The Preservation of Video Games: A Community Effort
The medium of video games continues to march on, here to stay. Ever since the Atari 2600 brought video games to the home market in 1977 with such titles as Pong and Pac-Man, they have remained a fixture of popular culture (Santo). Of the platforms that are most prominent now, Sony has its successful PlayStation console line, which is up to its fourth iteration. Microsoft is developing the Xbox line, which is currently on its third generation, known as the Xbox One. Meanwhile, Nintendo has had its inconsistent but consistent offerings, with, among others, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo 64, the Wii, and their current flagship the Nintendo Switch. Outside of dedicated consoles, the PC is also one of the most prominent gaming platforms. This does not even include platforms that are gone now but were successful in their time, such as Sega’s Genesis. With the passage of time however, these electronics and their related materials are in danger of disappearing.
Like many forms of new media, video games have a lifespan that is determined by physical materials, and the sensitivity of digital components. From consoles that feature a new iteration every 5–10 years, to storage formats that are not always supported going forward, to the inevitable physical decay of these devices, video games are in danger of losing artifacts important to the medium’s history. In addition to this, secondary material such as design documents and artwork are often kept haphazardly, with many ending up forgotten in filing cabinets. This paper will look at the ways video games have been preserved, through the lens of the concept of archives.
The problem with video games is that they are primarily a digital medium. Cartridges and discs will inevitably decay, and/or become incompatible with the latest hardware. Bit rot, or the decay of digital information and storage media, occurs to all of these forms. Floppy disks, magnetic tape, and hard drives are the most vulnerable to bit rot, with lifespans that range between 10–30 years. ROM (read-only memory) cartridges are less susceptible, yet require protection to ensure their longevity. EPROM (Erasable Programmable ROMs) suffer from bit rot the fastest, as their method of storing information, charged electrons within the chip, leak over time. Meanwhile, the exact lifespan of optical discs is unknown, yet there have been cases of lost information in forms as recent as Blu-Ray (Monnens, et al.).
Obsolescence, or the replacement of a media format by one with improved capabilities such as higher storage capacity, processing speed, and functionality, is a key factor to video game history being lost (Monnens, et al.). As the medium progresses, it is inevitable that compatibility will be left behind. In 2019, for example, Apple ended support for 32-bit apps with their Catalina operating system update, which will render a large number of games unplayable (Statt). While there is the possibility of the developer updating these apps to 64-bit, and the existence of workarounds that allow for Catalina users to use 32-bit apps (Mendelson), for all intents and purposes, these games are lost to Mac users should they upgrade their systems.
Another anxiety that archivists face is that many, if not all, games are ongoing documents now. There are online multiplayer games, such as Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft that host thousands of players. Would a preserved copy be the same without the players? And then there is the matter of games receiving regular updates, such as new scenarios and changes to mechanics (Winget and Murray). Some receive them for up to a year, but the aforementioned online multiplayer games can receive them for however long the game goes on. Which version do you preserve? The original? The latest? All of them?
And what about the media produced in the making of these, such as the game’s source code (which is as integral to the preservation of a video game as a film negative is to a movie), the design documents, and the hardware that produced these? One studio, Irem Software Engineering, revealed that the source codes for their games were long gone, yet they retained the ROM cartridges for almost all of their games. However, they expressed concern over the possibility that the parts and maintenance used for preserving these may soon be outdated. Next, Microsoft has special departments within the company just for the archival of these materials. They have expressed plans to move games from the year 2000 and earlier to new storage platforms through their Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery program. And lastly, Nintendo has stated that they are committed to preserving their history, citing the examples of their design documents from the Legend of Zelda series being used as reference in new installments, and their Virtual Console service allowing for new audiences to play older games through modern systems such as the Wii (Andersen).
However, these practices are not consistent throughout the industry, or even the company. Nintendo has ended support for the Virtual Console on the Wii, leaving only the Wii U and 3DS with access to this service, but these consoles have much more limited titles. Nintendo Switch Online, the Virtual Console’s follow-up for the Nintendo Switch, offers a fraction of what the prior service featured (Maiberg and Bode). And as far as production material, certain companies simply disposed of their material after publishing their games, or went bankrupt and abandoned their offices. Some of these, such as the Atari Corporation’s assets for games like Pac-Man (or more accurately, the filing cabinets that contained these assets, which included marketing materials and design diagrams) were later purchased at auctions and sought out by collectors (Andersen).
While there is not a singular authoritative collection of video game history, there have been multiple efforts to preserve the history of the medium, and these tend to be by people outside of the industry. The Video Game History Foundation was founded in February 2017 by journalist Frank Cifaldi. In an interview with Allison Meier for the site Hyperallergic, he talked about the problems he faces as an archivist, saying, “The biggest issue is there’s no checklist, there’s no complete catalogue of video game ephemeral material to work from, we’re just discovering things as we go. What we focus on is identifying and digitizing and archiving what we feel like is the most ephemeral and volatile of it.” Speaking about what separates his foundation from other projects, “But what I’m doing that is different is conserving the entire history of video games, instead of just what the future should look at. I think my job as an archivist is not to decide what’s important, it’s to save what I can, because I don’t know what’s going to be important 50 years from now.”
