You may find yourself contemplating this if you, like me, decide to stump up the $14.99 for the complete collection of 100 games in the collection for iPhone, released yesterday. Am I ever going to play the 2600 versions of Concentration, Checkers or 3D Tic-Tac-Toe? Perhaps once or twice for nostalgia's sake -- but many of those games will remain curiosities at best.
On April 14, James Newman and Iain Simons of the National Videogame Archive in the UK are giving a talk about the . They suggest that when it comes to retro gaming and nostalgia, we might be trying to preserve the wrong things. They also question the things that we find most important about games of the past. What's more interesting? The games themselves, with all their technical limitations? Or the stories of people who played them?
By way of example, consider this. Here's . Bet you didn't watch the whole thing. Now, imagine me sitting in an office chair playing that, dressed in a thick coat, balaclava, sunglasses and a makeshift "oxygen mask" made from bits of cardboard and the hose of a defunct vacuum cleaner. You probably want to know why I was sitting there dressed like some sort of steampunk elephant. (I wanted to be a pilot, and I was 9 years old.) Your interest is immediately piqued far more than just by watching old footage of the game or attempting to play it yourself. So I'll ask again: what's more interesting -- the game, or the stories of people who played it?
"Maybe we might want to dare to consider that games might not last forever," Newman and Simons argue. "Maybe the certain knowledge of their inevitable extinction will be the thing that focuses us on preserving and documenting what they are, what they mean, and how they are played."
It's a sobering thought to think that the interactive entertainment we take for granted today might not be around forever. But as consoles become obsolete, physical media deteriorates and many of the old ways are forgotten we're already seeing parts of gaming history pass into the realm of memory. So perhaps, as Newman and Simons suggest, we should start preserving the wider context of gaming in society as well as the games themselves.