After E3, Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and other pressers have concluded, we finally get a comfy holiday season to sit down and play games…for a short while. Then, it’s back to early PAX conferences, game developer’s conference, that tech-focused CES which sometimes has game news, you get the picture. The point: there’s a lot of focus being put into looking ahead into the future of where this industry could be going. And it’s certainly a sensible reaction. The PS4 and Xbox One FINALLY have games focused on that hardware coming down the pipeline in reasonable succession. Looking onward at what the future may hold also shows signs of good health. Yet, even with all this new stuff and seeing many in the spirit of forward momentum right now, this is also the time I’ve been more inclined to keep looking back, curious as to how games got here. And with that comes the question: why is it so difficult to look back?
Sure, the recent influx of remasters, retro-inspired revivals, and the like may be about celebrating the past too; but when considering the business Powerpoints of these respective companies, the AAA CGI trailers, vertical slices, and scripted scenes telling you to “get hyped,” you can tell that the rule (with exception) is about what’s on the horizon. New ideas (arguably), new hardware gimmicks, and new stuff in general permeate these game company’s respective booths. And while it’s awesome to celebrate where games could be going and what new potential they might reach, it’s also fitting to look into games’ past from a historical mindset and question the current hurdles with archiving them in the 21st century.
Earlier this year Konami decided to pull the plug on P.T., a “playable teaser” of the now-cancelled Silent Hills. Any PS4 owner who hadn’t downloaded it from the PSN store before the cut-off date lost the opportunity to have it secured on their PS4 hard drive (1)—me being one of these cases—lest they wanted to break bank and get a PT PS4 off ebay (2). What does this mean in short? Well, for Konami it really had no commercial utility with Silent Hills off the table so, like the cynical publisher seems to do, they just tossed the baby out with the bath water.
Konami’s action beggars another question: what about its non-commercial utility? P.T. wasn’t just a regular teaser but a moment in time that a plethora of gamers took part in unraveling all of its interesting Easter eggs. What about these social aspects, the mechanical design that could teach upcoming horror game designers, or other inherent values in the grand scope of our shared gaming history? These kinds of questions burden me even more when considering just how aggressively thorough historians of other artistic mediums try to be and the ease with which any onlooker can assess these works. In fact, let’s do a test for comparison:
-One of the oldest written works ever to be archived is the Epic of Gilgamesh. With a few mouse clicks, I'm able to provide a direct link to it (3). The version considered "standard" dates back over three millenniums ago.
-One of the most respected painted works in human history is the Mona Lisa (4), dating back a little more than 500 years. While nothing can really top going to The Louvre and seeing it or other venerated Renaissance works firsthand, I can still link to said works with minimal effort. Even a local library will have catalogued books on these works.
-Considered the earliest video recording of all time is “Roundhay Garden Scene.” It was made in 1888 and I can view it on youtube right now (5).
Now let’s compare these examples to…let’s say 10 Yard Fight for NES (6). Here’s the list of materials you’d need to legally play it: a functional copy of the game, a NES with proper audio/video and power cords, plus a TV compatible with NES audio/video cable. To put this into perspective: it’s easier for someone to read an ancient Akkadian text that’s roughly three thousand years old than it is to play one of the earliest forerunners of American Football videogames that’s thirty years old—barring the possibility you already own those stated materials.
Well, when considering the dire straits gaming companies and evolving hardware put us in it becomes clearer as to why this is the case. Lost catridges and discs, the rapid succession of new-gen hardware, and the plethora of now-defunct companies who owned the intellectual property. For decades now, it’s been the role of pirates to emulate older games onto PC hardware most often. This puts those historians in a bind however since what they’re doing is technically illegal, even if not done for the purposes of resale; and considering how one of the most popular archivists of retro games can go kaput from legal problems (7), these IP owners certainly aren’t sitting around letting these bit torrents just happen. All of this is even further compounded when considering online games or online components OF games a publisher shuts down. While many gamers celebrated the Entertainment Software Association’s (ESA) salient defense when it came to legislative efforts in censoring violent games (8), their perfidious nature revealed their self-serving intention with a recent scuffle against the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in wanting the restoration of online functionality of abandonware to remain illegal (9).