Another example is the Computer & Video Game Archive, at the University of Michigan. The CVGA opened in the fall of 2008 and currently houses close to 8,000 games across 70 systems, board and card games, tabletop roleplaying games, and related items such as player guides and novelizations. A key feature of the archive is to allow for hands-on use, meaning every item has to be in working order. The site has allowed for researchers to look into using games as a way to discuss important topics, with an example given of historical traumas such as the American Civil War. Other applications include using video game music to study music theory, and driving simulators to research the effects of texting while driving (Wood and Carter).
In situations where the original hardware is not around however, emulation, or the use of a program that can run these games, has opened up the possibilities for older titles. Code Mystics, Inc. for example, has published Dragon’s Lair and the Atari Greatest Hits series for the Nintendo DS in 2009 and 2010–2011. These releases presented titles from the late 1970s to the 1990s for a console with an audience that had likely never heard of them. Without the source code, it would have been much harder to repackage these games, as it would have required remaking the game from scratch whereas the source code allowed them to make the existing game compatible with the emulator program (Andersen).
The use of emulators and ROM modding (modification) has helped these titles find new life. Much in the same way that Hito Steyerl’s “In Defense of the Poor Image” suggested that “the economy of poor images is about more than just downloads: you can keep the files, watch them again, even reedit or improve them if you think it necessary,” the modding community has taken these old games and expressed their creativity in different ways using their own knowledge of coding. For example, a prominent modder in the community, who goes by Baron von Lector, created an homage to what he considers “the greatest team in baseball” in the form of a modded ROM file of 1986’s R.B.I Baseball from the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) that centered on the 1927 New York Yankees. This is one of his many projects, making mods for games such as R.B.I. Baseball and Tecmo Super Bowl to recreate teams from history in games that would not have these players (Johnson).
Different companies have different perspectives of ROM modding. In 1998, Valve Software released the game Half-Life, a science fiction first-person shooter. Two years later, a modder named Minh Le modified the game to create Counter Strike, a game about terrorists fighting counter-terrorists. Le and his partner Jess Cliffe were hired to work as developers by Valve, and the game became highly successful, with around 650,000 players still playing the current iteration of the game, nearly two decades later. This has become a standard move for Valve, as CEO Gabe Newell believes that modding is one of the best ways for aspiring game developers to develop their skills (Dyer).
Nintendo, on the other hand, has a very strict stance with regards to ROM files. Their official policy contains lengthy responses to hypothetical questions that make it clear that they regard owning any ROM files as illegal. They regard emulators as “the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers.” They respond to the argument that emulators are good for the company as they will promote the Nintendo brand with the counterargument that piracy “promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose” (“Legal Information (Copyrights, Emulators, ROMs, Etc.)”). As with the concept of “poor images,” companies, driven by capital, will always insist on their work being the last word.
How do these policies affect the past of the medium? Companies such as Nintendo do not easily provide their older titles, except for the most popular ones. However, there are games that may not be as known as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda but are still influential. Mother 3, the 2006 sequel to the acclaimed 1995 Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Mother 2 (known in the United States as Earthbound) has never been released outside of Japan nor has it been officially translated to English. While the series has not quite been the household name that other Nintendo games have been, Earthbound is named as an influence on popular games such as Undertale and South Park: The Stick of Truth (Kohler). And yet, this game that is in heavy demand somehow has not seen a worldwide release.
How about the present? Bethesda Game Studios has allowed a large modding community to grow around their Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games, dating back to 2002, when The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind came with official modding tools for fans to use. The games have benefited from this approach in a number of ways, namely in that they have had life for years to come. Morrowind for example, was still being sold at stores for $20–30 seven years later (games typically retail for $60 when they first come out), when other games from the same time were in bargain bins (“GDC Session: Bethesda Studios Talks the Importance of Modders.”). In 2017, however, they introduced their Creation Club service, which hired third-party developers to create mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4 that would be sold. This has attracted criticism from the community, for the reason that there has been overlap between the paid Creation Club mods and the free, fanmade mods. To be fair to Bethesda though, the Creation Club mods were essentially remakes of content that had existed in previous games of theirs, such as the in-game item Chinese Stealth Armor from Fallout 3, so it was not as if they had taken material originally created by fans. In addition to this, the fanmade mods are still allowed to run. However, there is still disapproval from the community for the studio monetizing a concept that began within fan circles (Wright). While it does not erase the work that had been done by the fans, it does suggest that what the corporation does is worth attaching a monetary value, and therefore prominence, to.
