Why is the preservation of video games such a complicated mess? And what's the big deal with preserving them in the first place? We look at how enthusiasts and historians are trying to find ways to prevent old games from being forgotten.
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the welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart, radio, the key there and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, I'm an executive producer with I heart radio and how the tech art you know
but today I would talk about the issue of video game preservation.
Inspired to do this because of something that recently happened within ibeesoft a game company. That's.
while the poet lightly its had a pretty darn controversial few years, but would be self makes lots of different game titles and one particularly popular franchise from them is the assassin
his creed series
what one of the entries in this long running franchise
came out way back in two thousand. Twelve and
It was called assassin's, creed, three liberation and notable,
or a few reasons one was that the
their controls, a carriage named Eveline de ground pray, who happens to be
first female assassin in the series that the player could control before
that they were all male protagonist
later on, ubisoft released a remastered version of the game: titled assassin's creed, liberation, hd anyway steam
Is the video game store the digital video games store? So it's not online store.
Run by valve, which used
the primarily be known as a video game developer now, is mostly known as the company that runs steam anyway, steam
posted a message on July, eleventh two thousand and twenty two. That said, at the request of the
well sure assassin's creed, liberation, hd, is no longer available for sale on steam, which is fair
these things happen,
but he's will allow some into technically can
you're out of print, although in this case that's kind of a myth,
because we're talking about digital sales, but who besought decided to
up selling copies of this game, now,
salted started also previously announced that
be ending multiplayer functionality for several of its games, including assassin's creed, can be
disappointing to hardcore fans, but the same time you can kind
I understand why it's happening because supporting multiplayer
means that a company has to run servers that host those multiplayer sessions, which also
maintaining those servers and responding if something goes wrong with them
so older games the player base. That's still access
saying multiplayer might be so small that it's difficult to justify the ongoing expense of keeping those servers online, particularly
it's a game that doesn't have a subscription model to it. Right
if it's a game where multiplayer was part of the features of the game that you got with the
purchase of the full game, and it's not
ongoing expense.
Then the company is footing the bill for providing that service. Even after
people are no longer really buying the game. It's
but you know it's kind of understandable from the perspective of the business, however,
These days, a lot of games,
choir at least some sort of online component. Typically as
part of digital rights, management or drm
just terrible, but here's how it goes. The basic idea is that
the game, you're running on your local device, like on your computer or whatever, checks in with
A home base server that belongs to the company in order.
fi that the copy of the game that you are playing is legitimate, and at that point
home base servers, says yeah go had let let him play the game or
the game isn't legit or
The connection- can be made for some reason. This
Her tells your local machine, hey, don't let us jerk face play that game. They probably stole it so
players who just want a single player experience right like it's a game, that's just meant to be played on your computer. There's no online component, there's no multiplayer component. If those those folks,
have a poor internet
action or no connection to the internet.
It's kind of drm is a huge hassle because it means there's no real way to access the game legitimately, but that's the
dear emma I've done full episodes about this in the past. Are it let's get back over to be soft soap
in its initial message that was published on steam.
The implication was that the assassin's creed game wouldn't just be unavailable to purchase from that point forward. But would
act be rendered completely unplayable that people who had purchased a cop
the of this game would be on.
able to access their game at all, even if they were just trying to play local single player mode
nor would they be able to run any of the downloadable content ordeal see that they had purchased for the game.
These would issue a follow up statement. That said, be
who owned the game already would still be able to play it there
even be able to re download it. So
on steam. You have a library of games,
games may or may not actually be downloaded to your computer, but it's a record of all the games you have purchased throughout.
her time using steam and if you want,
you can redownload a game to install it on a new machine. Let's say that you're upgrading your computer,
you've decided to
which to a brand new new computer.
system that can run the latest games, but you also have a soft spot for some older games.
