Game History and Preservation

Digital games are a culturally significant part of modern life but much of digital game history is at risk of disappearing on outdated, disintegrating media formats. Specialist media conservation groups that work to preserve these heritage materials find their efforts stymied by restrictive copyright laws, corporate interests, and other roadblocks. Such groups share a common preservation goal, but often differ in methodologies, priorities, and desired outcomes for media artifacts. A common charter of principles would help preservation groups across the globe improve communication, avoid duplicating work, and support scholarly rigor. This proposed charter adapts the structure established by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) for preserving heritage materials with added details of the specific needs of digital game preservation, scholarship, and education as used in practice by specialist groups worldwide. It is meant to spark discussion, inspire the formation of a community of practice for further development, and act as a set of guidelines for new preservation efforts. This charter organizes principles for preservation into eight articles and recognizes digital game heritage as a common cultural heritage of human knowledge and expression.

This article will argue that the current literature on retrogaming as a practice and the retrogamer as a subject has been lacking in fully describing the variety of practices and subjects that engage with old games. Based on data collected by interviewing nine selfdescribed Danish retrogamers, three motivations for engaging with old games, besides nostalgia, are identified. These motivations are typologized into three player types: amateur archaeologists, amateur art historians, and techno-historians. Following the analysis, it will be argued that retrogaming might be an imprecise term to encompass the many different ways that individuals engage with old games. The concepts historical play and nostalgic play are presented to alleviate this.

Memories of playing games with computers have an important role in terms of documenting people's personal relationships with computing history. This paper presents and discusses the Popular Memory Archive (PMA), an online portal of the "Play It Again" game history and preservation project, which addresses 1980s games, produced in Australia and New Zealand. As well as providing a way to disseminate some of the team's research, the PMA taps into what is, effectively, a collective public archive by providing a technique for collecting information, resources and memories from the public about 1980s computer games. The PMA is designed to work with online retro gamer communities and fans, and this paper reflects on the PMA as a method for collecting and displaying the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period.

Locality has largely been left out of game history, at least until recently. The orthodoxy that the U.S. and Japan constituted the 'centres' at the outset of the video game industry has enjoyed such legitimacy that many accounts do not bother to mention the where that their material or statistics pertain to. That many histories have been written by journalists, collectors, and other 'insiders'-comprising what Erkki Huhtamo famously calls the "chronicle era" of game history (Huhtamo 2005, 4)-largely accepting the game industry's 'global' rhetoric, has no doubt contributed to this situation. I largely agree with Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins who, reflecting on such chronicles, write, "This is a mode of writing history consumed with the 'when' and 'what' to the detriment of the 'why' and 'how'" (Lowood and Guins 2016, xiii); however, to their formulation of what is missing, I would add consideration of the 'where'. In general, location has been a massive blind spot in game history. At least until relatively recently, histories of digital games have been written

More Than A Craze" is an online exhibition consisting of 46 photographs of New Zealand's early digital games scene, in the 1980s. The exhibition includes the work of some of New Zealand's best known documentary photographers-Ans Westra, Christopher Matthews, Robin Morrison-with images from the archives of Wellington's Evening Post and Auckland's Fairfax newspapers. These photographers captured images of games, gamers and gameplay in the moment when these were novel. These images are significant in that they offer insights into the early days of digital games. They are an important primary source material for researchers interested in the history of play and interactive entertainment. The exhibition has been curated by Melanie Swalwell and Janet Bayly. It is an online exhibition, hosted by Mahara Gallery, Waikanae (http://www.maharagallery.org.nz). It is one of the outcomes of Swalwell's research into the history of digital games in New Zealand, in the 1980s.

The art historical notion of 'the original' continues to inflect games history and game preservation work. This paper notes the persistence of this concept particularly in the game lover's invocation of 'the original experience'. The paper first traces the game lover's notions of history and preservation, recognizing their commitment to games, before noting that the appeal to original experience is problematic for more critical historical and scholarly perspectives. It suggests that there is a need to liberate critical thought from this paradigm and ask different questions, such as how exhibitions of 1980s games and gaming culture might be assembled for future audiences with no memory of this period. The model proposed by net art preservationist, Anne Laforet, of the Archaeological Museum offers a way for thinking about such exhibits of game history and visitors' encounters with these, whilst moving beyond the notion that games must play exactly as they once did.

