"We need a Computer Game Hall of Fame. Not just a list of names printed every month... a real memorial."
In this reprint from the April 1999 issue of Game Developer magazine, IGDA co-founder Ernest Adams laments the contemporary state of games preservation and calls for a more permanent way by which game developers remember their own history.
I was thinking in the shower the other day about the notion of immortality. It's among the most ancient of human fascinations, and a subject of philosophy and spiritual thought since before recorded history.
If you want to live forever, you have some options: spiritual immortality (religion), practical immortality (don't die), or virtual immortality (fame). The disadvantage of spiritual immortality, at least for the rationally-minded, is that there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it exists. And we're a long way, technologically or medically, from achieving practical immortality and conquering death. So, that leaves virtual immortality: fame, and the knowledge that you counted for something and will be remembered by those who follow you. How can I, as a game developer, be remembered?
Now, you might say, "So what? The vast majority of the world leaves no legacy. What entitles you to a monument?" I don't have an answer to that, except that I know that I want one. And not just for myself. There's someone else that I want people to remember as well.
Danielle Bunten Berry is dead. And in a few years the work of her heart and hands and mind are going to be dead too, and that is not right, my friends. Her imagination, her contribution, was too important to be forgotten. We need a way to remember her. We need a Computer Game Hall of Fame. Not just a list of names printed every month in Computer Gaming World, but a real memorial. But what kind?
Now, I have stood in the tomb chamber at the heart of the Great Pyramid. One of the most common reactions to the Great Pyramid is, "My God! What a ego that guy had, to build such a monument to himself." But there's nothing intrinsically evil or immoral about building monuments, even to yourself. We no longer have to use whips and slaves to get it done. Why shouldn't Dani get a pyramid, if we want one for her?
Well, pyramids are expensive, and they take up a lot of space. So, we turn to the question of leaving a legacy in memory, rather than stone. But the work of game developers suffers from a kind of technological decay that is not experienced by other artists. To illustrate this I want to quote Bruce Sterling, the science fiction author, from a speech he gave at the 1991 Computer Game Developers' Conference. He was talking about a hypothetical — and now not-so-hypothetical — device, the "electronic book," and he said:
Now I'm the farthest thing from a Luddite ladies and gentlemen, but when I contemplate this particular technical marvel my author's blood runs cold. It's really hard for books to compete with multisensory media, with modern electronic media, and this is supposed to be the panacea for withering literature, but from the marrow of my bones I say get that little sarcophagus away from me. For God's sake don't put my books into the Thomas Edison kinetoscope. Don't put me into the stereograph, don't write me on the wax cylinder, don't tie my words and my thoughts to the fate of a piece of hardware, because hardware is even more mortal than I am, and I'm a hell of a lot more mortal than I care to be. Mortality is one good reason why I'm writing books in the first place. For God's sake don't make me keep pace with the hardware, because I'm not really in the business of keeping pace, I'm really in the business of marking place...
You folks are dwelling in the very maelstrom of Permanent Technological Revolution. And that's a really cool place, but man, it's just not a good place to build monuments.
He's right, of course. Our work is as bright and as beautiful as the wildflowers of a Sierra mountain springtime... and just as ephemeral. Our games cannot serve, unaided, as our monument. When we die, we leave nothing to remember us by. We need something else.
The Computer Game Hall of Fame would be a place where the great games are kept, and talked about, and studied for the wonder and truth that they contain. Above all, it would be a place where their designers are honored. It should consist of two things: First, a permanent site on the World Wide Web (which, in my opinion, is soon to be the collective cultural memory of mankind). Second, a physical place. A building, a museum — an arcade if nothing better — where people can go and admire, play, learn, and remember.
Now some will say, "A museum about outdated video games? Pathetic." But consider this: I work on a game about professional football. There's nothing very world-shaking about professional football. It doesn't change the fate of the human race. Professional football is about the exercise of athletic skill for the purpose of excitement and entertainment. Excitement and entertainment is our business too. If professional football can have a Hall of Fame, then by God, we're entitled to one. Who's going to build it? I don't know. I don't have the time. I don't have the money. But it needs to be done, so that our great works can live on. They can be remembered, but only if we choose to remember them.
We need to preserve the systems they were designed for, or it will be moot. Also, what happens to those games that require an online component? Are they completely inert forever?
Developers/Publishers should start doing what ID did for some of their games: release them to open source once they are old enough. That would make preservation a lot easier, and with public server components you could recreate at least the technical side of the online component (an active player base could be temporarily achieved at events etc.).
Not sure if this is ever going to happen on a broad basis, but if you want your game preserved for ever, this is your best shot. Just look at Doom, you can now play it in your browser, and people can play it at least as long as JavaScript is around (and that wasn't even an preservation attempt, it just occurred naturally).
Games are disposable as paper towels to many consumers. Preserving games is like keeping a handkerchief instead of tossing out the tissue.... Games are driven by the "new" and so old games don't hold the same value that an old painting has or an old book.... It is sad but games just aren't worth nearly as much as want them to be.
But if this is true, how is it that so many people answer "Zelda" or "Sonic" when asked for their favorite game (almost always talking about old titles, not some Wii remake)?
My favorite game of all time is probably the first Fallout, and I think it has features you don't find in modern games (mostly open-world concepts), and I still play it from time to time.
