Four years ago, almost to the second, give or take a couple of days, the National Videogame Archive was launched. In this session, James Newman, one of the co-founders of the NVA, talks about the challenges of preserving games and gameplay and what the team have learned about preserving games as part of the national cultural heritage over the last 1460 days (approximately).
What can we save, what should we save, what should we forget, who should decide, what are the impacts of digital distribution and the second hand market, what is the value of emulation, and does any of this stuff really matter anyway? A
ll these and many more questions will be asked with some, or fewer, being answered. Joining James on stage will be Henry Lowood from Stanford University whose work on the Preserving Virtual Worlds project and the IGDA game preservation group puts him at the forefront of US game preservation. Videogames are disappearing, come along and help us save them, before it's too late...