And what about its future? Developer Toby Fox got his start in the medium by making a ROM mod of the aforementioned Earthbound, which he released online in 2008 as EarthBound: The Halloween Hack (Kirshenblatt). This later led to the 2015 success Undertale, which has been named by prominent gaming website Polygon as one of the best games of the decade. The game later got a spiritual follow-up entitled Deltarune. Soon enough, Undertale was released for the Nintendo Switch in 2018. If Nintendo had had their way, the ROM that allowed Fox to create this game would not have been allowed to exist, and these two games would not have been possible. Does that not make for a poorer medium?
Through this brief examination of the ways that video game history has been preserved, by companies and fans, one can argue that the only way history of games can be archived properly is by bringing down barriers to access for the average person. When it comes to archives, there is the question of “who can see it and contribute to it?” We have seen examples of companies making the effort to preserve their materials, and examples of fans doing the work of keeping these in the public eye. The medium of video games is based on the idea of interactivity. Without the proper programming from developers, and the right input from the players, the intent is not accomplished. Perhaps the best way to tell the complete story of games is to allow the entire community to maintain it.
Works Cited
Andersen, John. “Where Games Go To Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis, Part 1.” Gamasutra, 27 Jan. 2011, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134641/where_games_go_to_sleep_the_game_.php.
Dyer, Andy. “History of PC Game Mods.” Nvidia, 18 Mar. 2016, https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/history-of-pc-game-mods/.
“GDC Session: Bethesda Studios Talks the Importance of Modders.” Pluralsight, 4 Mar. 2015, https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/film-games/gdc-sessions-bethesda-studios-talks-importance-modders.
Johnson, Stephon. “ROMs Away: Modding Keeps 8-Bit Games and Sports History Alive Today.” Polygon, Polygon, 10 June 2017, https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/10/15773402/rbi-baseball-mods-roms-nes-tecmo-super-bowl-baron-lector.
Kirshenblatt, Matthew. “EarthBound Dress Rehearsals and The Beginnings of Interaction: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part I.” Sequart Organization, 10 Dec. 2018, http://sequart.org/magazine/69430/earthbound-dress-rehearsals-and-the-beginnings-of-interaction-toby-fox-and-gaster’s-deltarune-part-i/.
Kohler, Chris. “Seriously, Nintendo: It’s Time For Mother 3.” Kotaku, Kotaku, 30 June 2017, https://kotaku.com/seriously-nintendo-its-time-for-mother-3-1796533984.
“Legal Information (Copyrights, Emulators, ROMs, Etc.).” Nintendo, https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp.
Maiberg, Emanuel, and Karl Bode. “Nintendo Makes It Clear That Piracy Is the Only Way to Preserve Video Game History.” Vice, 29 Jan. 2019, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjm5kw/nintendo-makes-it-clear-that-piracy-is-the-only-way-to-preserve-video-game-history.
Meier, Allison. “An Archivist Sets Out to Save the Material History of Video Games.” Hyperallergic, 3 May 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/371889/saving-the-material-history-of-games/.
Mendelson, Edward. “How to Run 32-Bit Apps in MacOS Catalina.” PCMAG, 11 Oct. 2019, https://www.pcmag.com/article/371267/how-to-run-32-bit-apps-in-macos-catalina.
Monnens, Devin, et al. “Before It’s Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper.” American Journal of Play, vol. 2, no. 2, Jan. 2009, pp. 139–166. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1069232&site=eds-live&scope=site.
“The 100 Best Games of the Decade (2010–2019): 100–51.” Polygon, Polygon, 4 Nov. 2019, https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/11/4/20944265/best-games-2019-2010-ps4-switch-xbox-pc-100-51.
Santo, Brian. “The Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame: Atari 2600.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, 3 Jan. 2019, https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-atari-2600.
Statt, Nick. “Why MacOS Catalina Is Breaking so Many Apps, and What to Do about It.” The Verge, The Verge, 12 Oct. 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/12/20908567/apple-macos-catalina-breaking-apps-32-bit-support-how-to-prepare-avoid-update.
Steyerl, Hito. “In Defense of the Poor Image.” E-Flux, no. 10, Nov. 2009, pp. 1–9. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asu&AN=505273569&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Winget, M. A., and C. Murray. “Collecting and Preserving Videogames and Their Related Materials: A Review of Current Practice, Game-Related Archives and Research Projects.” Proceedings of the ASIST Annual Meeting, vol. 45. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselc&AN=edselc.2–52.0–71949119143&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 10 Dec. 2019.
Wood, Kelli, and David S. Carter. “Art and Technology: Archiving Video Games for Humanities Research in University Libraries.” Art Libraries Journal, vol. 43, no. 4, Oct. 2018, pp. 185–195. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1017/alj.2018.29.
Wright, Steven T. “Bethesda’s Creation Club: the Fallout.” Eurogamer.net, Eurogamer.net, 13 Dec. 2017, https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-12-13-creation-club-the-fallout.