This paper explores the challenges facing the collection and preservation of contemporary Melbourne videogame design. It reflects on the need to develop new methods for developing design archives that address the demands of the born-digital and the impact of the cultural shift to privately owned digital platforms in the distribution and consumption of born-digital design objects. It argues that if we wish to have records of the design cultures of contemporary Melbourne gamemakers that the process of collecting and archiving needs to happen when these works are most relevant. That the traditional methods for the creation of design archives may not be effective for a new generation of born-digital artefacts and contemporary design cultures.

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between the technological and semantic interoperability (metadata) of information systems with sustainability, a global proposal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for the development of our societies. Through a systematic literature review and an analysis of the results, it intends to understand the contribution of knowledge organization and interoperability to the enhancement of sustainable development. Two research questions were addressed: What is the role of interoperable systems in environmental, social, and economic development? How can knowledge organization and interoperability contribute to sustainable development? The results show that interoperability is seen as fundamental to sustainable development, especially when building integrated and standardized information systems. The role of interoperable systems in environmental, social, and economic development is relevant, as knowledge organization and interoperability contribute, indirectly but decisively, to sustainable development. They enable the exchange of information, encourage the construction of global communities of practice and overcome local limitations and deficits. It is concluded that knowledge organization plays a crosscutting role in projects, which aim to implement the Sustainable Development Goals. 1.0 Introduction This paper seeks to assess the relationship between interoperability and sustainability. Focusing on Sustainable Development, it intends to assess the existing literature on the contribution of interoperability as a sustainability factor. Sustainable Development, which develops from an eminently environmental perspective, and which emerges in the 1960s (Scott and Rajabifard 2017), is a concept coined in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development. That year, in the Bruntland Report, the United Nations (UN) defined Sustainable Development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987), aiming at quality of life and respecting the limits of the capacity of ecosystems. With social and political evolution, the concept broadened and consolidated, reaching a definition close to its current semantic content in 1994, when the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) defined Sustainable Development as the development that provides basic economic, social, and environmental services to all members of a community, without compromising the viability of the social, natural, and manufactured systems on which they depend. The concept would assert itself, above all, from the beginning of the 21st century with the 2nd Earth Summit (2001), in Johannesburg (South Africa), under the title World Summit for Sustainable Development, integrating the economic, social, and environmental pillars, as well as with the Prepcom, preparatory conferences for the Johannesburg Summit (Silva 2003). In 2015, a comprehensive set of goals was consolidated into the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which form the UN 2030 Agenda. This encompasses universal problems, such as hunger or poverty, and aims to develop essential aspects, such as health, education, gender equality, access to clean water and sanitation, renewable energy, decent work, innovation, reduction of inequalities, sustainable cities, sustainable production, and consumption. It also seeks to combat climate change, protect oceans and terrestrial ecosystems, and achieve peace and justice, in a global effort of partnerships for development (United Nations 2015). Despite the terminological and epistemological debates (Hjørland 2012), different authors distinguish between Organization of Information and Knowledge Organization (KO) (Brascher and Café 2008). The first formulation concerns the organization and representation of informational objects (Svenonius 2000; Joudrey and Taylor 2018), while the second applies to units of thought, to concepts, giving rise to knowledge organization systems, that is, conceptual structures of knowledge representation, which end up being essential for the representation of information itself. As we will see further on, reality ends up calling for both perspectives, in close articulation, as the Organization of Information is inseparable from KO, and vice-versa: "KO is about describing, representing, filing and organizing documents and document representations as well as subjects and concepts both by humans and by computer programs" (Hjørland 2020). Among the various subareas that give body to KO, metadata creation and management is one of the

This paper outlines a new funded project which aims to conserve and render born digital artefacts widely accessible by establishing an Australian Emulation Network. High value cultural collections from university archives and the GLAM sector requiring legacy computer environments will be targeted. The project expects to generate new knowledge across media arts, design, and architecture. Expected outcomes include stabilising and providing researchers with emulated access to born digital cultural artefacts, sharing legacy computer environments across the network, and establishing an Australian software preservation community of practice, building skills in preserving and emulating digital cultural artefacts with substantial future applications also in scientific preservation.