Well. You can redownload them to your new machine, so ubisoft said
players will still be able to do that, they'll still be able to access the game that they purchased. However, they will not be able to access online
content or dlc for that game. That would be unavailable
anyway that whole mess prompted this episode, because with so many games requiring online services to function,
the games themselves are otherwise confined to a local device.
happens when the company
that provides that online service goes out of business because that has how
more than once in the video game world or what happened
if a company like ubisoft, decides to shift resources away from continuing support of older games that have smaller player bases. The thing you,
suddenly becomes inaccessible even
The code is fine, and even if you have a machine that otherwise could run the game without a problem, you still can't access the game
broached means it becomes difficult to preserve such games and in some
cases. It could even
the illegal for you to try and do it
their cases. It might not be illegal, but it might be practically impossible.
so these games are lost in time like tears in rain. Let me know if you got that reference,
now some of you might be saying
I didn't even know, video game preservation was a thing
or maybe a few of you could be saying. Why is it important to even preserve video games in the first place? And it's totally fair,
but not everyone is into video games. That's cool right!
I'm not into every kind of art there is doesn't mean the arts- bad, I'm just not into it, but there are
out of folks who are really into video games, including those who consider video games to be a type of art. I
I've been to be one of those people. I don't necessarily think video games at least
most of them typically qualify as high art, but I do
there's a lot of artistic expression that goes into creating video games, whether it's from
character, design or level design or even gameplay elements, or
textures that you use to enhance visuals or the story that plays out over the course of a game there. A lot of avenues for artistic expression, so, though,
might not classically, think of as artistic like gameplay elements, you might think o
Your pressing ate a jump, that's nothing, but you.
Get some of these games and some of the elegant approaches to game play elements in them. You started
there is an art to this,
people who are particularly artistic, concrete.
It really transformational experiences through that. So even
you strip all the art away right
if you deny that there's anything artful about video games the factory
Is the people and a lot of people.
In many of these cases, I mean some of these games have
hundreds of folks who worked on these those people.
which really hard to make that game happen. They labored over getting the various components up to snuff and then
Also worked really hard to make sure all these different components actually work together, so that one thing doesn't break something else and let's be fair.
video game companies are not always successful. In doing this, there are plenty of examples of broken games out there. Some of them got
less broken overtime thanks to patches and stuff, but we have seen no shortage of the
it just didn't work properly, but I still feel like the word,
of the people who do dedicated their time and their their skill and their knowledge to creating these games should be acknowledged.
and it should be preserved. I think two big things that prompt
both to question the need to preserve games. Are that there still this,
perception among some people, the video games are meant for kids, like video games are for babies,
they're, just silly diversions and there's really no reason to put in the effort into preserving those things there's another.
Perception that undermines the concept,
preserving video games and that's that they are so tightly connected to commerce. They are a product you know, like
You would go out and buy a hammer, but you wouldn't necessarily want to preserve the hammer for posterity.
Not all games are made specifically to be sold, but the vast majority of them are so
They aren't really considered art. By some folks
However, I would argue that most art is actually meant to be sold. It's not just meant to hang on a wall.
hand, the artist makes no money from it. We know if
art was never sold, artists wouldn't make a living, and you know what
patronage or it's selling it sufficient or whatever
and commerce always
have a relationship with each other. Otherwise you run out of artists because they all starved to death. Then of course
there are countless examples in say the fashion world, where people spend truck loads
cash on designer goods, and they consider these art, like the fashion world, that is art art
there has been made to be worn.
some way, but
even while people are spending those truckloads of cash on the latest fashions, they do so knowing that
if they are buying, is going to be out of fashion in six months to a year like the thing that is
avant garde and desired today is
going to be almost dismissed
years time which that
is the stuff that wrinkles, my brain,
video games I get fashion.
A you just have to take one look at me and you would know he doesn't get fashion. That's fair! Then
observing that fashion is, is silly or frivolous. I just don't get it
let's talk about video game preservation. So one of the methods I have talked about in fairly recent episodes of tech stuff is
the main platform and main is in a in a and it stands for multiple
Arcade machine emulator, main purpose- is to emulate, or
stimulate if you like this
the tree and programming of various game platforms.
