Preservation

Recommendations:

Where possible, collect two copies of a video game’s wrap kit; one will become an archival copy, the other will circulate to the extent permitted by its authors
Support, foster, and cultivate replication, variation, and emulation communities

Practical Reasoning

Any effort to preserve video games is fraught with technical challenges; and, in the case of commercial video games, there are legal hurdles to overcome as well. We still struggle with how best to implement inclusive and sustainable long-term preservation for digital content. The standard preservation practices that have developed within the past two decades, chiefly file migration, are upended when applied to video games. The best technological solutions bring their own vulnerabilities and are essentially short-mid term solutions, not long-term preservation solutions.

As scholarship continues to take shape in new and varied forms, the gap between what is integrated into university libraries and archives and what is not will continue to widen. There is not currently a preservation solution that is achievable and sustainable. There is, however, the opportunity to re-evaluate complex digital objects and their footprint. There is the opportunity to collect and preserve emerging forms of digital scholarship even if the work isn’t entirely accessible. The materials representing video games and other complex digital scholarship works contain significant value and are easily managed within most current library processes. Proactively preparing for a future that will enable the use of the scholarship is our role as librarians.

Imperfect Solutions

The proposed solutions for mid-term and long-term preservation are imperfect and frankly impractical for libraries at this time.

Migration

Preserving digital objects by migrating them to new platforms is the default preservation strategy at our library. Migration as a preservation strategy is less a solution than a stop-gap measure; for most digital content, migration is a sufficient mid-range preservation strategy, especially for common file types.

Conditions which lend to migration being considered a ‘mid-term’ solution as opposed to a long-term solution include the slight changes to an original file that occurs during migration. Baker and Anderson note, of the over 6000 known file types, “some of these [are] so intimately bound up with the particularities of their originally intended hardware that the conversion process becomes more tricky… [and] even when a great deal of care has been exercised, it is not uncommon for files originally written on one computer system to appear slightly differently on a new system” (Baker and Anderson, p.93). Baker and Anderson state conversion errors will “gradually accumulate as a file moves from one system to the next.”

A video game employs an array of file types, if we were to migrate only the common files we would inevitably be changing the relationships between the files. If we were to migrate the lesser known file types as well, we cannot be sure that they will be able to function as intended in the operating environment they are migrated to, much less maintain the integrity of file to file interactions. Additionally, we can expect for the slight shifts Baker and Anderson wrote of, which further compromise the authenticity of the migrated files, and by extension, the video game.

Emulation

The strides made in emulation development cannot undo the fact that emulation itself is a software, sharing all the same vulnerabilities as the softwares it emulates. Boss and Broussard write of the ‘false dichotomy’ of emulators; emulation is more a stop-gap, relatively short-term preservation solution (Boss and Broussard, 2017). Emulation can help in early preservation efforts, but ultimately emulators will require the same preservation interventions as the video games they emulate. Pinchbeck in an article on emulation as a preservation strategy wrote, “the biggest problem… with all current emulators is their own obsolescence” (Pinchbeck, p. 3).

Institutional commitment and fiscal concerns (which are in lockstep with each other) aside, were we to pursue emulation as a solution to video game preservation we would not be solving a digital preservation problem but instead compounding it. Emulation is software. A video game is software. With a technologically-myopic approach to video game preservation, we are not solving video game preservation, we are squaring it. Producing emulations as they are needed is not a feasible or sustainable venture for our library, and, we imagine, many libraries.

Hypothetically, the way an emulation program would play out for us is that we would need to obtain or create an emulator to encase a video game in its original operating environment. An emulator would function just fine in the operating environment it is hosted in, but, not when the operating environment changes; at this point, the emulator must be migrated or re-built. We would be assuming responsibility for managing not only emulators for individual video games, but endlessly producing emulation solutions for the emulators that have already been deployed by us. At the current rate, EAE students produce anywhere from 8-15 video game theses a year; games that may operate in very different environments. Pursuing emulation on an institutionally-resourced level is beyond our capacity and that of libraries and archives in general.

Versioning, replicating, and rebuilding

Examining a video game from a performative aspect, in the same way we would a recital, play, or dance performance, highlights how variations can play a role in preservation. For example, originally released on Queen’s 1975 album A Night at the Opera, the song Bohemian Rhapsody is six minutes long, so long that the record label feared no radio station would be willing to play the song in its entirety. Instead the song became a fan favorite. Years later Queen performed a portion of it at LiveAid. Bohemian Rhapsody has become so well-known that thousands of attendees at a Green Day concert participated in a massive group sing-along.