Retro culture is often criticised for its ahistorical and aestheticized assembling of the past. Nostalgia is considered a prevalent attitude in the domains of retro-gaming and vintage computing in terms of a romanticising view of the past. Thus, the phenomena of retro-gaming and vintage computing can seem unfit for museums as arbiters of History. However, what if the affective appeal of nostalgia could be harnessed and the romanticised approach to the past simultaneously tempered with more reflection? This article focuses on the possible transformation, via participatory exhibition design, of museum visitors’ simple nostalgia into reflective nostalgia. The article accounts for two exhibitions of retro-gaming culture at the Media Museum that deployed two participatory approaches: 1) Enabling the visitors to participate by using the technology on display and playing games. 2) Including retrogaming fans in a co-creative exhibition design process. We argue that there is a considerable p...

A large number of exhibitions worldwide deal with digital games, but curators lack a coherent understanding of the different aspects of games that can be exhibited or a clear vocabulary for talking about them. Based on a literature review on game preservation and visitor behavior in exhibitions, the paper makes an argument for understanding digital games on display as made up of object, experience, and context aspects. The study further presents a matrix model for understanding and working with games in exhibitions. The model makes for a more nuanced understanding of the different ways digital games can be exhibited. Additionally, it clarifies the position of games in exhibitions as socioculturally constructed through inherently ideological curatorial choices.

This paper is an edited version of the International Game Developers Association’s Game Preservation Special Interest Group’s recent white paper. The specific threats to preserving digital games are outlined, as is the importance of games as cultural objects. The current strategies for preservation across a range of stakeholders are presented followed by an argument for why preservation matters to industry and what industry can contribute. Finally, the unique potential relationship between academia and industry in this matter is explored, and a call for partnership projects and strategic dialogue is made.

A large number of exhibitions worldwide deal with digital games, but curators lack a coherent understanding of the different aspects of games that can be exhibited or a clear vocabulary for talking about them. Based on a literature review on game preservation and visitor behavior in exhibitions, the paper makes an argument for understanding digital games on display as made up of object, experience, and context aspects. The study further presents a matrix model for understanding and working with games in exhibitions. The model makes for a more nuanced understanding of the different ways digital games can be exhibited. Additionally, it clarifies the position of games in exhibitions as socioculturally constructed through inherently ideological curatorial choices.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand microcomputer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

This paper contributes to the developing body of videogame exhibition knowledge by evaluating the methods utilised within informal and formal contexts of videogames exhibition from the perspective of reception theory. The study of both large-scale exhibitions such as those by the Victoria and Albert museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum alongside the one-night indie game night is a unique contribution to the field, with studies typically focussing on one given context. Reception theory and the hermeneutic circle provide lenses through which the active participative role of the player/reader in meaning-making can be evaluated. Exhibition method analysis across formal and informal contexts allows modelling of a connection between the need for player/reader specialist knowledge and the resulting co-participation in meaning-making possible. These models suggest the ways that exhibition methods and settings can shape audience profiles and the potential for co-participation. The ...

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand microcomputer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

The digital transformation of our society coupled with the increasing exploitation of natural resources makes sustainability challenges more complex and dynamic than ever before. These changes will unlikely stop or even decelerate in the near future. There is an urgent need for a new scientific approach and an advanced form of evidence-based decisionmaking towards the benefit of society, the economy, and the environment. To understand the impacts and interrelationships between humans as a society and natural Earth system processes, we propose a new engineering discipline, Big Earth Data science. This science is called to provide the methodologies and tools to generate knowledge from diverse, numerous, and complex data sources necessary to ensure a sustainable human society essential for the preservation of planet Earth. Big Earth Data science aims at utilizing data from Earth observation and social sensing and develop theories for understanding the mechanisms of how such a social-physical system operates and evolves. The manuscript introduces the universe of discourse characterizing this new science, its foundational paradigms and methodologies, and a possible technological framework to be implemented by applying an ecosystem approach. CASEarth and GEOSS are presented as examples of international implementation attempts. Conclusions discuss important challenges and collaboration opportunities.

The art historical notion of 'the original' continues to inflect games history and game preservation work. This paper notes the persistence of this concept particularly in the game lover's invocation of 'the original experience'. The paper first traces the game lover's notions of history and preservation, recognizing their commitment to games, before noting that the appeal to original experience is problematic for more critical historical and scholarly perspectives. It suggests that there is a need to liberate critical thought from this paradigm and ask different questions, such as how exhibitions of 1980s games and gaming culture might be assembled for future audiences with no memory of this period. The model proposed by net art preservationist, Anne Laforet, of the Archaeological Museum offers a way for thinking about such exhibits of game history and visitors' encounters with these, whilst moving beyond the notion that games must play exactly as they o...

