I don't understand why piracy is stated as "undesirable", especially in the context of ancient games no one cares about anymore. To use their own analogy, being able to see Titanic as it was...
I don't understand why piracy is stated as "undesirable", especially in the context of ancient games no one cares about anymore. To use their own analogy, being able to see Titanic as it was originally, with original film on original projectors and screens etc, is practically impossible, but Titanic itself is readily available to be enjoyed. Maybe you can't play Dig Dug on a fully authentic Atari and Tube television with the radio on in the background, but the games are still available and playable on their own.
The author appears on some podcasts I listen to, so I've heard them expand more on this topic as it relates to piracy. Legality. Their foundation, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF), is...
The author appears on some podcasts I listen to, so I've heard them expand more on this topic as it relates to piracy.
I don't understand why piracy is stated as "undesirable", especially in the context of ancient games no one cares about anymore.
Legality.
Their foundation, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF), is trying to engage in legal ways to preserve video game history. A combination of industry lobbying and the existing legal framework around copyright puts roadblocks in the way of libraries and game archives from getting and providing access to classic games.
The author calls out both in the video and in the article how the VGHF is trying to engage in the legislative process to make it easier to legally provide access to classic games.
Fair enough. I do think it should be legal, and I appreciate these efforts to make it so. I wonder how effective these strategies will be at preserving more modern distributions of games. It's...
Fair enough. I do think it should be legal, and I appreciate these efforts to make it so. I wonder how effective these strategies will be at preserving more modern distributions of games. It's simple enough to get a Mario kart 64 cartridge and keep it in your library, but how will you get or keep something like Team Fortress 2 (which is reliant on steam)? Both in terms of keeping it and lending it out, seems like a much more complicated measure, and if steam decided to end the game for whatever reason I wonder how we can keep it legally archived for later play
They probably won't be, especially without coorperation from the game developers. I'm struggling to find the direct quote, but I don't believe they are under any impression that they will be able...
I wonder how effective these strategies will be at preserving more modern distributions of games.
They probably won't be, especially without coorperation from the game developers.
I'm struggling to find the direct quote, but I don't believe they are under any impression that they will be able to preserve every game and they are fully aware of the myriad of challenges that comes with preserving games with online components.
It seems like they're more thinking of each step moving the industry closer to a reality where "the classics" are accessible to people legally once enough time has passed and rights holders have made their money.
For popular IPs they sometimes release older games as packages (like Street fighter 2 on Switch recently). In don’t see why they aren’t all ported to Steam and sold for 99c. It’s a way for them...
For popular IPs they sometimes release older games as packages (like Street fighter 2 on Switch recently).
In don’t see why they aren’t all ported to Steam and sold for 99c. It’s a way for them all to be permanently accessible, not be lost to history and Id bet in some cases a way to be revived. If the games went viral like Among Us.
You'd get banned from many of the gaming subreddits for even mentioning piracy. Like, were talking about a 30 year old game here... finding a physical copy is nigh impossible and possibly cost...
You'd get banned from many of the gaming subreddits for even mentioning piracy.
Like, were talking about a 30 year old game here... finding a physical copy is nigh impossible and possibly cost prohibitive.
Ignoring the ethical concerns of piracy for a moment, video games are probably the most well-preserved out of all media. How many games are really 'lost' in that they can't be played? MAG? City of...
Ignoring the ethical concerns of piracy for a moment, video games are probably the most well-preserved out of all media. How many games are really 'lost' in that they can't be played? MAG? City of Heroes? That's a pretty small fraction compared to the losses of, let's say, Doctor Who, which was still having episodes destroyed as late as 1978, the same year the Odyssey 2 came out. Because of emulators, games are really accessible and play almost identically to how they did in the past. It takes me all of two seconds to download Stella and a ROM of Space Invaders to play one of the most influential games ever made—without any loss of quality. That's the important thing. Physical film and music are subject to degradation, but games are eternal and are the same today as they were forty years ago.
This article understandably sees games preservation through a capitalist lens because of copyright, but there's no question that the vast majority of games are in no danger of being lost. Right now you can download every single Atari VCS game ever released and store it for as little as twenty megabytes. Imagine if the Silent Era of film was like this.
This is an extreme level of selection bias. Plenty of old arcade games, for example, are not preserved at all, and the few remaining copies are slowly rotting in warehouses. Of course the games...
video games are probably the most well-preserved out of all media
This is an extreme level of selection bias. Plenty of old arcade games, for example, are not preserved at all, and the few remaining copies are slowly rotting in warehouses. Of course the games most people care about generally get preserved (we're never losing Pac-Man), but for more niche games? It's very hit-or-miss.
MAME in particular has embarked on an absolutely massive project of preserving all of these games, and they have done surprisingly well... but unless you know the right people/places, finding the romsets to play these games can be difficult. Plus, there's still tons of arcade systems that have yet to be implemented, because figuring out how to emulate a board from forty years ago is quite difficult!