The games themselves come
form of roms, r, o ems or read only memory they up. There are people who have copied the
owed off of classic video games to preserve those roms, and originally these roms were programmed directly onto microchips. So if you
the open up, a classic arcade game. You would see a whole bunch of circuit boards with chips on them and they
since the game like the game, is physically coded onto the circuit boards and those mike
chips include the the
the read only memory. That is the game itself. So in order
create a copy of that. You have to strip the code.
offer the wrong. That's not always easy. In fact it's pretty complicated, and then you also have to create software that imitates the
operation of that actual circuit, so that the roms will run properly and that
So is a non trivial thing so
arcade machines and then later on, cartridge based consoles and also computers would have,
that were programmed in physical circuitry
isn't particular right, like that's, there's a circuit board in a cartridge and that's what the game is programmed on.
then later on. You would have things like images that would be put on optical discs, we'll get to that too. So the main
but for mimics the
get tree allowing the copied code from whatever the original rom was to play on a computer
always play perfectly well. Sometimes the emulator is just an approximation of how the game would work. In other cases,
The approximation is incredibly accurate to the point where it feels like you're playing the original arcade machine. It depends
play on the level of emulation for that particular game, as well as the specs on the machine you're running mehmaan in the first place
act in talk more about maim and emulation, and the reasons why this is important for preservation. After we take this quick break
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games now obviously a lot
people have used names, software to create like a home, arcade machine, that's capable of running hundreds or thousands of different games like can. Even
go online and find companies that offer these things where they will have
a computer
often powered by a raspberry pi, which is a very basic computer,
it's running, maim, emulation software and
s like a smart card just loaded with gigabytes of roms on it.
that was not the original intent of creating maim
what the idea wasn't hey, let's create a way for people to get access to these,
hundreds of arcade machines in the comfort of their own home. It was
the idea that we need
something that can preserve these games, because the hardware that the games are built upon will degrade over time and eventually the law.
asked remaining cabinet of any given game, will stop working? And at that point the game is law
So this is a way of preventing
that loss from happening it just so,
happens, that it also means that you
could create a bull
arcade in one machine by down
lots of roms. However, you should know
downloading roms can
the illegal it's technically,
be right violation because you're downloading a copyrighted work, without legitimately
purchasing that work.
doesn't mean that doesn't happen everywhere. It does, but it's still illegal. Now. Never mind that in some
cases at least there's no way for you to buy a legal copy of the game or, if
dil de may be that the only legal way to buy the game is to find someone selling it on a market like ebay, and it might be
incredibly expensive price
it'd be and there's no guarantee that those will work by the way like you might go out and spend it
a couple of thousand dollars buying a classic arcade cabinet find out that
You need to do a lot of maintenance on it in order to make it work properly. The the circuitry, if
treated well, will typically hold up for a very long time, but things like the actual
buttons and controls they wear out. We just wear and tear so yeah
you can get to a point where there's just there very few avenues, for you too
at a legitimate purchase of a game,
the way maim is supposed to be used,
that someone who has a legal right to a ron like they own
a game or maybe they even own the ip for the game.
well, they can download the rom for their own use and they
run the main software on a computer. They can act.
that wrong- and it's totally legal. So, for example, let's say that you and I
and purchased an arcade machine, a classic game like elevator action, which.
I I absolutely anonymously- love and no. I cannot justify it, but I love that game. Well, let's say you bought a
I iD that you went out. You purchased a copy of it. You could
legally download a rom of elevator action and
it serve either as a backup or as a replacement for the rom on the arcade machine itself. If it had stopped working
so it's kind of like making a backup of a recording for your own personal use. That's acceptable, that's fair use, but if you didn't
already own, a copy of elevator action, then downloading the wrong with it essentially
piracy
on. Essentially, it is piracy
as for maim itself may miss
totally legal to download maimed doesn't have any games on it. Natively. It's just a program that emulates different kinds of hardware
main is kind.
The of like a console in a way. It's the thing that lets you play the games, but it is not the games themselves. So the erratic
You should not be downloading roms for games that you don't already own, however,
A lot of games are otherwise unavailable.
