The Video Game History Foundation decried the 'lobbying efforts by rightsholder groups' that have 'impeded' proper efforts to archive old games at libraries.
I mean, that all sounds to me like a really good argument for preserving copies of every single version of every game. To go back to your Shakespeare example, it would be a massive loss if any of those adaptations were not preserved to be found by those who went looking, so all we had to go on was records of people talking about them. In fact, there are at least a few examples of exactly that: Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey are only parts of a much larger series which we only know exist because we have other records discussing it.
Yeah, just taking snapshots of everything isn’t going to let you perfectly recreate the culture surrounding a game at any point in time, but having those snapshots around is important for giving context to other records you have.
But how feasible is it to have a recording of every single time any high school brit lit class put on Shakespear? Uhm… okay, the NSA got you covered but you get my point.
But, again, is a copy of the state of WoW on October 25th 2024 all that important when you consider that what really matter are the players and… I dunno, I guess they are talking about the expensive mounts?
Which gets back to the argument of preserving the games themselves (which I think has a lot of merit) versus preserving the culture around them. And people tend to conflate the two because they think “we are preserving culture” gives them a stronger argument.
Because they are very different problems. And conflating the two is how you end up losing masters because “there are VHSes with it on it”.
I mean, that all sounds to me like a really good argument for preserving copies of every single version of every game. To go back to your Shakespeare example, it would be a massive loss if any of those adaptations were not preserved to be found by those who went looking, so all we had to go on was records of people talking about them. In fact, there are at least a few examples of exactly that: Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey are only parts of a much larger series which we only know exist because we have other records discussing it.
Yeah, just taking snapshots of everything isn’t going to let you perfectly recreate the culture surrounding a game at any point in time, but having those snapshots around is important for giving context to other records you have.
But how feasible is it to have a recording of every single time any high school brit lit class put on Shakespear? Uhm… okay, the NSA got you covered but you get my point.
But, again, is a copy of the state of WoW on October 25th 2024 all that important when you consider that what really matter are the players and… I dunno, I guess they are talking about the expensive mounts?
Which gets back to the argument of preserving the games themselves (which I think has a lot of merit) versus preserving the culture around them. And people tend to conflate the two because they think “we are preserving culture” gives them a stronger argument.
Because they are very different problems. And conflating the two is how you end up losing masters because “there are VHSes with it on it”.