These celebrated versions of Bohemian Rhapsody memorably pay homage to the original recording while at the same time serving as examples of transformative iterations of the song. Recreations and emulations of video games will similarly result in transformative versions of the original game; the quality of each version judged by the degree to which it authentically and faithfully recreates the original in a new and different environment.

Developing a Local Video Game Preservation Strategy

At our library, J. Willard Marriott Library, ExLibris’s Rosetta Digital Asset Management and Preservation is used for much of the content in Marriott’s Digital Library. Rosetta is used for comparatively simple digital objects, for example, images, text files, and other, generally common, archival media file-types. We plan to deposit a zip file containing the operating files for an EAE video game in Rosetta. Digital preservationists managing the library’s digital preservation processes in Rosetta will migrate the zip file as needed, but its individual operating files won’t be migrated separately. The reason for migrating only the zip file lay with the issues that arise if we were to individually deposit the operating files in Rosetta. Obscure filetypes may not migrate, and the essential relationships between the files may be lost if some files are migrated and others are not.

We are fortunate that challenges that apply to commercial games, do not apply in the same manner or to the same degree as with EAE’s student-created video games. EAE video games could be collected immediately after they have been launched at the annual unveiling of new games during EAE’s bi-annual Open Houses. New EAE games are launched with a limited number of versions, chiefly prototypes that informed the final game design. Documentation and representation information for a video game can be collected in forms submitted by the students to EAE as part of their final project submission. Copyright, access, preservation, and use are explicitly asked on the form that students submit. The tiered form offers a range of archival preservation treatments available which must be approved by the video game’s creators. The more openly-available students chose to make their video game, the better the chance of prolonging and preserving its playability. The students willing to allow community users to migrate, emulate, and replicate their game, open avenues of distribution of the game, and in turn, the possibility of community users playing a role in preservation of a video game through using approaches that include replication, variation, and emulation.

EAE’s bi-annual Open Houses are the public debut of a cohort’s team-produced video games. At the events, it is expected that each video game will be functioning as intended by its engineers, artists, designers, developers, and producers. Open to the public, visitors are encouraged to play the newly-launched games. For our purposes, the Open Houses presents an opportunity to collaborate with video game creators and the Open House visitors to capture archival recordings of gameplay. Gameplay recordings, as archival content, are essential elements we would want to make available for rebuilding, migrating, and emulation efforts. In some cases, a video game’s creators will decide not to deposit a copy of the game’s operating files in the library’s archives. For these games, we are hopeful the creators will permit static representations of gameplay in the form of walkthroughs, still images, and other ephemera with which we can create an enhanced archival record for the game, and, in turn, catalog it with the same logic as we would an exhibition, performance, or recital.

Where commercial video games have a distinct advantage over student-created video games is in the fan communities that have formed around a beloved game. The archival value of community-contributed content for a commercially successful video game cannot be understated. That there is relatively little opportunity to gather community-contributed content for EAE video games makes the annual Open House a significant opportunity to represent EAE video games in library collections and archives, whether as a single performance with still images, footage of video game gameplay, the wrap kit for a video game, or some combination of these.

We are going to explore the method of prolonging the longevity of EAE’s video games by supporting and facilitating the emergence of EAE-focused communities of replication, emulation, and variation. Where community members are allowed access to the original operating files of a video game, there is the opportunity for them to replicate the video game for use on their personal devices. As librarians, we can assist in this community in its rebuilding efforts by developing strong curation and archival practices for video game-related materials and ephemera. By developing a community-focused preservation strategies for EAE’s video games that are focused on potential permutations of video game scholarship in library collections, we are then able to regard a video game more expansively. Curatorial and archival treatment of the video game is according to content its authors submit, allow, describe, and choose to share.

Versioning, replicating, and rebuilding video games as methods of preservation invites comparisons to the established practice in item treatment for a performance, musical recording, choreographed dance, or event. Viewing EAE’s video game theses as scholarly works that include operating files, code, and representations of gameplay, allows an expanded approach from which we can archive a video game and proactively implement preservation-focused practices for EAE’s video games and other complex digital scholarship works.