The companies that made some of those games have long since vanished. So there's no,
where were you to go down to buy them or
sometimes another company has come around and scooped up the old ip from someone who has gone out of business
Sometimes I can be hard to track down like you might think. Oh there's this great game. I love when I was a kid
the company that made it went out of business. I have no idea who owns that intellectual property, because chances are someone bought it when
The old company went out of business so
There are a lot of cases were finding a legitimate way to purchase the game you want just doesn't appear to exist, and that is frustrating
being said. There are some game creators who have granted permission for folks to download roms of their games. So these are creators who have the right to do that right. They are
the folks who actually own the intellectual property in the first place so
They have the capacity the authority to grant permission to people
they can download the roms, and the main website does link to roms that meet that qualification. However, you're not going to find
any real big names in that list.
fact. You may not recognize a single title. There are a couple of dozen titles that fall into this category. I
looked them over and I
recognize any of them. None of them were titles that I was familiar with, so they get the stuff
that you, you know and love, you would have to go elsewhere, now
I mention arcade machines, but that is not the only hardware that mame emulates since
two thousand and fifteen. The main platform has integrated a separate emulator called mess m s, s which stands for multi emulator super system, so mains,
primary purpose, was to preserve arcade game
that otherwise would eventually disappear once that last working cabinet gave up the ghost mess focuses
or on consoles an computer systems, most of which are well out of production, and
I supports nearly one thousand systems in total. Not all of them are fully functional, however. So, while
it count all the ones that are included in the emu later and you'd get up to more than nine hundred. You have to keep in mind.
but those are only partially functional.
There really big names on that list by the way and clean than intended entertainment system or any s
Super nintendo nintendo, sixty four as on their second genesis also,
is, the mega drive is on there. The sega dreamcast is on their older,
You're on there, too, the atari twenty six hundred and clique of vision and in television are all on their and obviously lots
for a game consoles as well as for computers,
payment- I mean? There's everything from texas instruments to apple two computer systems, to commodore computers, to amiga and more
now. These are all devices that have long since been out of production, which means
You're not going to be able to buy a new one
he'd be able to find a working used one somewhere, the chances are emulation, is going to be the only way you will experience a law, the programming that was originally made for those devices. Now again in a lot
cases that software is not tat,
we abandonware meaning
abandoned, where abandonware is something where there's
no legitimate owner of that ip anymore.
has been abandoned. It is, it just exists,
thing on its own with no owner above it
someone somewhere owns
I ve for most of the software, that's out there so
you might think of it as abandoned where, because nobody's done anything with it for a very long time, but legally speaking, it's not because
that does still belong to some company or person out there now
It may be that that entity doesn't care if folks, download, roms or images of that of that program.
or a game or whatever I
case means. Essentially,
copy of the code, not an actual picture of something, but
kid just assume that and it certainly.
the case everywhere I mean some companies like nintendo, for example, are
really well known for being super protective of their work, even if there is no way to purchase the titles from the company itself anymore.
the look at nintendo
and you look at how for first,
party games the price
a comes down like you could look at.
Party games that nintendo sells to this day and the game
themselves might be years old, but the price hasn't budged,
it really gives you a hint at nintendo's perspective on this kind of thing, which I'm not saying is a wrong perspective. I'm just saying it indicates that you're not
likely define and tender- oh sure, glad download images of gains. We don't care that. I can't
ever happening. However,
put aside the ownership question for a moment to get back to the central point:
of this episode
the main and mess platforms and others that are like them
to provide a way to preserve the games and
programmes as well, but we are focusing mostly on games that had been made for these old plan.
Forms that are no longer in production.
I'll be emulators. We
it gradually lose access to that work will be fully dependent upon companies,
issuing work, which they
ever do and
peters change, so quickly that a lot of stuff that was made for older systems becomes impossible to access. Otherwise, without an emulator right, like you can get
old pc programmes and try to run them on a modern pc and sometimes it just becomes inoperable. You can't even use it. I remember distinctly how
sing, a version of the class
six star wars, arcade game, the wire frayne game that she saw the arcade way back in the eighties, and I had a
the pc version of that game and
play the side and kind of lost track of it, and then we upgraded computers a couple of times as when I was a kid
I found the game and I thought oh, I want to play. This haven't played in a very long time,
loaded it up.