Memories of playing games with computers have an important role in terms of documenting people's personal relationships with computing history. This paper presents and discusses the Popular Memory Archive (PMA), an online portal of the "Play It Again" game history and preservation project, which addresses 1980s games, produced in Australia and New Zealand. As well as providing a way to disseminate some of the team's research, the PMA taps into what is, effectively, a collective public archive by providing a technique for collecting information, resources and memories from the public about 1980s computer games. The PMA is designed to work with online retro gamer communities and fans, and this paper reflects on the PMA as a method for collecting and displaying the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period.

Retrokultur bliver ofte kritiseret for en ahistorisk og æstetiserende tilgang til fortiden, og nostalgi bliver anset for at være en udbredt attitude inden for domænerne retrospil og antikke computere i form af et romantiserende syn på fortiden. Derfor kan retrospil og antikke computere virke som upassende emner for museer, som varetagere af Historien. Men hvad nu hvis nostalgiens affektive appel kunne udnyttes, og den romantiske tilgang til fortiden samtidig modereres af mere refleksion? Denne artikel fokuserer på den mulige transformation af de museumsbesøgendes simple nostalgi til refleksiv nostalgi gennem deltagende tilgange til udstillingsdesign. Den redegør for to udstillinger af retrospilkultur på Mediemuseet med to forskellige deltagelsesstrategier: 1) Give de besøgende mulighed for at interagere med den udstillede teknologi ved at spille spil. 2) Inkludere fans af retrospil i en samskabende designproces af udstillingen. Vi argumenterer for, at der er et anseeligt potentiale ...

The art historical notion of ‘the original’ continues to inflect games history and game preservation work. This paper notes the persistence of this concept particularly in the game lover’s invocation of ‘the original experience’. The paper first traces the game lover’s notions of history and preservation, recognizing their commitment to games, before noting that the appeal to original experience is problematic for more critical historical and scholarly perspectives. It suggests that there is a need to liberate critical thought from this paradigm and ask different questions, such as how exhibitions of 1980s games and gaming culture might be assembled for future audiences with no memory of this period. The model proposed by net art preservationist, Anne Laforet, of the Archaeological Museum offers a way for thinking about such exhibits of game history and visitors’ encounters with these, whilst moving beyond the notion that games must play exactly as they once did.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand micro-computer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

More Than A Craze" is an online exhibition consisting of 46 photographs of New Zealand's early digital games scene, in the 1980s. The exhibition includes the work of some of New Zealand's best known documentary photographers-Ans Westra, Christopher Matthews, Robin Morrison-with images from the archives of Wellington's Evening Post and Auckland's Fairfax newspapers. These photographers captured images of games, gamers and gameplay in the moment when these were novel. These images are significant in that they offer insights into the early days of digital games. They are an important primary source material for researchers interested in the history of play and interactive entertainment. The exhibition has been curated by Melanie Swalwell and Janet Bayly. It is an online exhibition, hosted by Mahara Gallery, Waikanae (http://www.maharagallery.org.nz). It is one of the outcomes of Swalwell's research into the history of digital games in New Zealand, in the 1980s.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand micro-computer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

This study investigated the relationship between playable, interactive games on original hardware and the representation of game culture using the case of the exhibition Game On 2.0, often considered to be the largest exhibition of digital games in the West so far. Our results suggest that play as a way of engaging with games as museum objects has limitations which make it necessary to add other means of contextualization in order to afford critical engagement with digital games as contemporary culture. Play excludes visitors who lack necessary gaming skills as well as many genres of games which need longer or different kinds of interaction than a museum can allow for in the context of an exhibition. Moreover, we show that not all games can be exhibited in the same way and that we need to adapt exhibition strategies to individual game and their properties and contexts.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand micro-computer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand micro-computer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

On November 20, 2014, two Australian-based game developers Matthew Hall and Andrew Sum operating under the company name ‘Hipster Whale’ released their first mobile game on to the Apple App Store. By January 13, 2015, less than two months later, Crossy Road – Endless Arcade Hopper had generated in excess of US $3 million in advertising revenue alone (Paskova 2015). Whilst it is beyond the remit of this chapter to account for the particulars leading to Crossy Road’s rapid commercial success, the opening section will begin by describing how certain features of Crossy Road reveal a widely adopted set of motifs recurrent in the design and development of for-profit mobile games. Significant here is to recognise how these motifs – developed and deployed to return a profit – also establish and maintain a set of conditions under which numerous video recordings of gameplay are being created as a concomitant part of everyday play.

