wisdom has decreed, culturally important. For every book they've got available, hundreds of others are forgotten. That's always what libraries have been about.
Yeah, lending libraries. And even then, there are things like Project Gutenberg. In the digital domain especially, you just don't need to be picky with what you keep in the same way either.
posted by Dysk at 9:31 AM on July 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
Hollywood studios used to cheerfully recycle all the prints of old silent movies, to get the silver back. Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past?
People studying film and television, history, or film and television history certainly tend to think so. Whether or not they were good is beside the point - you don't keep these archives because a 17th century novel can replace a modern one, but because they are invaluable assets in understanding the history and development of the artform. The archives are for researchers, not Jo Schmo looking for something to eat their popcorn to.
posted by Dysk at 9:34 AM on July 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
People studying film and television, history, or film and television history certainly tend to think so. Whether or not they were good is beside the point - you don't keep these archives because a 17th century novel can replace a modern one, but because they are invaluable assets in understanding the history and development of the artform. The archives are for researchers, not Jo Schmo looking for something to eat their popcorn to.
posted by Dysk at 9:34 AM on July 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
I tried re-watching Mr. Belvedere and, well, it really doesn't hold up.
Maybe not the actual show, but the theme song holds up just fine in my household.
posted by Mr. Merkin at 9:39 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe not the actual show, but the theme song holds up just fine in my household.
posted by Mr. Merkin at 9:39 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think a very salient example is something like Civilization I. Civ is a pretty seminal strategy game, but you currently can't legally get it anywhere. I think of a game design professor trying to teach their students about the history of what is still a very popular (if not the most popular) 4x strategy game and not being able to provide a way for those students to play it outside of breaking the law. That seems like a pretty darn big hole in the system.
posted by Zargon X at 9:46 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Zargon X at 9:46 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
Hollywood studios used to cheerfully recycle all the prints of old silent movies, to get the silver back. Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past?
Vast quantities of television programming has been destroyed by reusing tapes. We don't have any of the early Doctor Who seasons because of this. I'm sure much more is lost in the same way, but that's the main one I know about.
posted by hippybear at 9:52 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
Vast quantities of television programming has been destroyed by reusing tapes. We don't have any of the early Doctor Who seasons because of this. I'm sure much more is lost in the same way, but that's the main one I know about.
posted by hippybear at 9:52 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
You don’t have to believe that video games are great art (though I absolutely believe that they can be) to believe that they are products of human culture that shed valuable light on the people who made and played them, and they are and will continue to be the subjects of study for that reason. That study cannot happen without it being possible to preserve them and make them accessible, a process that is hard enough without the aggressive legal and corporate barriers to doing so.
Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past?
Holy shit, yes! Early Black cinema especially.
We don't have any of the early Doctor Who seasons because of this.
We have quite a bit, and there's been a substantial amount that has been recovered in the years since it was recognized as being of enduring interest, though there are still losses.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:16 AM on July 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past?
Holy shit, yes! Early Black cinema especially.
We don't have any of the early Doctor Who seasons because of this.
We have quite a bit, and there's been a substantial amount that has been recovered in the years since it was recognized as being of enduring interest, though there are still losses.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:16 AM on July 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
Internet Archive has a very large software library of games , many playable in browser.
They’ve even got some rather esoteric items, like 2XL 8 tracks and traces for pocket LCD games.
posted by dr_dank at 10:17 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
They’ve even got some rather esoteric items, like 2XL 8 tracks and traces for pocket LCD games.
posted by dr_dank at 10:17 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was a C=64 user back in the day and there were SO many games that I played. I have very fond memories of Archon, by Electronic Arts before they became an evil behemoth. It was chess, but it was chess where every time you tried to capture a piece, it was a head-to-head combat instead of an automatic win. Each piece had different ways it moved on the board AND different skills during the fight phase. It was super fun, and I don't think there have been any remakes of it.
Sadly Commodore software isn't included on the IA that I see, and even though the machine has a really robust continuing developer fanbase I don't know if the old games are preserved at all.
posted by hippybear at 10:26 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sadly Commodore software isn't included on the IA that I see, and even though the machine has a really robust continuing developer fanbase I don't know if the old games are preserved at all.
posted by hippybear at 10:26 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hollywood studios used to cheerfully recycle all the prints of old silent movies, to get the silver back. Do we lament that today as some incalculable cultural loss that has damaged our understanding of the past?
Hell yes we do. Only one of many examples: early Yiddish film, which there was once a lot of. Well north of 90% of it is gone forever. Hell yes I lament this as an incalculable cultural loss. Abso-freakin'-lutely I do, and I am far from alone. "Crap/not-crap" is not the only appraisal criterion here -- cultural/historical relevance absolutely can and does extend to stuff whose production values or scripting or acting or whatever aren't amazing.
As usual, loss hits marginalized communities hardest. Where this intersects with games, to keep this on-topic: LGBTQ+ oriented games, just for starters.
posted by humbug at 10:31 AM on July 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
Hell yes we do. Only one of many examples: early Yiddish film, which there was once a lot of. Well north of 90% of it is gone forever. Hell yes I lament this as an incalculable cultural loss. Abso-freakin'-lutely I do, and I am far from alone. "Crap/not-crap" is not the only appraisal criterion here -- cultural/historical relevance absolutely can and does extend to stuff whose production values or scripting or acting or whatever aren't amazing.
As usual, loss hits marginalized communities hardest. Where this intersects with games, to keep this on-topic: LGBTQ+ oriented games, just for starters.
posted by humbug at 10:31 AM on July 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
Some really good work in preserving and restoring old games has been done by the folks at GOG.com (GOG originally stood for "good old games"). Five years ago, NoClip released a 42-minute documentary about the company's work. Of course, much of their work is about the continuing commercial value of these old games so it's not completely the same as altruistically preserving games and related artifacts for future generations but there's a lot of overlap.
posted by ElKevbo at 10:36 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by ElKevbo at 10:36 AM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
Sadly Commodore software isn't included on the IA that I see, and even though the machine has a really robust continuing developer fanbase I don't know if the old games are preserved at all.
posted by hippybear at 12:26 PM on July 11 [+] [!]
They talk about this in the podcast, and I would assume the report (note: it is, page 27). They picked three ecosystems of game platforms to research, categorized as Abandoned, Neglected, and Active. The C64 is the Abandoned platform, in that there's no real activity on the platform anymore, no real preservation to speak of, and updates to the games and re-releases are essentially zero. Which, they note, is awful, as the C64 was a huge part of gaming in the States in the 1980s.
posted by gc at 10:37 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 12:26 PM on July 11 [+] [!]