I play the game because now it ran so screamingly fast that just
touching. The joystick would make it jerked. The at
stir jerked the rider up or down or whatever
things are moving so quickly on the screen. You couldn't see anything and
you blink once and you would see game over
so it became impossible to play. I needed to have an emulator in order to run that code at the proper speed, and I did it so that games.
Became inaccessible to me
Let me give you another less frivolous example: some both of my parents write novels and when I was a kid, my parents bought an apple two e computer, my dad
is it primarily so that he could write
books and short stories using the apple, although he would also play the occasional computer game on there, too
I remember him being particular
the fond of the game wizardry, which was canada, adee, a style dungeon crawler, computer rpg benny,
a dad used a relatively primitive word processor program on the apple to write out his first few books and
You saved these chapter by chapter onto floppy disks. It would take more than a dozen floppy lobbyists to hold a single novels, manuscript
In fact, I once accidentally deleted an entire chapter of his work because he had left the computer to go. Do something else,
and he had not saved the file for a little bit and I thought he had just left the computer on. So I was thought I was being conscientious
wanting to waste electricity. So I turned the computer off wip.
So if you ever wondered why the novel moon dreams didn't go the way you thought I was going, that was probably because of me anyway. Flash forward its
a couple of decades, since we had a working apple computer. So assuming the data on those,
Lobbyists is still intact witches
a very big assumption, because magnetic storage is not permanent, it will degrade over time but
it's still intact. We would still have to find either a working apple to a computer and
copy of that word, processing program in order to access those files or we'd have to
an emulator that would run on a modern computer plus
external floppy disk drive that could connect to a computer, possibly through an interface like usb or something otherwise, that
that is just going to slowly rot on those floppy disks which honestly
is probably what's going to happen.
good news is those are
books, all published rates
naturally tracked down copies of the books, though it could take a la searching. Most of those books have been out of print for nearly forty years, but as for the
earlier drafts of those books, some of which were
had notable differences from the published.
one of the book
there's one children's novel in particular my dad wrote where
I thought the original draft was
in every way superior to the published version of the book, those might be lost forever.
So emulators are one method we can use to preserve games and other types of of coded content, and that
works pretty well for
local games, as in games that are meant to run on a local device that may or may not be connected to the internet, but
I said earlier, there are a lot of games, an increasing number of games, in fact
that rely in part or entirely on some sort of online component and let's
I called the dm games and, like I said, I've thought about the roma lot in fairly recent episodes. So we won't go into too much detail here,
Now some games might just need an initial check in, but increasing
lots of games require a persistent online connection.
These games, and and just to be clear, it's
games that do this lots of different software does this to these games?
what's called an always on drm or persistent online authentication requirement. So if you lose your connection to the internet,
likely to get a little pop up notification within the game, explaining that the connection to the authentication server is down
this is going to affect your experience in some way.
Double. The game might no longer count any progress towards achievement because it can't verify that you're, not cheating or
it might be unable to save your progress in the game as you play it now.
Today a lot of games will save progress locally on your computer and then once you have
We established a connection with the authentication server
It might give you the option to either revert to the save that was established by the server. The last time you were connected.
or you can choose your local save,
it's probably more recent, and then that will just overwrite the older one on the server and you can go from there and there's no other interruption. But if that server
That authentication server goes offline either due to malfunction or the company chooses to no longer support. It then would
The owners of this game suffer their unable to access all the features of their game or
some cases are not able to launch the game at all. Thus there is a single point of,
failure for this game- and it's not even within the players control to address it,
Their hardware might be working just fine, but because of the
connectivity requirement, they are unable to play the game that they legally purchased, which doesn't seem fair. Well,
I'm going to talk more about that and how this ties:
into the issue with piracy in just a moment and then get back
into video game preservation, but first, let's take another quick break,
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I'm so leave russian while a host of a pod cast called far flung from ten in each episode I'll. Take you to a new place across the globe to get lost in a new vibe and tap into surprising ideas from tiny.