Sure, the money is made with new games, but all the sentimental value, many valuable game design lessons and a lot of fun is in old games, games which don't continue to be playable without active preservation (even Windows games like Fallout).
Not preserving old games is like saying all the money comes from selling new books, and most people only read new books, thus old books have no value. Because games are exactly like books in this regard.
Most people don't care about 99% of old books either, so I guess we should just burn all the libraries and be done with the snot rags.
Today's Skyrim might be the next millennium's Odyssey. The Miyamoto of today may be tomorrow's Shakespeare. As with any great work, the society of it's time doesn't get to decide it's historic value. It's a commendable pursuit to preserve culture so that future generations can better learn and grow from it.
Ben, I think you're on the wrong track. After people read a book, they give it away, sell it, throw it out or just shelf it for the rest of their days. But that doesn't mean that books "just aren't worth nearly as much as want them to be". Games may be disposable for individual players, but not for society as a whole. There will always be people interested inb historical games (even if they won't be the majority).
The difference is that the physical book on the shelf has resell value to the collectors market. Not all books will be of value but some will be; that's more than 0.
And having a physical book of something is like keeping a copy of the source. A video game is a compiled and optimized subset of the source. You can't generate reprints or reproduce the original content onto a new platform with just the game install. You can transcribe a book onto any future formats.
A physical book can survive 100 years. A DLG has a life expectancy of 1-8 years.
This should be done both for released games and games that were cancelled for whatever reason. So much work is never seen by the public and sometimes even thrown away as companies close and teams disband...
There are already game museums in a number of places though (Paris, Berlin) and wasn't there an initiative in Texas to start preserving important design and development artifacts? Maybe it would be good if any online initiative were to connect these different places. I doubt one single perfect location could be found for a Global Game Archive.
There is plenty of preservation of the games of yesteryear. Besides emulation, such as dosbox or nestopia, there is tons of videos on youtube talking about the games of the past and why people loved them. I don't see the need for a physical location that is hard to get to. Games are information and we live in the information age. The internet is the video game hall of fame.
The physical objects are worth preserving also though, not just the games on the original hardware, but original designs and art and other things that would inherently be tied to one location. I think the best we can hope for is that every major game development area will have its own archive where that kind of material can be preserved while everything digital goes on the internet.
(obviously designs and such should also be digitized)
Game preservation enthusiasts should check out byuu and the bsnes project. It's an emulator w/ a focus on accuracy, and he's collected and reverse engineered every single SNES game and all the unique co-processors within them. He's also taken photos of and created circuit diagrams for all the boards. It's a fantastic endeavor that took years of work and a whole lot of money.
If we could get a dozen more people with the dedication of byuu there might be some hope for preserving this stuff in a way that's still usable beyond a decade and actually close to the original experience.
Sadly, once you get to around the fifth/sixth generations of consoles, things get significantly more complicated. And the recent generations of the game disc not being the final version are making proper preservation practically impossible.
I am a little surprised that no one has mentioned the Art of Video Games exhibit that the Smithsonian American Art Museum put together. This in itself is a major stepping stone on the way to making a hall of fame a reality. I am unsure if this is a permanent presentation that they will maintain over time or if it will die after it is done with the national tour it is on over the next few years. This may not be the perfect example of what needs to be done to preserve past and future games for recognition and future generations but it is a start. I'm sure once video games become widely recognized as an art form it is only a matter of time for something like a hall of fame to emerge.
Not sure if this is ever going to happen on a broad basis, but if you want your game preserved for ever, this is your best shot. Just look at Doom, you can now play it in your browser, and people can play it at least as long as JavaScript is around (and that wasn't even an preservation attempt, it just occurred naturally).
My favorite game of all time is probably the first Fallout, and I think it has features you don't find in modern games (mostly open-world concepts), and I still play it from time to time.
Sure, the money is made with new games, but all the sentimental value, many valuable game design lessons and a lot of fun is in old games, games which don't continue to be playable without active preservation (even Windows games like Fallout).
Not preserving old games is like saying all the money comes from selling new books, and most people only read new books, thus old books have no value. Because games are exactly like books in this regard.
Today's Skyrim might be the next millennium's Odyssey. The Miyamoto of today may be tomorrow's Shakespeare. As with any great work, the society of it's time doesn't get to decide it's historic value. It's a commendable pursuit to preserve culture so that future generations can better learn and grow from it.
And having a physical book of something is like keeping a copy of the source. A video game is a compiled and optimized subset of the source. You can't generate reprints or reproduce the original content onto a new platform with just the game install. You can transcribe a book onto any future formats.
A physical book can survive 100 years. A DLG has a life expectancy of 1-8 years.
There are already game museums in a number of places though (Paris, Berlin) and wasn't there an initiative in Texas to start preserving important design and development artifacts? Maybe it would be good if any online initiative were to connect these different places. I doubt one single perfect location could be found for a Global Game Archive.
(obviously designs and such should also be digitized)
If we could get a dozen more people with the dedication of byuu there might be some hope for preserving this stuff in a way that's still usable beyond a decade and actually close to the original experience.
Sadly, once you get to around the fifth/sixth generations of consoles, things get significantly more complicated. And the recent generations of the game disc not being the final version are making proper preservation practically impossible.