They talk about this in the podcast, and I would assume the report (note: it is, page 27). They picked three ecosystems of game platforms to research, categorized as Abandoned, Neglected, and Active. The C64 is the Abandoned platform, in that there's no real activity on the platform anymore, no real preservation to speak of, and updates to the games and re-releases are essentially zero. Which, they note, is awful, as the C64 was a huge part of gaming in the States in the 1980s.
posted by gc at 10:37 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have very fond memories of Archon
I remember playing Archon on my cousin's Atari 800! It looks like the DOS version is available on archive.org (the C64 version is also available elsewhere, and likely all the other many ports are online as well) and, perhaps germane to the conversation, there was a modern remake more than a decade ago.
Point being, though, that for the most part, the preservation is either enhanced remakes, which isn't real preservation, or piracy.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:38 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I remember playing Archon on my cousin's Atari 800! It looks like the DOS version is available on archive.org (the C64 version is also available elsewhere, and likely all the other many ports are online as well) and, perhaps germane to the conversation, there was a modern remake more than a decade ago.
Point being, though, that for the most part, the preservation is either enhanced remakes, which isn't real preservation, or piracy.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:38 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Survivorship bias is different than the need to preserve fragile artifacts. And video games are indeed fragile artifacts of historical importance. Sure, the world does not need copies of Custer's Revenge everywhere (Just.... Don't google this if you haven't heard of it. Legitimately terrible.)
But if we can store the games, why not? The medium is inherently intended to be played, to be experienced, for the person to be part of the challenge and story, the adventure. Isn't that exactly like a book, just a different medium and level of interactivity?
I've read (and sometimes enjoyed) terrible books. I think they should be archived and preserved. Does it matter if nobody checks it out of the storage for years? No. They have the option. And it might mean the world to someone to be able to find Obscure Childhood Favorite.
Also, as a lifelong member of the Warbird community, I am indeed an advocate for saving plane types. It's super exciting to see rare and uncommon designs, in ways that pictures and even video can't capture. Time is slowly grinding away the aircraft that was used in WW2. In less than a hundred years after the war, there's very few planes that can fly. Each loss is a huge blow. Unlike books and video games, planes are not easy to store, protect, and most importantly, replicate.
It's virtually cost free to save, and distribute, books and video games. It's hugely important to store them while we can, before it gets even harder. Just like some books, movies and records can be huge successes in their time, but forgotten today, doesn't mean they are insignificant. Even the unsuccessful things had love and care and value to them. They meant something to someone. And we can preserve them, and people are willing to put in the time and effort to do so, swimming against the tide of change and advanced technology. I think that's the exact goal of museums and libraries, collections and monuments. Video games deserve that much consideration, no matter how good or bad, brilliant or mediocre.
posted by Jacen at 10:56 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
But if we can store the games, why not? The medium is inherently intended to be played, to be experienced, for the person to be part of the challenge and story, the adventure. Isn't that exactly like a book, just a different medium and level of interactivity?
I've read (and sometimes enjoyed) terrible books. I think they should be archived and preserved. Does it matter if nobody checks it out of the storage for years? No. They have the option. And it might mean the world to someone to be able to find Obscure Childhood Favorite.
Also, as a lifelong member of the Warbird community, I am indeed an advocate for saving plane types. It's super exciting to see rare and uncommon designs, in ways that pictures and even video can't capture. Time is slowly grinding away the aircraft that was used in WW2. In less than a hundred years after the war, there's very few planes that can fly. Each loss is a huge blow. Unlike books and video games, planes are not easy to store, protect, and most importantly, replicate.
It's virtually cost free to save, and distribute, books and video games. It's hugely important to store them while we can, before it gets even harder. Just like some books, movies and records can be huge successes in their time, but forgotten today, doesn't mean they are insignificant. Even the unsuccessful things had love and care and value to them. They meant something to someone. And we can preserve them, and people are willing to put in the time and effort to do so, swimming against the tide of change and advanced technology. I think that's the exact goal of museums and libraries, collections and monuments. Video games deserve that much consideration, no matter how good or bad, brilliant or mediocre.
posted by Jacen at 10:56 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Isn’t this true for all software? If the underlying technology, such has hardware, changes, and it will, doesn’t the software have to also change in order to coexist with the new technology?
The issue is certainly relevant to all software. The better solution for archival purposes is generally to write software to emulate the old hardware, which is exactly what is commonly done, by amateurs, to preserve old video games - the real issue is the lack of space to make old software available legally. The percentage of games available would look considerably better if you did count piracy, but legally that’s at the mercy of rights-holders who tend not to want to abandon ownership, while also being reluctant to invest in continued availability. So best case is often games being available to those with a modicum of technical knowledge but in a legal grey zone, and worst case is the owner aggressively shutting down unauthorized distribution but offering no authorized distribution.
posted by atoxyl at 11:08 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
The issue is certainly relevant to all software. The better solution for archival purposes is generally to write software to emulate the old hardware, which is exactly what is commonly done, by amateurs, to preserve old video games - the real issue is the lack of space to make old software available legally. The percentage of games available would look considerably better if you did count piracy, but legally that’s at the mercy of rights-holders who tend not to want to abandon ownership, while also being reluctant to invest in continued availability. So best case is often games being available to those with a modicum of technical knowledge but in a legal grey zone, and worst case is the owner aggressively shutting down unauthorized distribution but offering no authorized distribution.
posted by atoxyl at 11:08 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
And yeah “does anybody really care about the old movies that have been lost forever?” is a pretty odd take. All of this stuff is the domain of nerds (inclusive of real academics), but of course the nerds care.
posted by atoxyl at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2023
posted by atoxyl at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2023
Still gotta find my damn TRS-80 CoCo tapes and get them in the hands of archive before it's too late (though it probably already is...)
Rainbow Magazine subscribers represent!
posted by azpenguin at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2023
Rainbow Magazine subscribers represent!
posted by azpenguin at 11:16 AM on July 11, 2023
On a completely unrelated note, did you know that it's extremely easy to hack your 3DS and run whatever software on it you want? Super easy, step-by-step instructions. Don't know why I mention it here. Just some nice information about a defunct piece of hardware.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:17 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:17 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
How many thousands of games hit Steam every year? 2? 5? 10? Okay I'm Googling. 2017 7k, 2020 10k...