Pension british mountains of nepal to
Journalists who taken the city buses to deliver the news in caracas, let's tap into what the world is thinking on far flung
in the far flung on the iheart radio, app on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
the okay, so we were talking about how any sort of issues with connecting to an authentication server can create a an.
The bull experience for a legitimate owner of a video game, copy
While, meanwhile, you got people who are engaged in piracy who are illegally downloading games, they're, stealing games, they're cracking
Those authentication requirements, because obviously
if you've stolen the game and the server detects that this is not a legitimate copy, you're not going to have access to those features. So you gotta get around that right. So pirate
can launch their copy and play it with no problems, at least for games that are local single player games. It's a little bit
different from multiplayer games, because getting
nothin indication servers for online play requires a lot more work, but at least
for single player experiences. It's not an issue. Once the game has been cracked yeah, you might not have access to things like achievements, but you'll be able to
play the game so
folks have gone to say that always on drm is just
in bad technology like it's just, doesn't work
it's a bad idea, because it does not do what it's supposed to do it supposed to prevent piracy, but people are still pirating games
and meanwhile it creates a ban.
Experience for legitimate owners, the other people who actually spent money to purchase a real copy of the game, they're the ones who get affected
my always on drm. The pirates have worked a way around it,
So it's a double whammy right. There doesn't do what it's supposed to do, which is stop piracy, Adams
and it impacts the people who are legally purchasing the games.
I argue, drives more and more people to piracy, it's kind of a self.
The feeding tool anyway,
back to video game preservation, so in this case the cracked
might be. The only games
stick around
as if a company were to go out of business or to shift asked
away from supporting a particular title like ubisoft, is doing then
that particular title might lose some or all of its functionality the cracked games, which have severed
action to home base will continue
work- or at least
work as much as they possibly can, since online functionality will still be affected. If the company
running servers to support whatever that functionality is. Let's consider
the m m o world for a second
I most stands for massively multiplayer online, so it
kind of a general category and there are
of sub categories under it and emma
pretty much describes. One aspect of what these games are all about, namely these are games that are played online so that in a net connection is required and they,
for a large number of simultaneous players. Leslie massive multiplayer, a viable,
her subset of a memo. Games are mme, o r, p, Jeez or emma games that our role playing games, a famous
one that still going on is world of warcraft? That's kind of like the flu
ship example of m m, o rpg's, historically speaking,
but there are other games that came and went and would have told
disappeared if it
for dedicated fans who would commit their own resources to keeping instances of the game running by running their own servers.
One such example is star wars, galaxies, which is obviously a game set in the star wars, universe.
That game originally launched back in two thousand and three. Then it was
numerous updates and expansions, but the player base.
Is diminished slowly over time
Two thousand and nine sony online entertainment which ran the game, alerted players who had
urges, uncertain servers,
Those servers would soon be shut down and
the player would be given the
capability to transfer their character to one of the remaining servers that Sony would continue to operate. However,
in two thousand and eleven sony would shut down. The whole shebang
so? Why did you do that? Will one reason was that these star wars, based in m, o r b g star wars, the old republic, was about to launch so
the company wanted to dedicate its resources to supporting the new game and also push people to
move over to the new title: keep him
and these animal are be jeez. The way they generate revenue is that these were subscription based services right for the most part you
subscribe and pay a monthly fee in order to maintain access to the game. So, unlike
most video games, where you purchase at once, and that said this
as a model where you are having a recurring payment to the company
This is before we get into stuff. Like you know,
in game content and micro transactions, which is the predominant revenue generation model that we see today like that.