I will contend it is by paying closer attention to these recordings that the incremental updates and evolutions of a videogame can be mapped. Using Crossy Road as my example, I will suggest commercial game developers benefit most from developing videogames that are extensible; designed to accommodate constant and potentially infinite content updates to maintain marketplace viability as a commercialised product cum service. What this means is that a videogame no longer exists in a singular, definitive form; rather, it goes through multiple phases of existence as it is continually modified, altered, revised and updated after its initial release. Accounting for these ongoing changes is a key challenge facing videogame preservation. In this chapter, I intend to present a response to the question: in what ways might these video recordings contribute to a history of videogames?

This paper considers play as an archival practice and its impact on the future histories of videogames and digital culture. Drawing upon De Kosnik’s notion of ‘rogue archives’ (2016), this paper demonstrates how certain play activities generate archival materials and how noncanonical works and/as practices shape our digital cultural memory.

Purpose – This paper aims to introduce new criteria for evaluating authenticity in digital preservation, particularly in cases related to unreleased software projects and preservation work that occurs in non-institutional settings.
Design/methodology/approach – Interpretive visual and formal analysis of image files is performed on three overlapping preservation efforts to understand the ways that self-appointed preservationists reframe content in varied settings. The unreleased mid-1990s console game Sonic X-Treme is used as a case study because assets from the development process have been widely preserved among former developers and enthusiasts alike.
Findings – The findings indicate that non-professional preservationists transcode original production files into a variety of formats, ranging from lossy compressed images to contemporary three-dimensional (3D) modeling files. Materials are presented in settings that range from colorful webpages mimicking the appearance of commercial software to browsable file systems. These results show that non-institutional preservation practices embody notions of authenticity that diverge significantly from those of professional archivists.
Research limitations/implications – The study is limited by its focus on a single case study, but helps to facilitate ongoing research concerning preservation of unreleased projects insofar as it surveys the current status of existing projects.
Originality/value – Existing studies within preservation literature have established the need for increased attention paid to unfinished digital works. This study introduces new data and interpretative findings that outline such preservation efforts as they already occur in non-institutional settings.

After December 2020, Adobe Flash, a technology that was once the standard for rich and interactive Web content, will no longer be supported in browsers. This means users will not be able to access the thousands of diverse creations powered by Flash, from animations to digital games. This is particularly problematic for games, which cannot be easily converted into a more modern format. The threat of losing the legacy of Flash has provoked both reflection and action by online communities dedicated to animation and browser-based games, none more so than Newgrounds, the Web portal credited with popularizing Flash games at the turn of the century. As a result, groups of enthusiasts have been able to make significant progress in preserving Flash games. Still, they continue to face numerous challenges, from rigid copyright laws to a relative lack of recognition of the importance of preserving Flash games as such. Consolidating their efforts by joining forces with other like-minded groups may be the key not only to saving digital heritage created with Flash, but also to the longer-term survival of these creator communities themselves.

Angela Ndalianis, Melanie Swalwell, Helen Stuckey, “The Popular Memory Archive: Born Digital Heritage and the Preservation of Videogame Culture from the 1980s”, in Utilità e danno della storia, ed.s Massimo Bulgarelli, Agostino De Rosa, Carmelo Marabello, Mimesis Edizioni: Università Iuav di Venezia, 2019, pp.180-197. ISBN: 978-88-5753-774-0

"The collection and preservation of the ‘born digital’ (artefacts that"
"originate in digital form) has, in recent years, become a growing a"
"nd significant area of debate. Finally, institutions are beginning to give serious consideration to best practice for digital preservation strategies and the establishment of digital collections. Digital technology emerges and disappears with incredible speed; a once-new piece of hardware or software becomes old and is replaced by the next technological advancement. What happens to videogame software and hardware of the 1980s and 90s? The web browsers, blogs and social media sites and content they once displayed? The artworks that relied on pre-2000 computers to create art? Are these – amongst many other – digital cre- ations fated to be abandoned, becoming only memories of individual experience? Are they to be collected by institutions as defunct objects? Or are they to be preserved and revived using new digital technology? These are but a few of the serious questions facing collecting institutions  The question of who is responsible for collecting, preserving"