That's a lot. But here's the thing. Why not preserve them all? We can afford it. We have the tech.
posted by Wetterschneider at 11:19 AM on July 11, 2023
That's a lot. But here's the thing. Why not preserve them all? We can afford it. We have the tech.
posted by Wetterschneider at 11:19 AM on July 11, 2023
Sadly Commodore software isn't included on the IA that I see, and even though the machine has a really robust continuing developer fanbase I don't know if the old games are preserved at all.
C64 collection (or just the games, powered by a web version of the vice emulator. There is even a whole selection of software loaded from tape, if you're so inclined (which is to say, mostly if you come from the uk or australia)
In terms of game preservation, there is gamebase64 which is remarkably complete including a ton of metadata. There is CSDB for demoscene preservation, as well. The c64 is actually a remarkably preserved platform, even the sounds are preserved via the high voltage sid collection.
posted by jaymzjulian at 11:26 AM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
C64 collection (or just the games, powered by a web version of the vice emulator. There is even a whole selection of software loaded from tape, if you're so inclined (which is to say, mostly if you come from the uk or australia)
In terms of game preservation, there is gamebase64 which is remarkably complete including a ton of metadata. There is CSDB for demoscene preservation, as well. The c64 is actually a remarkably preserved platform, even the sounds are preserved via the high voltage sid collection.
posted by jaymzjulian at 11:26 AM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
Unpopular opinion klaxon: computer games might not be important.
Alternately, some computer games can be important, others can be unimportant. And from the perspective of a society looking back 200 years at them, it might be really hard to figure out which is which.
I'm sure there are early novels and destroyed films that we would think of as important if we knew about them, but they were destroyed so we don't.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:33 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Alternately, some computer games can be important, others can be unimportant. And from the perspective of a society looking back 200 years at them, it might be really hard to figure out which is which.
I'm sure there are early novels and destroyed films that we would think of as important if we knew about them, but they were destroyed so we don't.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:33 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
There's also the Museum of Arts and Digital Entertainment in Oakland, California. I haven't made it there yet, but a few years ago I shipped them a box of early-mid 1990's Mac games on CD from cleaning out my parent's house. I would have shipped them the Performa too, but it was thoroughly dead.
posted by foonly at 11:52 AM on July 11, 2023
posted by foonly at 11:52 AM on July 11, 2023
Alternately, some computer games can be important, others can be unimportant. And from the perspective of a society looking back 200 years at them, it might be really hard to figure out which is which
That’s really the thing about the lost movies/TV. It’s not that people now really care about every work in the past, but people in the past treated works as disposable that people now are actually very interested in.
posted by atoxyl at 12:01 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
That’s really the thing about the lost movies/TV. It’s not that people now really care about every work in the past, but people in the past treated works as disposable that people now are actually very interested in.
posted by atoxyl at 12:01 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think a very salient example is something like Civilization I. Civ is a pretty seminal strategy game, but you currently can't legally get it anywhere.At least eighties and nineties games like Civ can be technically preserved by the gray market, since those games came on disks that can be imaged and their copy protection can be broken.
All those iOS apps that went on the bonfire will never live again, barring an act of absurd generosity by Apple. I would not be surprised to learn that Apple has archived everything they ever offered on the app store -- programmers hate deleting things for reals.
Or maybe old programs can be farmed and cracked from dead old iDevices; don't know much about the difficulty of this.
posted by Sauce Trough at 12:03 PM on July 11, 2023
hippybear, last year I preserved an original Archon disk (copy protection and all) and uploaded it to archive.org. It's playable & downloadable. There are also other copies on archive.org, though to my knowledge they were all versions with the copy protection removed.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 12:47 PM on July 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 12:47 PM on July 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
Ah, bless EA and their C=64 Copy Protection. That was easily broken and is how I managed to play any of their games at all.
posted by hippybear at 1:10 PM on July 11, 2023
posted by hippybear at 1:10 PM on July 11, 2023
I was delightfully surprised that I can put The Logical Journey of the Zoombonis on my iPad for my granddaughter to play. Her mother used to play it on our PowerPC Mac clone wayyyy back in the day.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:20 PM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 1:20 PM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Wow, Thorzdad. That got me unexpectedly misty. Yay for cross-generational computer gaming. On some level, this is why this preservation is important.
posted by hippybear at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
I supported "50 Years of Text Games" historical text on Kickstarter and the huge tome just arrived yesterday. It's massive and wonderful. I was explaining to the 13 year old about the games I loved 40 years ago, when I was his age, fully expecting him to shut me down for general old fogeyness. He was extremely interested and kept saying how much fun they sound.
He asked if Roblox, and all its games, would still be accessible in 40 years, when he's my age. This is pure coincidence, a random "pick up from camp" car ride home conversation.
I suggested that most likely, Roblox and the games he loved will be archived and playable... why not? They are a huge part of the childhood of so many kids right now.
posted by Wetterschneider at 1:35 PM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
He asked if Roblox, and all its games, would still be accessible in 40 years, when he's my age. This is pure coincidence, a random "pick up from camp" car ride home conversation.
I suggested that most likely, Roblox and the games he loved will be archived and playable... why not? They are a huge part of the childhood of so many kids right now.
posted by Wetterschneider at 1:35 PM on July 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
AFAIK you need a jailbreaked 32-bit iOS device to play the older games, and idk how easy it is to jailbreak them these days, or if anyone has a helpful .ipa archive of software available somewhere. iTunes used to back up all of your app files to your desktop, but they're encrypted. There is another effort to emulate games on an individual basis (sort of like Wine for Win32 apps) but it's early.
And I hate to use the world "seminal" but these games were figuring out the strengths and limitations of the modern smartphone platform, and deserve preservation and study.
posted by credulous at 1:44 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
And I hate to use the world "seminal" but these games were figuring out the strengths and limitations of the modern smartphone platform, and deserve preservation and study.
posted by credulous at 1:44 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I seem to remember there was one game that invented the touchscreen "joystick" and it was hailed as a major step forward in mobile gaming. The entire ecosystem of games on phones was seen as very bleak at the beginning.
Weirdly, I have an old iPod that has a Spore game on it that uses the wheel as an input method. That iPod has a unique collection of games on it. I wonder if things like that are being seen and known and preserved, too.
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Weirdly, I have an old iPod that has a Spore game on it that uses the wheel as an input method. That iPod has a unique collection of games on it. I wonder if things like that are being seen and known and preserved, too.