how video game companies are really making revenue now is that they have ways to continue to sell you stuff within a game so that you can
on spending money on a title
and a lot of titles end up being free to play, but to get
access to all the cool stuff. You got a cough up. The big bucks anyway,
Sony decides to shut down star
wars galaxies now
where's galaxies that had a pretty robust set of features, including a player centric economy in which players could buy and sell goods that other players had crafted or that they had crafted they could become
bounty, hunters or smugglers, or you know, a jedi or whatever. It was again
Proceed
a positive reviews and the players who are still with the game toward the end
we're really re to say, good bye, so some of them didn't
there are a couple of different dribs that set out to emulate the server system that ran star wars galaxies. One such group formed the s w g emu project, so it's s, w
g e m- u and
actually aim to create servers that ran an earlier version of star wars. Galaxies one
didn't include a change that was made to the game's combat system a little later on
there is another group called project S, w g that has set out
create emulated versions of the servers running the later versions, the game
so the one that actually did incorporate some of those changes to combat plus other expansions. So
there are fan, run servers out there, some of them are still under construction, and these are key
being that game alive, and otherwise it would just be gone. That's cool
but not all companies are keen to allow unofficial servers to operate,
For example, electronic arts or a company that was once
said on a pole from a consumer to be the worst company in america.
used to rely on a company called gamespy to
online multiplayer functions for some of their titles. Titles like
battlefield heroes and battlefield. Twenty one, forty two, but you know
There's always a bigger fish, and sometimes bigger fish have different ideas of what they want to support so
what happened with game spy I jean merged with game. Spied in two thousand and four, then zip d.
This has acquired a gene and then left
It was decided to shut down a whole bunch of services that had been run through. I g n and game spy because it was, you know, an expense it.
It was having to maintain and run these things and Ziff Davis is like why
We paying to do this, hardly anyone uses it shut it down and that
klute it online multiplayer functions. The games like the battlefield ones I mentioned were using so a group
fans began to run servers that would allow players to keep laying the online multiplayer functions of those games together.
To be able to do that, they had to get copies of the games. That would be.
compatible with this approach and the
Their view was that this is a way of preserving again they love and preserving a part of the game that was
big part of the experience. There are players who bought
battlefield games. Just
he's multiplayer muds, because that's really where the meat of the game was like there
There are plenty of examples of games out there that might have some limited single player content, but the
vast majority of the experience is really aimed at multiplayer
But why should you just accept that
The thing you bought
no longer has all the features that it was supposed to have available to you. Why should that be allowed? So the
ans ran the service for a few years, but in two
seventeen a said a legal notice to them and asked them to shut it all down which they did
and when you think about you can understand. Ea is a big company. It's got deep pockets, you don't really want to get in an ip dispute with them and
yea was saying: hey, you know what you don't. Have the authorization to do stuff like distribute content,
it. Has our logo on it and our trademarked com,
an intellectual property on it.
and the people running. The server said. You know
you tell me right: we don't have that authority.
It's not our right. We can't present ourselves
as representing a company when we don't have any connection to that company, so they shut it down. Now
Many fans and preservationists this
activity, has become a huge point of frustration if there are no legitimate ways to access
or to preserve a game, then there is a risk that game is just going to fade into obscurity forever. All that work will just be forgotten.
the games industry has argued
at the nature of their work, means that an old title can re emerge on a new platform pretty much
anytime and technically that is
True, if a company deems that there's enough of a market to justify the effort that would be involved day
he can make those old titles available again.
Some cases, it could be a relatively trivial effort, but in others it could require the creation of an emulator or they might have to port.
the original game to new platforms and that's not really
same thing as preserving a game, because ports of games can really,
two fundamental aspects of the title, but it
it's hard to argue against that industry perspective, because it is technically possible to bring
back these games
I mean that's obvious because of the emulator community. They they're doing it themselves without the authority to do so. So it is
While a dozen historians of already proven that
possible to bring these games back and to run them on modern hardware, sometimes with almost perfect replication. So if
enthusiasts and historians can do it, then surely the companies that own the ip can do it too, and sometimes they do, but sometimes
Don't they can choose not to do that.
many cases they probably wouldn't choose to do it, because the effort to do it would not end up being paid off
it'd, be too few people to go out and buy the new version of the game, even
if the old, their people who really really love thy, gain there, not enough of them to justify the effort of doing this.
