You may have heard recently that the Video Game History Foundation share data suggesting that 87% of video games released before 2010 have not been preserved in any way. Part of the reason for this is because of copyright laws that don’t have video game protection exemption. It hasn’t helped that the Entertainment Software Association, or ESA for short, have been resisting those exemptions.
Well, the ESA has responded to the Video Game History Foundation’s data, and it’s not really reassuring. ESA president & CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis said that video games are “the most expressive works in our copyright canon”, and that it’s “critically important” that video gaming companies bets decide how their games should be released.
Pierre-Louis even goes as far as to say that “I don’t know that I agree with the results of [the VGHF’s] study or how they’re characterizing it. There’s a robust avenue for preservation to occur and that is occurring”. Pierre-Louis cites recent efforts by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to re-release their older catalogue of games, and also says that the ESA’s member organizations “work with a wide range of well-resourced public institutions that adhere to high professional standards in looking on how best to preserve games for use by scholars”.
Unfortunately, there’s 3 issues with the ESA’s response. Firstly, those recent efforts by the big three companies have only accounted for 13% of their back catalogue, which is something that Video Game History Foundation co-founder Kelsey Lewin says “is not enough”.
Secondly, the ESA’s collaboration with public institutions is based on guidelines issued by the Library of Congress Copyright Office in 2015 that would later be updated in 2018. While these 2018 guidelines are better than 2015’s, they are still relatively restrictive and haven’t been updated since. In fact, the Library of Congress Copyright Office declined to make the guidelines more favorable due to “the greater risk of market harm in this context given the market for legacy video games”.
Lastly, as previously mentioned, the ESA has not just ignored efforts to preserve video games, they have actively resisted more favorable guideline exemptions that have been proposed. Also, despite letting video game companies fix the problem, video gaming companies have lots of influence in the ESA. In fact, lots of video gaming companies are all members of the ESA, including Square Enix, Capcom, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. So, the ESA’s plan of “letting video gaming companies handle it” isn’t really believable when these same companies control the ESA, and the ESA itself has been resistant to better video gaming protection exemptions.
Nevertheless, Lewin doesn’t want the latest news to create an “us-vs-them” argument with its counterparts in the video gaming industry. Lewin even says that “we hope we can all agree that this is a place where libraries and archives can and should be empowered to make a difference”.
I don’t know if this is a spicy take or not but… I don’t think every single video game that’s published needs to be archived.
I know it seems like nobody likes game XYZ but somebody and their deceased cousin may have had a huge connection to game XYZ. Even bad games can seem like magic in the hands of a young kid in 1989.
…
that wasn’t totally coherent. one man’s trash is another mans treasure
If the companies themselves could be trusted to preserve their own properties, this wouldn’t be an issue. Game companies need to be properly preserving their own titles to begin with. unfortunately, if you leave it strictly for them to decide what to save and not, you get in incredibly biased collection.
I am 100% for non-profit archives to be able to save all the titles they want. This creates a nice database where anyone can look up a title and learn about it or simply learn of its existence–it doesn’t mean that non-profit is putting the data out there to download copyrighted material–that’d be a pirate site.
ALSO this is a nice guarantee of any given titles continued existence. Lets not forget Nintendo still stands accused of losing the data to the original Mario Bros. game and using an unofficial ROM to put the title in the VC. (They say they didn’t but evidence says otherwise).
If you can’t trust them to protect the big titles, you can’t trust them with any title.
Obviously games that have immense cultural impact (Super Mario Bros., Mario 64, Pokemon Red & Blue, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life 2, I could list literally hundreds of examples) should be preserved, no question. I even believe that some infamously bad ones should be preserved as well, if only to serve as a cautionary tale, or what not to do (like E.T. on the Atari 2600). But, I don’t think every game should be obligated to be preserved- I can think of a handful of 3DS and Wii U eShop games that I wouldn’t mind not seeing again.
No they all need to be preserved. It’s part of history, and just because you don’t want to play certain games doesn’t mean others won’t.
some people dont seem to understand… Its preservation not a “top ten list”
…at least its supposed to be…
Nintendo making an effort to release past games lol “OK”
Yes, but are they really well preserved if they are not accessible?
Many old films were recovered based on chance copies in the hands of collectors or third parties.