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's so sad. Technically, it shouldn't be difficult to run old games, because you can run versions of windows and MacOS in a VM, most games systems have competent emulators, and I think there are simulators of iOS and Android that don't require actually owning the hardware.
But there are legal issues. Last time I ran MacOS in a VM, I got the distinct impression that it might be an egregious violation of Apple's wishes, and it might be hard to find an old version of the OS. And that says nothing of the copyright on the games, which can be insurmountable. I don't particularly want archivists to be criminal.
There are games from the 90s which were released, sank without a trace, and then found an audience on abandonware sites. And the games did interesting things. I'm thinking Darklands, Ironseed, and Emperor of the Fading Suns, which are a detailed and unusual rpg grounded in history, a weird space game, and a buggy 4x game combined with a hex based war game layer. All now available on steam and/or gog. My own appreciation of what games can be would be diminished if not for pirate-archivists.
posted by surlyben at 1:51 PM on July 11, 2023
But there are legal issues. Last time I ran MacOS in a VM, I got the distinct impression that it might be an egregious violation of Apple's wishes, and it might be hard to find an old version of the OS. And that says nothing of the copyright on the games, which can be insurmountable. I don't particularly want archivists to be criminal.
There are games from the 90s which were released, sank without a trace, and then found an audience on abandonware sites. And the games did interesting things. I'm thinking Darklands, Ironseed, and Emperor of the Fading Suns, which are a detailed and unusual rpg grounded in history, a weird space game, and a buggy 4x game combined with a hex based war game layer. All now available on steam and/or gog. My own appreciation of what games can be would be diminished if not for pirate-archivists.
posted by surlyben at 1:51 PM on July 11, 2023
Pallas Athena During the pandemic I (legitimately) bought Dragon Age 2 for Mac, and it was hugely emotionally helpful during that solitary time. Then one day it just stopped working on my old machine. Now I have an M1 Mac and I can't play it at all-- I even bought the Windows version, only to find it wouldn't load in Parallels. I miss my spouses Fenris and Isabela
You might have better luck installing OS X Catalina in a Parallels VM. Nothing to lose but time as long as you already have a Parallels license.
posted by nathan_teske at 2:33 PM on July 11, 2023
You might have better luck installing OS X Catalina in a Parallels VM. Nothing to lose but time as long as you already have a Parallels license.
posted by nathan_teske at 2:33 PM on July 11, 2023
Unfortunately, preserving old software for all time means preserving the hardware it runs on for all time and that isn't cost effective at all. We really need to stop thinking of software as a physical object like a car or a plane and start thinking of it as an evolutionary process that is changed and updated to fit the current need, or just replaced if something better comes along.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 3:00 PM on July 11, 2023
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 3:00 PM on July 11, 2023
We really need to stop thinking of software as a physical object like a car or a plane and start thinking of it as an evolutionary process that is changed and updated to fit the current need, or just replaced if something better comes along.
We really need to start thinking of software as a vital part of our history, that we preserve in its original state(s), so that we can access and study like other pieces of cultural production.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:30 PM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
We really need to start thinking of software as a vital part of our history, that we preserve in its original state(s), so that we can access and study like other pieces of cultural production.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:30 PM on July 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
Since when does cost effective the sole factor in whether something is done? Just because capitalism has fucked everything up and continues to fuck everything up doesn't mean that one can't carve out an ideologies where thinking something is, for example, "important to preserve as a cultural artifact" is a factor.
God if we could only stop thinking money was the only important thing we'd be so much further along as a civilization.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:31 PM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
God if we could only stop thinking money was the only important thing we'd be so much further along as a civilization.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:31 PM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately, preserving old software for all time means preserving the hardware it runs on for all time
It really doesn't though? Even if, for some reason, you thought software emulation was impossible, hardware-level emulation through FPGAs also exists. There's no fundamental technical obstacle to preserving software indefinitely, the obstacles are intentional technical and legal hurdles placed there by corporations.
posted by Pyry at 4:04 PM on July 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
It really doesn't though? Even if, for some reason, you thought software emulation was impossible, hardware-level emulation through FPGAs also exists. There's no fundamental technical obstacle to preserving software indefinitely, the obstacles are intentional technical and legal hurdles placed there by corporations.
posted by Pyry at 4:04 PM on July 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
> And the games did interesting things. I'm thinking Darklands...
I bought a legit version of Darklands after playing a pirate copy back in the day. Recently bought it again from GOG (?) and... that version it runs ok on modern systems. Don't know if they fixed the palette bug.
posted by porpoise at 4:14 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I bought a legit version of Darklands after playing a pirate copy back in the day. Recently bought it again from GOG (?) and... that version it runs ok on modern systems. Don't know if they fixed the palette bug.
posted by porpoise at 4:14 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Most of the first computer games ever written are lost to history. The BASIC games developed at Dartmouth and on the DTSS from 1964 onward were never preserved in their original incarnations. We have the adaptations in David Ahl's and the PCC books, but not the original code, nor in many cases do we know the original authors. And in many cases all we have is a mention in a random news article or interview.
posted by credulous at 4:33 PM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by credulous at 4:33 PM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, Ahl never saw a credit in a BASIC game he couldn't replace. True, there was no copyright on software at the time, but now he's lauded as some great conservator. If you're really lucky you'll get the name of the person who ported it for Ahl's department at DEC, but that's a stretch. Emulating some of the early timeshare BASIC systems from HP and GE is a bear: they're modelled after the Dartmouth two-processor system, so you have to host two emulators in sync, one running the BASIC system and the other handling the user I/O. Bleah.
UofT Mississauga lucked out by getting the near-complete game collection from the Brantford Home Computer Museum. The Brantford museum closed after the owner died under extremely sad circumstances (if you don't already know, don't ask). It's taken them some time to catalogue the accession. It's an incredible collection.
A tiny ray of light is the BBC Micro user community. Not merely are they attempting to archive every game and piece of software for the system ever, they're online and playable: Complete BBC Micro Games Archive. They also have the snazziest virtual emulator: https://virtual.bbcmic.ro/
posted by scruss at 6:22 PM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
UofT Mississauga lucked out by getting the near-complete game collection from the Brantford Home Computer Museum. The Brantford museum closed after the owner died under extremely sad circumstances (if you don't already know, don't ask). It's taken them some time to catalogue the accession. It's an incredible collection.