It all comes back to prolonged apathy. Unlike other artistic mediums, videogames have finally reached a point of being considered more than just a commodity; as such, it’s only just now being considered a worthwhile venture for one to prevent these artistic relics from evanescence altogether. And time isn’t on their side.
Part of my worry comes from gleaning the tragic history of film’s preservation, where a mickle of both silent and sound are now considered lost films. To be precise: it is believed that ninety percent of all American silent films before 1929 and fifty percent of all American sound films before 1950 have been lost forever (10). Slow, natural processes like film decay and an early film culture mostly unconcerned with preservation of the medium resulted in such a great loss. Contemplate on that for a moment: over half of all created American works within the most popular artistic medium of the 20th century have ceased to exist. Now consider the kind of ramifications this may have if we don’t learn from film’s history and lose that many video games permanently. Could a similar blow like that ultimately change games as we know them for the worse?
Of course, the sky isn’t falling yet especially since gaming education is finally making headway in being an alternative trade school for creative minds. When formal education facilities like DigiPen exist, undoubtedly SOME old stuff can be acquired by them for classroom settings. Yet even with that consideration, the setting of a classroom is still fundamentally limited. Like the common ‘book smart/street smart’ dichotomy bandied about, there’s an intrinsic value to exploring things on one’s own time that can provide a different perspective than in a non-academic environment too; like the first-hand account of being WITHIN the New York Stock Exchange than simply reading about how things work from a distance. The sad fact of the matter is the difficulty of surveying specific works from the 70’s and 80’s, most notably arcade cabinets, in their original form may deflate upcoming designers’ enthusiasm to search out these classic works altogether.
I’m not sure where any of my fellow readers would stand on this but I have a great discomfort in thinking the future gaming world would be filled with artists and designers ignorant of much past the the popularity of 3D gaming. In the same way I wouldn’t put much stock in a writer that’s unfamiliar with literary titans such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or Dumas, I’m not going to hold much regard to an RPG designer who hasn’t looked back to the genre’s greatest inspirations like Ultima or Dragon Quest or a FPS developer ignorant of id Software’s work in the 1990’s. Yet, the relative ease of just making one-time purchases or having a subscription for old music and movies shows just how myopic and selfish gaming’s corporate side often is; and this recklessness is harming the past and future of games.
One of the clearest solutions is essentially a two-tiered answer against the corporate misers. First, opening up back catalogues more and more is the easiest one to consider. Online shops like GOG and Steam have done a great job of getting vast collections of old PC titles back into the market at oftentimes-competitive prices but it can always be bigger. In regards to consoles, classic collections like Rare Replay are what I want to see more often. And while my regurgitation of cataloguing old classics may have some considering the suspicions of me putting on nostalgia goggles, bear in mind that I cherish games like Rare Replay, Sega Genesis Collection (7th gen), and so on for their successes AND flaws. Being able to peer through a window into a more untamed time in game design and all the wild design ideas in regards to aesthetics, story, and gameplay can be a wonderful way of evaluating rights and wrongs for a designer’s own game.
The second tier would be about publishers loosening their grip on their IP’s for historians and refrain from the BS legal moves they’ve been pulling for years. As mentioned earlier with the ESA, the court fights against Jack Thompson and Leland Ye we’re really a façade for them and publishers yelling “artistic freedom!” back in the day. It was convenient then; but now, they’re back to just considering them as commodities to be milked and put in a safe once the money dries up. Something else that’s cropped up time and again regarding licensed games that become delisted from digital storefronts. From X-Men and The Simpsons (11) to 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures 2 (12), these types of games released, or re-released, digitally are taken off quite often; which is strange to consider: the place in which they could—essentially—live forever is where they’re at their most fragile state.
“Ire” is the word I’d use to describe how I feel about game preservation efforts getting stonewalled by uncaring companies. The reason I feel this way is in considering the lack of “tangible-ness” of these entertainment experiences to share with my next of kin—were I to have any. I recall my dad’s experience of seeing Star Wars in theaters and then, in some way, reliving that over with him. How will that be passed on in my situation? Granted, I do have a lot of physical discs. But what of the outliers like my social experiences on 1 vs. 100 back in the day? Sure, a gameshow game isn’t the most spectacular of examples but the playable engagement with others online isn’t able to be passed down like with my dad and his movies.
