http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/170243/When_digital_dies_where_does_that_leave_game_preservation.php

I've beat this drum for at least two years, so I'm just going to provide this article and leave it be for awhile. I'm interested if... well, not gonna say. Have fun.

Well this have happened before historically. Things WILL be lost but enough will survive to make it bearable.

One of the historically best solutions is already under way and it's GOG. Things don't get preserved in a major way unless it's profitable and GOG have showed that reusing products deemed as outdated, in this case media, can make a nice profit. More will follow in their steps.

What do you think about the value of the assets (e.g. art assets, game engines, source code, etc.), these technically fall under copyright and can provide valuable insight into the culture?

That will probably be swaying a lot. Right now they're seen as more or less garbage so they will be sold dirt cheap. Yes many will put a ridiculous high price on it but when they realise no one will pay that amount it will plummet. Then when they understand that there is a market for it it'll go up and then when the market is getting flooded it will plummet again.

I agree that it can be classified as art and therefore in a sense priceless but it is not going to be looked at that way in a long time so comparing price and value for it with art does not really fit for the time being.

On this topic, there's been talk about new disciplines in Information/Library Studies towards the preservation of digital assets; in fact, some schools are now offering programs offering training in being digital archivists, where instead of books, it's source code/apps that are preserved and filed.

Yeah there was an article written on Gamespot awhile ago with the same theme - they mentioned several non-profit preservation efforts (museums and the like) though I'm not sure if they talked about GOG.com.

Not to get into the "are video games art" discussion, but time is the ultimate decider of cultural worth of any medium of entertainment. Unfortunately video games have the problem of being more intimately tied to the technology of their day than any other medium which means emulators become must. Sadly the industry does indeed compound this problem.

To be fair, the movie industry was just as bad if not worse for preservation in its early days. The BBC was almost culturally criminal in their disregard for their own older TV works and many other production houses for TV were no better in the early days of TV. I think articles like this, GOG, DOSBox, ScummVM, Wine, even the dubiously legal console/ROM emulators, and several museum-led efforts are showing that things are moving in the right direction in some respects for video game preservation. At least the community cares a lot and some publishers even care a little.

It's not enough for some games, but it's a good start. I think there's some cause for optimism.

That's like saying "war is the ultimate test of any civilization's worth". Being left (alive / available) tells us nothing about the survivor's value, it merely proves perseverance.

I agree. Also values change. One culture/generation/age might think one thing is worth much but the next that follow that may treat it as trash and value something else from the same time more.
Hopefully you understand what I mean. Found my thoughts hard to put in english writing.

Not really a good analogy. If preservation efforts are good for a particular medium (a large caveat I grant you), then perseverance tells us a lot about the worth of a cultural artifact. This is the one people still play, still read, still listen to, etc ... Yes there are many other factors which go into that - randomness of survival being the most predominate especially when preservation efforts are poor or nonexistent - but in general those things which are cultural touchstones are preserved by that culture and those things which are simply a fad, die.

Perhaps I should use different language. Live/die is far too strong. A work may still have been preserved but no longer culturally relevant and visa versa. Rather it is an issue of cultural staying power. We still play Chess. We still read Shakespeare. Just to pick two obvious examples amongst many. There are many other games which we have knowledge of and whose rules we know, but we don't play them anymore. There are many english authors and playwrights of that era whose works we saved and while some studying works of that era will continue to read, study, and preserve them, it is Shakespeare's versions of the stories which remain culturally relevant to us (at least in the English speaking world). They're the ones with the most cultural staying power, that touch some piece of us 400 years after they were written, that we still put on major theatre productions of them many times a year. True but there are things which remain relevant to the human condition across generation. But it is also true preservation should focus on everything since you never know what that is going to be from the generation of the inception of the work. That's what I am trying to get at. It isn't the popularity in any given generation of a work, particularly that of the generation which created the work, but what after much time has passed do we still pay attention to an author's words, a composer's notes, etc ... Does it still touch some cultural core?

Edit: Starting over.

Not always true. It's not uncommon that what survives culturally is what is allowed to survive. We as a species have gone through many periods with totalitarian rule, in fact it's the norm and if some cultural part is seen as a threat to the ruling power it gets eradicated. Whole cultures and the people in it have been wiped out for this reason.

I'm not sure there are things that always will be relevant for humans across generations. It's probable but we have changed so much during history in our views and beliefs that it seems somewhat unlikely.
So I agree that we should preserve as much as we can because we don't know when it will be of cultural importance.

Edit: Darn quoting system. Confused me into making a double post instead of a edit. :/

I think this might be the case - the way you originally expressed things was... peculiar.
Time certainly doesn't "decide" what is precious, based on its longevity. It's the preciousness that (sometimes ?) causes people to take steps in order for it to persevere. Time in not the "judge" in the court of art, it's merely the stenographer (Or are you going to argue that this is a bad analogy as well -_- ?).

Absolutely: the Taliban destroyed Buddha statues; a whole host of groups destroyed large parts of the Parthenon; some group of assholes started a fire in the library of Alexandria; a different group plundered Constantinople; The BBC never thought about legacy and so destroyed their own just to save a small amount of money to reuse their film.

But we have preserved much and much of what we try to preserve is that which still teaches us. Considering that we still read and translate works of thousands of years old and teach them to bored high-schoolers, I think there are some works that do indeed have lasting power. But even if something doesn't last quite that long, having a historical perspective of what we've preserved and kept safe is still important, if not key to determining worth. Even if Shakespeare were to completely disappear in the next 100 years, to have lasted as long he did as cultural touchstone, would speak volumes to the impact of any author. The works don't have to last forever, but it's what lasts beyond the now that is important - what we choose to save. But yes, you can't really guess what that is going to be. But I'm sure the Klingons will never let Shakespeare fade away. :)

Studying popular cultural, fleeting though it may be in relevance across generations, is also very important to understanding a particular culture in a particular moment of time. So I'm not trying to denigrate those who study popular culture of either today or some point for which we still have popular cultural references left, but that's also a different issue.

Fair enough. I was using shorthand to express my thoughts and I can see how that might've confused what I was trying to say. But I agree with the above statements and, this time, the analogy. :)

@crazy_dave

I agree with you overall but there are one thing I think is important to mention.

We have not preserved much of culture from ages past. In fact we have only managed to find a tiny bit of it. A not insignificant reason much of the classical works like the odysseys are so popular is because it's so rare to find whole works from that time. In short many of the real classics are classics because they have no competition.
So I tend to side with Vestin about this. At least with the really old classics. :P

Yes I know there are questions about the odysseys authenticity, if it's one writer or many and if the author really even existed. It's only an example.

They could probably 'Morrowind' a few of them. The main concern, aside from AI programming would be to adjust the gameplay to a more suitable single player style.