I would be interested in seeing what these numbers look like if we include illegal archives. But the idea with this study is to establish data for what is legally accessible, so that it may be...
I would be interested in seeing what these numbers look like if we include illegal archives. But the idea with this study is to establish data for what is legally accessible, so that it may be referenced in arguments against copyright overreach.
From the study:
Although the game industry agrees with the cultural heritage field that preservation is important, they disagree about how severe this problem is and how to address it. Industry lobbyists in the United States have opposed new copyright exemptions for game preservation on the grounds that there is already a thriving reissue market. While a healthy market for certain game reissues does exist, it is overshadowed by the volume of games that remain unavailable.
To better inform discussions of these complex issues, we gathered empirical evidence about the state of the video game reissue market in the United States and what portion of historical games are actually still in commercial distribution. We believe this is the first major study to analyze the availability rates for a broad sample of historical games in this manner.
As an aside, I found your "City of Heroes" example funny since you can still play it on private servers.
I don't understand why piracy is stated as "undesirable", especially in the context of ancient games no one cares about anymore. To use their own analogy, being able to see Titanic as it was originally, with original film on original projectors and screens etc, is practically impossible, but Titanic itself is readily available to be enjoyed. Maybe you can't play Dig Dug on a fully authentic Atari and Tube television with the radio on in the background, but the games are still available and playable on their own.
The author appears on some podcasts I listen to, so I've heard them expand more on this topic as it relates to piracy.
Legality.
Their foundation, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF), is trying to engage in legal ways to preserve video game history. A combination of industry lobbying and the existing legal framework around copyright puts roadblocks in the way of libraries and game archives from getting and providing access to classic games.
Here's the author tangentially addressing this in the context of the 3DS shop closing down earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGAP9FvXtE&t=3285s .
The author calls out both in the video and in the article how the VGHF is trying to engage in the legislative process to make it easier to legally provide access to classic games.
Fair enough. I do think it should be legal, and I appreciate these efforts to make it so. I wonder how effective these strategies will be at preserving more modern distributions of games. It's simple enough to get a Mario kart 64 cartridge and keep it in your library, but how will you get or keep something like Team Fortress 2 (which is reliant on steam)? Both in terms of keeping it and lending it out, seems like a much more complicated measure, and if steam decided to end the game for whatever reason I wonder how we can keep it legally archived for later play
They probably won't be, especially without coorperation from the game developers.
I'm struggling to find the direct quote, but I don't believe they are under any impression that they will be able to preserve every game and they are fully aware of the myriad of challenges that comes with preserving games with online components.
It seems like they're more thinking of each step moving the industry closer to a reality where "the classics" are accessible to people legally once enough time has passed and rights holders have made their money.
For popular IPs they sometimes release older games as packages (like Street fighter 2 on Switch recently).
In don’t see why they aren’t all ported to Steam and sold for 99c. It’s a way for them all to be permanently accessible, not be lost to history and Id bet in some cases a way to be revived. If the games went viral like Among Us.
You'd get banned from many of the gaming subreddits for even mentioning piracy.
Like, were talking about a 30 year old game here... finding a physical copy is nigh impossible and possibly cost prohibitive.
Ignoring the ethical concerns of piracy for a moment, video games are probably the most well-preserved out of all media. How many games are really 'lost' in that they can't be played? MAG? City of Heroes? That's a pretty small fraction compared to the losses of, let's say, Doctor Who, which was still having episodes destroyed as late as 1978, the same year the Odyssey 2 came out. Because of emulators, games are really accessible and play almost identically to how they did in the past. It takes me all of two seconds to download Stella and a ROM of Space Invaders to play one of the most influential games ever made—without any loss of quality. That's the important thing. Physical film and music are subject to degradation, but games are eternal and are the same today as they were forty years ago.
This article understandably sees games preservation through a capitalist lens because of copyright, but there's no question that the vast majority of games are in no danger of being lost. Right now you can download every single Atari VCS game ever released and store it for as little as twenty megabytes. Imagine if the Silent Era of film was like this.
This is an extreme level of selection bias. Plenty of old arcade games, for example, are not preserved at all, and the few remaining copies are slowly rotting in warehouses. Of course the games most people care about generally get preserved (we're never losing Pac-Man), but for more niche games? It's very hit-or-miss.
MAME in particular has embarked on an absolutely massive project of preserving all of these games, and they have done surprisingly well... but unless you know the right people/places, finding the romsets to play these games can be difficult. Plus, there's still tons of arcade systems that have yet to be implemented, because figuring out how to emulate a board from forty years ago is quite difficult!
I would be interested in seeing what these numbers look like if we include illegal archives. But the idea with this study is to establish data for what is legally accessible, so that it may be referenced in arguments against copyright overreach.
From the study:
As an aside, I found your "City of Heroes" example funny since you can still play it on private servers.