BAFTA Regional Social Event

Welcoming BAFTA to the NVM

On 25th April 2024, the National Videogame Museum hosted the Regional Social for BAFTA and BAFTA Connect Members.

Attendees were fortunate to hear from three distinguished voices in the field on the topic of videogame preservation: Seb Chan, Director at ACMI; Isobel Davies, a lawyer specialising in videogames and intellectual property (IP); and James Newman, Professor of Digital Media at Bath Spa University. The panel was chaired by Holly Nielsen, a games historian and game developer.

As James noted, it would be difficult to tell the story of the late 20th and the 21st centuries without including videogames. Games have become an important part of our shared cultural history and help us to understand other forms of media. Despite this, videogame preservation is a new and developing field. Many videogames have already been lost, and the situation is growing more complex.

Preservation and Conservation

Many videogame objects are made of multiple materials with different conservation needs. Seb and James discussed how metals, glass, and plastics – mixed with electricity, heat, and motion – all interact in ways which can be difficult to predict. Often, the materials used were not built to last, either. As technology develops, a games console may be obsolete and replaced in only a few years. 

Videogame preservation entails more than conservation of physical objects. Digital materials, like the code used to create videogames, have their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to safe storage. 

Isobel explained how the trend towards digital-only game distribution and subscription models exacerbates the risks to preservation. Games, and even entire game stores, can disappear with little notice. 

Players do not own the games they play. Institutions already struggling to archive videogame data are faced with the difficulty of accessing the data at all.

Videogames are an interactive medium. Playing a game in person provides an experience which is difficult to capture otherwise: that immediate feedback of the game responding to your input. Maintaining games as playable objects requires both access to the software data and ongoing care of the hardware used to play them.

Nonetheless, we must confront the fact that many videogames may only be playable for a finite time. Data corrupts or degrades; hardware breaks down and cannot easily be replaced; digital games are withdrawn from availability. No museum objects, material or digital, can last forever. 

Alternative Approaches

Instead, the panel suggested that museums and archives can try alternative approaches. While a game is playable we can document everything about it: what it means, why it matters, how it reflects and affects the people making and playing it. Videos, gameplay streams, blog posts, and personal testimonies can preserve some of the less tangible aspects of a game, like the sense of community in a multiplayer game.

The recordings and personal stories collected in the Animal Crossing Diaries project demonstrate an example of preserving games beyond gameplay. Animal Crossing: New Horizons released at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic global lockdowns. Multiplayer functions allowed it to take on a new, improvised role as a (virtual) meeting place at a time when physical meetings were difficult. Seb noted this style of preservation is an easy and sustainable way to capture the experiences people have with videogames.

Intellectual Properties and Copyright

Intellectual property rights and the use of copyrighted material in cultural settings remain a thorny issue. Seb explained that Australia has laws permitting the fair use of videogames in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. However, he feels cultural organisations need to push more for their statutory rights to preserve games. 

Isobel noted that one of the difficulties in establishing usage rights is the length of time it takes. Building trust and maintaining relationships is key to the process of getting rights to use a videogame. Unfortunately, it can take so long to contact the relevant people and make all the necessary agreements that some of the people involved move to other roles in the meantime. Some of those steps must then be repeated.

Preservation Practices

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Society at large is developing more interest in preserving videogames. The NVM regularly receives enquiries about our work in this area.

The panel reported that game developers are beginning to come to museums to discuss videogame preservation directly. People in the games industry are becoming more mindful of their legacies and aware of the need for more preservation-friendly development practices. Some large studios have launched in-house archives and museums. Alongside them, organisations like the NVM will need to try to recover hidden histories and make sure other stories are also being told.

In Australia, ACMI receives tax funding which permits the use of older videogames in cultural contexts and universities. Emulation as a service platform also exists in Australia, allowing emulated versions of a videogame to be run directly next to originals for comparison. The EU is looking at live-service games with the view that when a consumer should be able to use them for a certain length of time, and for companies to provide more notice before shutting a game down and removing access to it.

A Collaborative Undertaking

Meanwhile, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) published their Video Games Research Framework in May 2023. This document outlines best practices for anyone wishing to research videogames in the UK. [link]

Preserving videogames is a massive undertaking – far too much for any person or organisation to accomplish alone. Code states, fan art and cosplay, social histories, and physical media and hardware will require their own collecting and conservation approaches. The key to covering all the areas of preservation will be coordination between all those with expertise and resources, including enthusiasts who may sit outside of traditional cultural heritage institutions. At the NVM, we’re keen to help share knowledge, and to learn as much as we teach.

(Blog post excerpt from report written by Ann Wain, Collections Officer, National Videogame Museum.)