What can be done?
I typically avoid talking directly to whomever is reading this—rather using the royal “you” for structural purposes, but I’m going to change that in this instance. I believe the best thing you and I can do is generously donate to specific institutes like The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (The MADE for short) that are making great strides in pushing improved archiving of game history. I understand that may be tough for some. Perhaps the economy in your area isn’t doing too hot or you’re already strapped for cash for the few games you want to buy. I can empathize with those reasons. If not able to do that, at least speak out against another messy bill coming down the pipeline called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (13)—I may/may not cover in another blog—which could change the landscape of games if approved. This is probably coming off as preachy to some, but I can’t help feel time is of the essence. This opportunity will be short-lived and if we don’t react quickly there’s no telling what we might lose.
Links:
1. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/si...
2. http://www.polygon.com/2015...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
4. http://www.wga.hu/frames-e....
5. https://www.youtube.com/wat...
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
7. https://torrentfreak.com/un...
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
9. http://www.extremetech.com/...
10. http://www.nytimes.com/2010...
11. http://www.screwattack.com/...
12. http://www.trueachievements...
13. https://www.eff.org/issues/...
Review - With its throwback vibes, a great atmosphere and story, The Glass Staircase is well worth a play; a game ripped straight from the '90s
Howl is interesting, winsome, and visually beautiful. It offers a fulfilling gameplay that is not over the top and yet lures you in.
Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison returns to fight against mutants and the GDF in Phantom Fury. Use a large selection of weapons and a robotic arm.
Yikes! Can't believe I forgot to comment right after. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed the blog. Feel to leave comments/questions here.
Hope everyone had a good Halloween as well, if you celebrate it. :)
Spooky blog, yo.
In the digital age though, i can't see the games of yore disappearing, because they can be emulated. The irony is, the games that are disappearing are right under our noses.
A number of games on the XBL marketplace are already living their last days on hard drives that won't last forever. They were pulled for reason or another, and now that is their grave.
Im a sentimental person, i like that tangible disc, case, cartridge, etc. I like to see my hundreds of wasted dollars sitting on physival shelves and not digital ones.
I just love to read blog like this, really.
I really liked your blog, and it only reminds me of how I miss reading your comments on these boards.
All that being said though, and know what I'm about to say is coming from a lover of video game history, the reality of it all is that the publishers who make these games do not see them as art. They simply see them as a commodity to capitalize on, and the artistry of what can be within games is left to the developer, and more often than not supplanted by the publishers will anyhow.
Games are only really art to the developer and a small subset of gamers, to the rest, it's just entertainment and a revenue stream. Since there is no great gain in allowing the preservation of the medium for ages to come, the efforts aren't made by those who could actually allow it to happen, and publishers are more concerned with the future valuation of their commodity that could be negatively affected by such efforts.
For the longest time, planned obsolescence has been in the works, or already implemented within games, and that's going to go on for a while. It's one of the reasons for the digital, always online bitching that publishers do...because they get 100% control of their commodity, and the art(or developers vision) can be damned.
Best analogy I can make is to movies. A lot of indie games would be like Citizen Kane...timeless, classic, loved by many(exaggeration to make my point) with lots of interesting things to discuss. The majority of mainstream titles are Michael Bay flicks which are pretty to look at, fun for your time with them, but hold no lasting redeemable qualities worth study, so get released to the lowest common denominator and an absence of any kind of artistic integrity.
Edit
I'd like to add that there is a silver lining to all this. Most publishers and developers do preserve their work for the long haul now. Since the PS2 days(or roundabouts), the need to preserve work was much more appreciated by publishers. Before that it was kind of hit or miss, and it wasn't uncommon for old games to not have any kind of back up beyond any published release.
Since professional preservation of this data is rather sophisticated, it is pretty safe for the long haul...although not 100% safe for eternity.
On the down side though, this means that while preserved, it doesn't make it easy for the end user to actually access said content for whatever purpose, and that ultimately is still up to the publisher to decide to make available in some form.
I was looking forward to reading this when you said you were working on it.
Lets combine efforts and write a book next time =p