Have you ever wondered what will happen to the games you play 50 years from now?
LOST FOREVER
It’s already getting increasingly hard and expensive to get our hands on some games from the 80s. Cartridges, disc-based media and arcade boards are slowly deteriorating and soon, some games are coming dangerously close to being lost forever. Digital games are at the mercy of their online stores and are being sold as a service, rather than a product you fully own. Especially if a game development company goes under, the survival of their library is never certain.
LET’S GET PHYSICAL
More and more independent developers are trying to get physical releases for their games for this exact reason. There are countless examples of Steam, WiiWare or other games that are lost forever unless a person somewhere has them installed on their machine of choice and manages to keep them forever.
ARRRGGH
One way these games can survive is, sadly, piracy. But torrent files or other files uploaded to hosting websites are not the best solution to the game preservation problem and definitely not a reliable one. Lesser known games are simply not in demand enough to be pirated and kept.
GETTING OFF OUR ASSES
Physical media can be a bit of a hassle sometimes and especially with newer consoles, it doesn’t make much sense to have to insert a disc in your console only for verification of a game which you have already installed. Switching games physically is more time consuming than having a digital library that can be accessed without a hitch. But is it really worth to risk the loss of decades of gaming history because we couldn’t be bothered to lift our asses from the couch to switch games?
THE CHANGE WE NEED
Games are art that can survive the test of time with minimal effort. It’s in our hands to do so. Vote with your money and buy physical media until an international game database is created to document and preserve games for years to come. Support preservation efforts. Build your own game library, as much as your budget permits you. You never know what will be in demand 50 years from now.
Cover photo: Angry Video Game Nerd – Cinemassacre
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