So
because they have the right to do it. Then
we're kind of stuck right like they. They
can reissue a game if they want to, but they don't have to
and because of that, that's why we get
to the situation where preserving games gets to be difficult, occasionally
groups like the electronic frontier foundation or ia theft will
to argue that the case for preservation,
it serve as an exception to copyright and fall under the umbrella of fair use so that it should be
perfectly legal.
babies, emulator and copies of games, but that's tough battle
because the companies that own the ip tend to be pretty convincing to politicians know
get cynical and say that's because these companies spend a lot of money to lobby politicians and that the pollen
fishing, listen to people who give them money- or you could just say
They can afford to have really influential lawyers. Both arguments hold some validity to them. Now the good news is
Are a lot of people working to make sure these games don't just disappear. That
in the future will be able to access and experience these games.
Least on some level the games
will likely not have the same appeal. Cuz the graphic
and be outdated. The scope of the game will be much less ambitious,
but the ideas in the presentation could inspire people to create new games that they otherwise never would have imagined. They could spark something. I mean
part of creativity, is built.
upon things that you have encountered before. Well,
you can only do that if you're able to encounter those things. So that's why prince
she is so important plus. Do we
really want to live in a world where you can't play elevator action. If you want to cause, I don't so that's kind of
This current situation about video game preservation.
How it has
the sort of her answer.
Ground, and I think for the large,
I like the the community, the main community, even though
got tons of people who are using maim, coral
illegally,
in many cases that's overlooked because company
aren't really doing anything with the ip anyway, like there not actively trying to reassure
you old, arcade machines, because the arcade
model no longer really exists, at least not on a sustainable grand scale. But that's not the case across
board. You do occasionally get these moves like em, like the the fair
the recent trend of companies to reissue,
small versions of old hardware like the the nintendo entertainment system, the super nintendo
where you get really
what's an emulator in a box that has
couple dozen games on it. You have cases like that, so
are ways that companies are cashing in.
His old ip
Thus there is a very strong argument to say, like
we can't allow people to just download
for free because it is part
are our assets and we are actually doing stuff with them, but
Every title that is getting kind of a reissue
our hundreds that just kind of are gathering dust, so he adds a complicated situation and
you can definitely see arguments on both sides that have validity to them. I d
we want to see titles preserved, but I would
love to be able to see a an approach where
There's collaboration between the industry
historians. So that the
process can be
that isn't going to encounter opposition
like isn't going to be legally challenged.
And then possibly shut down
because that would just mean that all that work would have gone to waste. So that's kind of what I hope for I don't
It happening soon, but I do hope,
and for the record there are some video game traders out there who definitely feel that way, who feel like preservation is a legitimate and important thing all right,
that's it for this episode. I do have another episode where I'm going to be talking about preserving data and the challenges,
preserving data in a way that is long
lasting and accessible. That's going to be in,
inspired by a listener request. Actually, so what
do that because it does tie into some of the things we talked about here today. If you have
gestures for topics I should cover in the future. There a couple ways to reach out one is: you can leave me a message
on the radio, podcast app
please I how radio happy just download it for free navigate the text off
the little microphone icon. Click on that you can leave a voicemail message for up to three
he seconds. If you want me to use the message in the context of an episode going
let me know and I'll
be sure to do that,
you can reach out to me on twitter the hand over the show is tax stuff h, as w
I'll talk to you again. Releasing text off is an eye heart radio production for more pod tasks. From my heart radio visit the eye, Heredia apt apple pie, casts wherever you listen to your favorite jobs
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two mm russian walla host of a podcast called far flung from ted episode, I'll, take you to a new place across the globe to get lost in a new vibe and tap into surprising ideas from tiny
for the mountains of nepal
journalists who've taken the city buses to deliver the news in caracas, let's tap into what the world is thinking on far flung,
in the far flung on the iheart radio, app on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript generated on 2022-07-26.