A tiny ray of light is the BBC Micro user community. Not merely are they attempting to archive every game and piece of software for the system ever, they're online and playable: Complete BBC Micro Games Archive. They also have the snazziest virtual emulator: https://virtual.bbcmic.ro/
posted by scruss at 6:22 PM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
I gave the Brantford guy some really amazing stuff including a huge box of unopened Atari 2600 5200 and 7800 games, and all of my development Atari 8-bit hardware including two MIO boards with hard drive interfaces. The guy seemed keen but there was soooo much stuff in his place. Sad to hear of his passing.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:55 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:55 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
90% of those movies were crap. 90% of old video games were crap, too.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. This remains a universal constant.
Preservation of classic games has a handful of different angles to it. The most valuable games, price-wise, are not the most entertaining or most creative or CERTAINLY the best-coded -- they're rarities, with their value tied to their scarcity and to the difficulty of finding them in original packaging and in good condition. There are people who hunt down games in order to play them on the original hardware, as I did after I got out of college. There are those who simply want to play them, period, whether the emulations are controlled by copyright holders/licensors/console shops or if they're acquired via digital dark alleys. There are those who want the most accurate emulation possible -- hence why ROM compatibility in MAME varies so wildly, for instance, as older sets get replaced by what are judged to be more precise dumps -- and those who don't care about the finest details as long as the game plays successfully.
Am I doing a better job preserving a game if I keep its shrinkwrapped box in a climate-controlled environment, or if I find and bring back to life its arcade machine but only myself and my friends play it, or if I buy it from a console's digital shop so that the current copyright holders feel rewarded by my purchase, or if I hunt down every one of its old-school cartridge versions, or if I give it and its emulator away to anyone who wants it so that as many people as possible who want to play it can play it?
'Cause I've done all of those except the first one.
posted by delfin at 7:44 PM on July 11, 2023
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. This remains a universal constant.
Preservation of classic games has a handful of different angles to it. The most valuable games, price-wise, are not the most entertaining or most creative or CERTAINLY the best-coded -- they're rarities, with their value tied to their scarcity and to the difficulty of finding them in original packaging and in good condition. There are people who hunt down games in order to play them on the original hardware, as I did after I got out of college. There are those who simply want to play them, period, whether the emulations are controlled by copyright holders/licensors/console shops or if they're acquired via digital dark alleys. There are those who want the most accurate emulation possible -- hence why ROM compatibility in MAME varies so wildly, for instance, as older sets get replaced by what are judged to be more precise dumps -- and those who don't care about the finest details as long as the game plays successfully.
Am I doing a better job preserving a game if I keep its shrinkwrapped box in a climate-controlled environment, or if I find and bring back to life its arcade machine but only myself and my friends play it, or if I buy it from a console's digital shop so that the current copyright holders feel rewarded by my purchase, or if I hunt down every one of its old-school cartridge versions, or if I give it and its emulator away to anyone who wants it so that as many people as possible who want to play it can play it?
'Cause I've done all of those except the first one.
posted by delfin at 7:44 PM on July 11, 2023
It’s tempting to compare games to books, but they’re more like cars or airplanes. They were created for their time. We don’t need to hang on to a working model of every plane that was built and flown, having pictures and the occasional set of blueprints is record enough.[…]
But preserving video games history is absolutely worth doing and important to our culture and for future generations of gamers and game creators/developers.
This type of framing also further diminishes and stigmatizes the entire video game industry as something that is not worthy of preservation or historical note.
I do not agree that taking pictures and keeping blueprints suggests that something is not worthy of preservation or historical note.
In fact the actual point I was making is that video game history should be treated exactly like automotive or aeronautical history. We archive a great deal of information about cars and planes but we do not require a playable model.
And the reason is that it costs a lot of time and effort to do so. People say we don’t need hardware: Really? How are you going to play Guitar Hero, or Beat Saber, or any game ever released for the Wii? And platform simulators? Do we have to relearn every year that all software — even simulators — becomes unusable over time?
Immortal software is a destructive ideal. All software dies eventually. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t important or has to be forgotten.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:29 PM on July 11, 2023
Stating that "video games were created for their time," doesn't mean anything - in addition to being dead wrong. Video games, like all cultural products, are created for many reasons. They are also unique cultural products. That, in turn, makes them even more special and necessary to archive.
We have no disagreement on the need to archive. The question is what form should that archive take and in particular whether it should attempt recreate the original experience of playing the game as opposed to just documenting it.
I think the former is a *lot* more work than a naive view would suggest. Controllers for example have been a huge part of game experience from the very beginning, and matching the stiff awkwardness of an Atari 2600 controller is an integral part of explaining why Pitfall was remotely interesting. Console games have been always been designed to match the limitations of their hardware.
That's what I had in mind when I said (sloppily) that the games were created for their time. The environment they existed in was much larger than a processor or platform and you're not going to learn about it by playing a simulator on a keyboard.
If keeping them playable was trivial then sure, why not? But we've been watching the incredible attrition rate of all software (not just games) for pushing 60 years now, and a bar for archiving video games that states they must be playable seems at minimum very wasteful and most likely outright impossible.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:11 PM on July 11, 2023
We have no disagreement on the need to archive. The question is what form should that archive take and in particular whether it should attempt recreate the original experience of playing the game as opposed to just documenting it.
I think the former is a *lot* more work than a naive view would suggest. Controllers for example have been a huge part of game experience from the very beginning, and matching the stiff awkwardness of an Atari 2600 controller is an integral part of explaining why Pitfall was remotely interesting. Console games have been always been designed to match the limitations of their hardware.
That's what I had in mind when I said (sloppily) that the games were created for their time. The environment they existed in was much larger than a processor or platform and you're not going to learn about it by playing a simulator on a keyboard.
If keeping them playable was trivial then sure, why not? But we've been watching the incredible attrition rate of all software (not just games) for pushing 60 years now, and a bar for archiving video games that states they must be playable seems at minimum very wasteful and most likely outright impossible.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:11 PM on July 11, 2023
I think the former is a *lot* more work than a naive view would suggest. Controllers for example...
We're talking about archiving software. Controllers are not software. In am ideal world, we would archive every controller, but that is, as you note, difficult. But it is only difficult because it is a physical thing that takes up space and it's made of materials that degrade. Unlike software.
Your argument seems to be that we can't preserve the entire experience perfectly, so we should just give up. No.
If we could keep an example of every car, we probably would. We keep a lot of them, automotive museums are a big deal. People do like to keep them running and driving, as well.