Digital games have become a central part of contemporary culture and society. At the same time digital games provide numerous challenges for collections, preservation efforts, documentation, and exhibitions. This article investigates the challenges and opportunities implicit in LAM convergence and collaboration with actors outside of the LAM-sector itself. These actors are stakeholders of various kinds within game culture: game makers and industry, players, and rogue archives. More specifically, we turn to the collaboration in two Nordic museums in their work with digital games: The Finnish Museum of Games and the National Swedish Museum of Science and Technology. We draw on their
actual efforts at collaboration between LAM-institutions and outside stakeholders and analyze them through the lens of political participation and agonistic pluralism. These concepts come from an interpretation of the participatory agenda in cultural policy that aims to resolve inconsistencies in the participatory agenda specifically around neoliberal logics of participation. The paper asks: How can the preservation of digital games be supported through participation of stakeholders inside and outside the LAM sector, and what policy changes would such collaborations require?
This paper concludes that political participation and agonistic pluralism are useful concepts for the modeling and understanding of game preservation and provide a possible solution for the paradoxes of the participatory agenda in Nordic cultural policy. Our comparison of the work in two museums shows that approaches that empower participants can lead to successful and surprising exhibitions not possible without the sharing of curatorial power. Policy regulating LAM-institutions should change in order to accommodate players, makers, and rogue archives as participants in game preservation efforts. For the future the participatory agenda in cultural policy should be interpreted through the lens of political participation and agonistic pluralism as calling for truly empowering participants in order to elevate participation in game preservation from lucky accidents to a political participation policy.

Digital games have become a central part of contemporary culture and society. At the same time digital games provide numerous challenges for collections, preservation efforts, documentation, and exhibitions. This article investigates the challenges and opportunities implicit in LAM convergence and collaboration with actors outside of the LAM-sector itself. These actors are stakeholders of various kinds within game culture: game makers and industry, players, and rogue archives. More specifically, we turn to the collaboration in two Nordic museums in their work with digital games: The Finnish Museum of Games and the National Swedish Museum of Science and Technology. We draw on their actual efforts at collaboration between LAM-institutions and outside stakeholders and analyze them through the lens of political participation and agonistic pluralism. These concepts come from an interpretation of the participatory agenda in cultural policy that aims to resolve inconsistencies in the participatory agenda specifically around neoliberal logics of participation.

The paper asks: How can the preservation of digital games be supported through participation of stakeholders inside and outside the LAM sector, and what policy changes would such collaborations require?

This paper concludes that political participation and agonistic pluralism are useful concepts for the modeling and understanding of game preservation and provide a possible solution for the paradoxes of the participatory agenda in Nordic cultural policy. Our comparison of the work in two museums shows that approaches that empower participants can lead to successful and surprising exhibitions not possible without the sharing of curatorial power. Policy regulating LAM-institutions should change in order to accommodate players, makers, and rogue archives as participants in game preservation efforts. For the future the participatory agenda in cultural policy should be interpreted through the lens of political participation and agonistic pluralism as calling for truly empowering participants in order to elevate participation in game preservation from lucky accidents to a political participation policy.

Videogames are the most successful entertainment industry today, but before they entered the “mainstream”, they were targeted at children and addressed by the traditional media as a bad influence. During the early 2000s, we started to see a growing acceptance of videogames as a cultural product and not merely as a toy. Academic journals started to explore videogames, and preservation efforts, previously restricted to fan initiatives, began to be undertaken in institutions such as the Computerspielemuseum in Germany and The Strong in the USA. Today, game studies are established as a discipline in universities, and new institutions and projects have joined the preservation efforts. Nevertheless, the nature of videogames as a primarily commercial product has presented some issues to museums, particularly if the aim is to preserve the game in playable form. Publishers and developers are afraid to share their work with institutions, and for that reason, alternatives to traditional techniques have been developed, such as emulation and migration. This dissertation will study the videogame as a museum object, the initiatives being taken to preserve it, and the challenges inherent in doing so.

Preserving a historically significant video game frequently requires either preserving or adapting a touchable interface for contemporary use. While control techniques are often evaluated in terms of fidelity between in- and out-of-game actions, this essay emphasizes several ways that fidelity must be actively constructed. Bringing a haptic perspective on video gaming into conversation with game history and preservation, this essay examines ways that textual materials surrounding and supplementing a work can be used to construct haptic fidelity. The video game Q*bert is selected as a case study both because of its historical and cultural significance and because it makes idiosyncratic use of controller and force-feedback technologies. The essay concludes that playing Q*bert in a preservation setting requires several unique accommodations at the level of touchable interface, and each accommodation illustrates another way that supplementary texts help construct historical haptic fidelity.

