Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper

The Game Preservation Special Interest Group was founded in 2004, only five years ago.

Even in that short time, however, interest in the preservation of digital games and virtual worlds has intensified remarkably.

Today, cultural institutions such as universities, libraries, and museums have begun to collect, display, and make available artifacts of game culture, and opportunities for the practical or critical study of game content and technology are increasing rapidly.

Game studies, a field that barely existed ten years ago, now boasts of annual conferences, journals, and organizations dedicated to it.

All of these developments are fine and good. In this white paper, however, we address a threat not just to academic game studies and the historical appreciation of game culture, but also to game developers and the industry itself: the potential disappearance of original game content and intellectual property through media decay, obsolescence, and loss.