Similarly, if we could keep an original printed copy of every book, we also would. A lot of libraries do aim for that kind of preservation, but obviously completeness is a challenge, because of the limits of physical space. But, the serious archives that keep the writing rather than the physical books (e.g. Gutenberg) don't have the limits of the physical medium, and so don't have to be picky, and aren't.
Your argument seems to be that we can't keep all the printed books to recreate the original experience, so we shouldn't bother with something like Project Gutenberg at all, just the limited libraries and archives that keep physical copies.
That doesn't really make sense. Yes, the absolute ideal is to preserve original hardware, original interfaces, etc, etc, but the kind of blanket preservation we're talking about is feasible and practical precisely because we don't need to preserve the original context to meaningfully keep the software. The Internet Archive has a huge collection of games for old computers, playable in a browser on modern hardware. That's worthwhile and useful, regardless of any whatabouting Wii controllers (a system which has a healthy emulsion scene with workarounds for every issue you mention).
The places where we don't have playable archives, the barrier is not primarily technical, it is legal, it is copyright and digital distribution and unhelpful companies colliding to make availability non-existent.
posted by Dysk at 10:47 PM on July 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
We're talking about archiving software. Controllers are not software. In am ideal world, we would archive every controller, but that is, as you note, difficult. But it is only difficult because it is a physical thing that takes up space and it's made of materials that degrade. Unlike software.
Your argument seems to be that we can't preserve the entire experience perfectly, so we should just give up. No.
If we could keep an example of every car, we probably would. We keep a lot of them, automotive museums are a big deal. People do like to keep them running and driving, as well.
Similarly, if we could keep an original printed copy of every book, we also would. A lot of libraries do aim for that kind of preservation, but obviously completeness is a challenge, because of the limits of physical space. But, the serious archives that keep the writing rather than the physical books (e.g. Gutenberg) don't have the limits of the physical medium, and so don't have to be picky, and aren't.
Your argument seems to be that we can't keep all the printed books to recreate the original experience, so we shouldn't bother with something like Project Gutenberg at all, just the limited libraries and archives that keep physical copies.
That doesn't really make sense. Yes, the absolute ideal is to preserve original hardware, original interfaces, etc, etc, but the kind of blanket preservation we're talking about is feasible and practical precisely because we don't need to preserve the original context to meaningfully keep the software. The Internet Archive has a huge collection of games for old computers, playable in a browser on modern hardware. That's worthwhile and useful, regardless of any whatabouting Wii controllers (a system which has a healthy emulsion scene with workarounds for every issue you mention).
The places where we don't have playable archives, the barrier is not primarily technical, it is legal, it is copyright and digital distribution and unhelpful companies colliding to make availability non-existent.
posted by Dysk at 10:47 PM on July 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
In fact the actual point I was making is that video game history should be treated exactly like automotive or aeronautical history. We archive a great deal of information about cars and planes but we do not require a playable model.
And the point of emulation is that while creating a playable model requires substantial time and effort, if people are willing to put in that time and effort, why shouldn't they?
There's a maritime museum that I support that has it all -- historical information on ships of prior centuries, physical examples of various types of ships to look at and climb aboard, and workshops for the public on long-outdated shipbuilding techniques. You can learn how older ships were built and repaired and sign up to get hands-on practice time. It's not that it's strictly necessary -- perfectly good ships exist using modern techniques and materials -- but it's breathing a drop of life into knowledge that might otherwise disappear solely into dusty books.
Those involved in the equivalent processes in gaming -- dumping and emulating games, keeping old hardware alive, writing new games for old hardware, porting emulators everywhere for maximum exposure and compatibility, open-source emulator code for transparency -- are doing God's work, and if I could shake all of their hands, I would.
posted by delfin at 7:50 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
And the point of emulation is that while creating a playable model requires substantial time and effort, if people are willing to put in that time and effort, why shouldn't they?
There's a maritime museum that I support that has it all -- historical information on ships of prior centuries, physical examples of various types of ships to look at and climb aboard, and workshops for the public on long-outdated shipbuilding techniques. You can learn how older ships were built and repaired and sign up to get hands-on practice time. It's not that it's strictly necessary -- perfectly good ships exist using modern techniques and materials -- but it's breathing a drop of life into knowledge that might otherwise disappear solely into dusty books.
Those involved in the equivalent processes in gaming -- dumping and emulating games, keeping old hardware alive, writing new games for old hardware, porting emulators everywhere for maximum exposure and compatibility, open-source emulator code for transparency -- are doing God's work, and if I could shake all of their hands, I would.
posted by delfin at 7:50 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Relevant presentation from the LD4 Conference (yeah, I'm a library-linked-data nerd) today. Sum of all video games: putting the 'linked' in video game metadata.
I unfortunately had to miss the presentation, but the slides are great.
posted by humbug at 9:25 AM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I unfortunately had to miss the presentation, but the slides are great.
posted by humbug at 9:25 AM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think the former is a *lot* more work than a naive view would suggest. Controllers for example have been a huge part of game experience from the very beginning, and matching the stiff awkwardness of an Atari 2600 controller is an integral part of explaining why Pitfall was remotely interesting. Console games have been always been designed to match the limitations of their hardware.
It depends greatly on the console. The Atari 2600, for instance, had hordes of third-party controllers with different feels to them.
There was an era in which many competing consoles (Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 5200) had a similarly complicated controller design -- a joystick, multiple fire buttons and a 12-button keypad that is an obstacle. The Intellivision used a 16- position disc, the ColecoVision an 8-way joystick knob, the 5200 analog joysticks that weren't self-centering and were so hated that aftermarket controller adapters filled the gap. While thumbsticks on modern controllers can fill some of that gap, the keypad is still an issue, as many games on the Intellivision in particular used all twelve keys and all four fire buttons. USB hacks exist, but I don't know that there's a prevailing standard.
Then there were oddballs like the Astrocade, which had a slotcar-grip-style controller with an 8-way joystick, a rotary dial and a fire button, effectively combining the Atari 2600's joystick and paddle controller options into one.
Once you get to the Famicom/NES and beyond, though, joypad + n buttons stabilized controller emulation greatly except for occasional oddball cases.
posted by delfin at 11:24 AM on July 12, 2023
It depends greatly on the console. The Atari 2600, for instance, had hordes of third-party controllers with different feels to them.