The design of engaging digital access to collections and the creation of opportunities for richer collaborations with an informed online public are key recommendations for developing the GLAM sector’s digital future (Mansfield et al., 2014). This presentation discusses Play it Again’s Popular Memory Archive (PMA) (http://playitagainproject.org/), an online exhibition of Australian and New Zealand videogames of the 1980s, which is intended to elicit recollections from those who played their way through the era. We propose that curatorial practice of videogames can be advanced through an examination of the vernacular models and practices developed by online retrogame communities. Play It Again is an Australia Research Council-funded game history and preservation project focused on locally written digital games in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s. Researchers from Flinders University (Adelaide), The University of Melbourne, and Victoria University (Wellington) are working in collaboration with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (formerly the New Zealand Film Archive), and the Berlin Computerspiele Museum. In October 2013, we launched the Popular Memory Archive, an online collaborative research portal and exhibition. The site provides a way to disseminate some of the team’s research, but as important, it provides a mechanism for collecting information, resources, and memories from the public about 1980s' computer games. Conceived of as both an exhibition about local games and a research tool that capitalizes on participatory culture, the online archive is an example of what a local collection of games might look like and how Museum 2.0 might work with online knowledge communities. It addresses the need to look beyond the conservation of the physical objects to document the experiences of play, as well as a sense of the social and cultural reception of these works.

The importance of the work of retro gamers and fan communities within the field of videogame preservation has been acknowledged and the need for institutional collaboration with these communities has also been recognised. There are, however, minimal examples of how museums might realize this opportunity. This thesis examines the curation of a local history of Australian videogames for the era of the microcomputer and, in the process, provides an example of how museums can effectively engage with online communities to document and display videogames.

Local game histories form a crucial component of a response to the call for a critical historiography of videogames. Notable scholars to have proposed the need for such a historiography include Raiford Guins, Henry Lowood, Jakko Suominen and Melanie Swalwell. Responding to this need, I undertake research on an important chapter of Australian videogame history. In addressing the challenges of curating videogames, which are understood as both ‘artefacts and experiences’, I explore what museums can learn from the practices of retro game communities. Online retro gamer communities have created extensive archives of early microcomputer games, developing systems and procedures for their preservation and documentation. Through examination of retro gamer sites and other player made artefacts, I develop a novel argument for the importance of player memory in capturing how people experienced videogames and engaged with broader game culture. The importance of personal memories for videogame history is further explored in the case study of the Popular Memory Archive (PMA). The PMA website is designed as both exhibition and archive with the intent of engaging online communities in sharing their recollections of 1980s games. Through an analysis of the PMA I examine new ways of documenting and displaying born digital work.

This thesis contributes to broader questions about the display and collection of digital heritage by museums confronted with the challenges of a future in which screen culture will no longer leave material traces. Born digital artefacts need to be recorded and represented through the documentation of their systems and the experiences they afford their users. Through an analysis of retro gamer sites and the PMA, I present an exemplar for future collaborative practice between museums and online communities for the display and documentation of born digital artefacts.
 

How does popular culture change? And, how can it also be understood as creative, in the sense traditionally associated with art as the avant-garde? This chapter uses the experience of the dominant youth gang in Melbourne in the seventies, the Sharpies, to open up such questions. Experience and expression are primary here: for the Sharpies were a tribe of 'well-dressed thugs', but they also created a culture and its own aesthetic forms, in fashion, dance, music, and the techniques of the body that animate everyday life. More, the innovative patterns of their performative working class culture attracted and even seduced or captured some leading middle-class artists, in particular, rock guitarist Lobby Loyde and feminist photographer Carol Jerrems.

Melbourne's counterculture happened in the sixties, but in some ways came to fruition into the seventies. Part of this scene was the Sharpies. The Sharpies were a network of Melbourne gangs, characterised by Italian fashion, 'sharp' looks, fierce music, and high levels of violence on tribal grounds and directed at outgroups like hippies. This chapter uses the work of two major period artists to discuss this culture and open some questions that follow. The first is Lobby Loyde, godfather of Australian rock guitar, whose band Coloured Balls were appropriated by the Sharpies. The second is Carol Jerrems, a photographer of extraordinary power and capacity to connect, whose work came to intersect with Sharpies in intriguing ways. The chapter then connects and contrasts these artistic representations of Sharpies with a recently emerging literature of Sharp self-representation.

Retro culture is often criticised for its ahistorical and aestheticized assembling of the past. Nostalgia is considered a prevalent attitude in the domains of retro-gaming and vintage computing in terms of a romanticising view of the past. Thus, the phenomena of retro-gaming and vintage computing can seem unfit for museums as arbiters of History. However, what if the affective appeal of nostalgia could be harnessed and the romanticised approach to the past simultaneously tempered with more reflection? This article focuses on the possible transformation, via participatory exhibition design, of museum visitors’ simple nostalgia into reflective nostalgia. The article accounts for two exhibitions of retro-gaming culture at the Media Museum that deployed two participatory approaches: 1) Enabling the visitors to participate by using the technology on display and playing games. 2) Including retro-gaming fans in a co-creative exhibition design process. We argue that there is a considerable potential for affective engagement of museum visitors in retro-gaming culture, which can serve as a platform of interest for scaffolding further reflection on gaming past and present. Interviews with visitors show that the interactivity of playing games and the tactile handling of original gaming artefacts are effective in fostering visitors’ reflection.

Raiford Guins is an Associate Professor of Culture and Technology at Stony Brook University. His research on the history of video games seeks to draw closer relationships with the fields of Design History and Design Culture. In his most recent book, Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (MIT Press, 2014), he investigates the emerging strategies of collecting and displaying video games within museums as well as the role that artifacts play in the documentation of game history. In this interview by Matt Ferranto, Guins shares his thoughts on the Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) video game exhibition.

The Popular Memory Archive is an online collaborative research portal for collecting and exhibiting the production and reception histories of Australian and New Zealand micro-computer games of the 1980s. Proposed as a resource for both historians of technology and media, and the public, the site provides the means to collect and share the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period. This article surveys activity on the site and offers some preliminary evaluation of the significance of the online contributions. From this we consider the discursive, inclusive and questioning practices of the portal as a means of exhibiting historic games.

This paper introduces and describes the UK-based National Videogame Archive, detailing the process leading to its creation and the core methodologies and aspirations of the project. It places the work of the NVA within the wider contexts of preservation, player culture and academia and describes initial projects undertaken by the NVA to supplement core preservation activities.

Video games are a cultural phenomenon; a medium like no other that has become one of the largest entertainment sectors in the world. While the UK boasts an enviable games development heritage, it risks losing a major part of its cultural output through an inability to preserve the games that are created by the country’s independent games developers. The issues go deeper than bit rot and other problems that affect all digital media; loss of context, copyright and legal issues, and the throwaway culture of the ‘next’ game all hinder the ability of fans and academics to preserve video games and make them accessible in the future.

This study looked at the current attitudes towards preservation in the UK’s independent (‘indie’) video games industry by examining current record-keeping practices and analysing the views of games developers. The results show that there is an interest in preserving games, and possibly a desire to do so, but issues of piracy and cost prevent the industry from undertaking preservation work internally, and from allowing others to assume such responsibility. The recommendation made by this paper is not simply for preservation professionals and enthusiasts to collaborate with the industry, but to do so by advocating the commercial benefits that preservation may offer to the industry.

Memories of playing games with computers have an important role in terms of documenting people’s personal relationships with computing history. This paper presents and discusses the Popular Memory Archive (PMA), an online portal of the “Play It Again” game history and preservation project, which addresses 1980s games, produced in Australia and New Zealand.  As well as providing a way to disseminate some of the team’s research, the PMA taps into what is, effectively, a collective public archive by providing a technique for collecting information, resources and memories from the public about 1980s computer games. The PMA is designed to work with online retro gamer communities and fans, and this paper reflects on the PMA as a method for collecting and displaying the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period.

The art historical notion of 'the original' continues to inflect games history and game preservation work. This paper notes the persistence of this concept particularly in the game lover's invocation of 'the original experience'. The paper first traces the game lover's notions of history and preservation, recognizing their commitment to games, before noting that the appeal to original experience is problematic for more critical historical and scholarly perspectives. It suggests that there is a need to liberate critical thought from this paradigm and ask different questions, such as how exhibitions of 1980s games and gaming culture might be assembled for future audiences with no memory of this period. The model proposed by net art preservationist, Anne Laforet, of the Archaeological Museum offers a way for thinking about such exhibits of game history and visitors' encounters with these, whilst moving beyond the notion that games must play exactly as they once did.