There was an era in which many competing consoles (Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 5200) had a similarly complicated controller design -- a joystick, multiple fire buttons and a 12-button keypad that is an obstacle. The Intellivision used a 16- position disc, the ColecoVision an 8-way joystick knob, the 5200 analog joysticks that weren't self-centering and were so hated that aftermarket controller adapters filled the gap. While thumbsticks on modern controllers can fill some of that gap, the keypad is still an issue, as many games on the Intellivision in particular used all twelve keys and all four fire buttons. USB hacks exist, but I don't know that there's a prevailing standard.
Then there were oddballs like the Astrocade, which had a slotcar-grip-style controller with an 8-way joystick, a rotary dial and a fire button, effectively combining the Atari 2600's joystick and paddle controller options into one.
Once you get to the Famicom/NES and beyond, though, joypad + n buttons stabilized controller emulation greatly except for occasional oddball cases.
posted by delfin at 11:24 AM on July 12, 2023
Your argument seems to be that we can't preserve the entire experience perfectly, so we should just give up. No.
I wouldn't suggest you give up, but I would suggest that the further you get away from the original gaming experience the less valuable things are for archival purposes, and the fewer resources you should put into keeping that lesser experience alive for that purpose.
If you just want to play it, by all means build yourself an environment and keep it up. To draw a parallel with cars there is a whole ecosystem of people who obtain and manufacture parts for vehicles that have long since fallen out of use. Fanatics can always make it happen.
If we could keep an example of every car, we probably would.
I don't think this is true. There are a lot of people with a lot of money who are fanatics about old cars and while people go to great lengths to assemble collections of classics I believe there are a lot of models out there that just aren't that interesting to rebuild. Designs and pictures are enough.
regardless of any whatabouting Wii controllers
If you're really that indifferent to recreating the original experience then I guess... okay. You do you. I personally would never claim to have successfully archived a playable Wii Golf without the controller.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:43 PM on July 12, 2023
I wouldn't suggest you give up, but I would suggest that the further you get away from the original gaming experience the less valuable things are for archival purposes, and the fewer resources you should put into keeping that lesser experience alive for that purpose.
If you just want to play it, by all means build yourself an environment and keep it up. To draw a parallel with cars there is a whole ecosystem of people who obtain and manufacture parts for vehicles that have long since fallen out of use. Fanatics can always make it happen.
If we could keep an example of every car, we probably would.
I don't think this is true. There are a lot of people with a lot of money who are fanatics about old cars and while people go to great lengths to assemble collections of classics I believe there are a lot of models out there that just aren't that interesting to rebuild. Designs and pictures are enough.
regardless of any whatabouting Wii controllers
If you're really that indifferent to recreating the original experience then I guess... okay. You do you. I personally would never claim to have successfully archived a playable Wii Golf without the controller.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:43 PM on July 12, 2023
There's a maritime museum that I support that has it all -- historical information on ships of prior centuries, physical examples of various types of ships to look at and climb aboard, and workshops for the public on long-outdated shipbuilding techniques. You can learn how older ships were built and repaired and sign up to get hands-on practice time.
And here we come to the point: if I told you that 87% of the ship models ever built were *not* in museums like that would you describe them as "lost to time"? Would you say that their history has been neglected or rendered unimportant?
If people want to support some set of games that's their business. But I do not think for a moment that the games that aren't being kept playable are "lost".
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:53 PM on July 12, 2023
And here we come to the point: if I told you that 87% of the ship models ever built were *not* in museums like that would you describe them as "lost to time"? Would you say that their history has been neglected or rendered unimportant?
If people want to support some set of games that's their business. But I do not think for a moment that the games that aren't being kept playable are "lost".
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:53 PM on July 12, 2023
As an aside, I was curious about the number of car models every produced and according to this AskMe the number is somewhere between 4,500 and 280,000.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:42 PM on July 12, 2023
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:42 PM on July 12, 2023
I wouldn't suggest you give up, but I would suggest that the further you get away from the original gaming experience the less valuable things are for archival purposes
It depends on the purpose of the archive. To people studying game design, for example, it may not be necessary to have a perfect recreation - being able to see the running software, tinker with it, may be enough to see and understand am initial implementation of a mechanic for the first time, for example. You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. You do not have to recreate the original experience all round for am archive of the software to be useful or meaningful. Again, Gutenberg isn't as good as keeping all original printed books, but it isn't practical to keep all original printed books, but Gutenberg is.
There are a lot of people with a lot of money who are fanatics about old cars and while people go to great lengths to assemble collections of classics I believe there are a lot of models out there that just aren't that interesting to rebuild. Designs and pictures are enough.
Rebuild? I was talking about keeping running examples, not rebuilding them. Maybe it's because I live in Coventry, but trust, every sorry shitbox has a drivers' or enthusiast group, and examples in some museum.
I personally would never claim to have successfully archived a playable Wii Golf without the controller.
There's a whole emulation scene, you know? They have solutions to this.
And here we come to the point: if I told you that 87% of the ship models ever built were *not* in museums like that would you describe them as "lost to time"? Would you say that their history has been neglected or rendered unimportant?
I would say yes, strictly speaking. More reasonably, a trade off between the value of preservation and the practical aspects of keeping giant piles of rotting physical material around in the form of a boat. The ideal is keeping everything, because we don't know what future generations will find important or interesting. Reality compromises ideals. But it's So cheap to archive software that we might as well. What's the harm?
posted by Dysk at 6:52 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
It depends on the purpose of the archive. To people studying game design, for example, it may not be necessary to have a perfect recreation - being able to see the running software, tinker with it, may be enough to see and understand am initial implementation of a mechanic for the first time, for example. You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. You do not have to recreate the original experience all round for am archive of the software to be useful or meaningful. Again, Gutenberg isn't as good as keeping all original printed books, but it isn't practical to keep all original printed books, but Gutenberg is.
There are a lot of people with a lot of money who are fanatics about old cars and while people go to great lengths to assemble collections of classics I believe there are a lot of models out there that just aren't that interesting to rebuild. Designs and pictures are enough.
Rebuild? I was talking about keeping running examples, not rebuilding them. Maybe it's because I live in Coventry, but trust, every sorry shitbox has a drivers' or enthusiast group, and examples in some museum.
I personally would never claim to have successfully archived a playable Wii Golf without the controller.
There's a whole emulation scene, you know? They have solutions to this.
And here we come to the point: if I told you that 87% of the ship models ever built were *not* in museums like that would you describe them as "lost to time"? Would you say that their history has been neglected or rendered unimportant?
I would say yes, strictly speaking. More reasonably, a trade off between the value of preservation and the practical aspects of keeping giant piles of rotting physical material around in the form of a boat. The ideal is keeping everything, because we don't know what future generations will find important or interesting. Reality compromises ideals. But it's So cheap to archive software that we might as well. What's the harm?
posted by Dysk at 6:52 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
And like, there are people out there restoring or preserving Wiimotes. You know what those guys will find really handy? That worthless, unplayable, pointless, controller-less archival copy of Wii Golf.
posted by Dysk at 6:55 PM on July 12, 2023
posted by Dysk at 6:55 PM on July 12, 2023
(I also don't get how just keeping blueprints of a car is fine, but just keeping the software without the original controller is pointless. The engineering drawings aren't the original experience either! It can be worth doing something even if it isn't perfect!)
posted by Dysk at 6:57 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 6:57 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, there are claims to be made. Is the game the same if it was originally on a CRT but is now on a modern monitor? Collision detection could be different if it was based on raster scans.
And speaking of rasters, are games like Asteroids or Tempest or Star Wars, the original coin-op arcade game, the same if they aren't being traced on the screen by a raster ray in a way that doesn't involve CRT scanning? Because those games literally physically worked different when it came to display on the screen than other games of the time like Pac Man.
The idea of preservation is really interesting because are you merely creating a current experience of something that was available long ago in a different form, mimicking the look/feel/experience as much as possible, or are you providing the actual experience from the years gone by?
Which is more valuable? Is it a matter of being as widely available as a "retro experience" as possible or is it about actually knowing what people back in Year X felt and heard and saw when they were playing the game?
I can see a lot of value in both, personally. I would like to be able to play Snokie on my computer in my house, but it isn't the same as sitting in front of a CRT using a third-party Atari joystick controller on an actual C=64.
I guess at some point it's like, are you the kind of person who would go to a revival cinema house to see Casablanca? You could watch it at home at any time in a lot of formats, but sitting in a cinema house with other people next to you is how it was meant to be experienced.
posted by hippybear at 7:07 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
And speaking of rasters, are games like Asteroids or Tempest or Star Wars, the original coin-op arcade game, the same if they aren't being traced on the screen by a raster ray in a way that doesn't involve CRT scanning? Because those games literally physically worked different when it came to display on the screen than other games of the time like Pac Man.
The idea of preservation is really interesting because are you merely creating a current experience of something that was available long ago in a different form, mimicking the look/feel/experience as much as possible, or are you providing the actual experience from the years gone by?
Which is more valuable? Is it a matter of being as widely available as a "retro experience" as possible or is it about actually knowing what people back in Year X felt and heard and saw when they were playing the game?
I can see a lot of value in both, personally. I would like to be able to play Snokie on my computer in my house, but it isn't the same as sitting in front of a CRT using a third-party Atari joystick controller on an actual C=64.
I guess at some point it's like, are you the kind of person who would go to a revival cinema house to see Casablanca? You could watch it at home at any time in a lot of formats, but sitting in a cinema house with other people next to you is how it was meant to be experienced.
posted by hippybear at 7:07 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
The "some games aren't worth preserving" conundrum will weed itself out over time, frankly. Nostalgia applies primarily to those who are old enough to have experienced the past personally.
Like, to piggyback off of my prior example, let's say that I'm a big fan of Bubble Bobble and remember it very fondly. An extreme fan might want the arcade version in hardware and put time and effort into maintaining it. Lesser fans might be more than satisfied by having it in MAME on various devices. Others may be interested in the NES version, which had some substantial differences but is generally held up as its best home port (some of those differences arguably _improved_ the experience), and again, may want the original NES hardware and cartridge or be satisfied with an emulation. But almost no one, even hardcore Bubble Bobble enthusiasts, will want the shoddy Apple II port of it unless they're an obsessive gotta-catch-em-all collector or they're momentarily curious about it.
Right now, there is a population that grew up with various decades of games and remembers them fondly, sometimes through rose-colored glasses. But even good games will tend to "time out" due to primitivity and their original userbase dying out. I think that it is both marvelous and important that the original PDP-1 version of Spacewar! is available via emulation, for instance; it was a vital milestone in videogaming history. But when was the last time that you heard ANYONE say "man, I could go for some PDP-1 Spacewar! with my buddies this afternoon?"
1980s games and consoles are on the bubble, propped up by (a) their generation's continued nostalgia and (b) their manufacturers riding the intellectual property and franchises as hard as they possibly can. When I stood in front of a Donkey Kong machine in 1982, did I think to myself, "Self, in forty years, there will be a big-budget motion picture about Jumpman and his supporting cast and Donkey Kong will be in it?" Not hardly. The endless franchises will last as long as Gen X nostalgia props it up; eventually, equilibrium will be restored and only the rare and the very good will remain in demand, for different reasons.
posted by delfin at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2023
Like, to piggyback off of my prior example, let's say that I'm a big fan of Bubble Bobble and remember it very fondly. An extreme fan might want the arcade version in hardware and put time and effort into maintaining it. Lesser fans might be more than satisfied by having it in MAME on various devices. Others may be interested in the NES version, which had some substantial differences but is generally held up as its best home port (some of those differences arguably _improved_ the experience), and again, may want the original NES hardware and cartridge or be satisfied with an emulation. But almost no one, even hardcore Bubble Bobble enthusiasts, will want the shoddy Apple II port of it unless they're an obsessive gotta-catch-em-all collector or they're momentarily curious about it.
Right now, there is a population that grew up with various decades of games and remembers them fondly, sometimes through rose-colored glasses. But even good games will tend to "time out" due to primitivity and their original userbase dying out. I think that it is both marvelous and important that the original PDP-1 version of Spacewar! is available via emulation, for instance; it was a vital milestone in videogaming history. But when was the last time that you heard ANYONE say "man, I could go for some PDP-1 Spacewar! with my buddies this afternoon?"
1980s games and consoles are on the bubble, propped up by (a) their generation's continued nostalgia and (b) their manufacturers riding the intellectual property and franchises as hard as they possibly can. When I stood in front of a Donkey Kong machine in 1982, did I think to myself, "Self, in forty years, there will be a big-budget motion picture about Jumpman and his supporting cast and Donkey Kong will be in it?" Not hardly. The endless franchises will last as long as Gen X nostalgia props it up; eventually, equilibrium will be restored and only the rare and the very good will remain in demand, for different reasons.
posted by delfin at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2023
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posted by seanmpuckett at 4:48 AM on July 11, 2023 [22 favorites]