Reading Games Writing: Out of Reach, Out of Mind by Phoenix Simms

Out of Reach, Out of Mind By Phoenix Simms

I picked this as it is about a cause I hold near and dear to my heart, and that is the preservation of games and all of its ancillary forms, games media coverage, interviews, promos, tie-in media, trailers, marketing, as the VGHF introduced to my vocabulary: ephemera. I also picked it because it introduced some new thoughts into how I think about those efforts as well.

This move [allowing GameInformer.com to remain an archive] is a baffling one that underscores how disposable games and their cultural relevance are viewed by corporations. An ironic state of affairs given that said relevance is the currency that allows execs to cash out.

GameInformer now joins EGM, 1up, GameVideos, Edge Online, Play, Joystiq, Machinima [an evil company that nonetheless was the source for many videos and rhetoric that have now been lost], US Gamer, GamePro, GameTrailers, and others I have either forgotten or not even yet discovered are gone. This is not counting developers whose studios have gone defunct, whose creations now sit as abandonware and whose continual existence is thanks to the unpaid labor of ingenious fans keeping their .exe files running on modern hardware.

Various historical projects over the years have grappled and continue to grapple with the way that preservation of games is not just about the hardware and software but about preserving the interactive context of games.

The full ludic experience is only truly preserved in a narrow band. It happens when the feedback loop between organic bodies interfacing with technology is preserved. Irrespective to whether that sense is via tactility, affect or both. When you strictly define games as a commercial product, as GameStop does, you devalue the prominent place games and their rhetoric now have in our current zeitgeist.

This expanded my perspective to preservation, as it is more than just, “Can you get the game to run on your computer in 2024?” The Video Game History Foundation introduced the term ephemera to me some time ago, which expanded the efforts of preservation beyond just the game but also its marketing. Now, here, Phoenix expands that even further.

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of this is emulation of the Nintendo DS/3DS, Wii, and Wii U consoles, which each featured interactive context that cannot be accurately replicated with a keyboard and mouse on PC monitor. Extended even further, a keyboard is not a recreation of the controllers for various consoles, nor are our displays accurate to the heyday of CRTs. I’m sure there are even more examples Phoenix has in mind when writing this and others had when reading it that I am not even aware of.

Perhaps sheer scale and availability is what keeps us feeling (falsely) secure about the state of games preservation. This principle goes for both for games themselves and media about games. But it’s dangerous to remain unbothered about the permanence or constancy of games and their associated physical media.

1000% agree with this. Often a sentiment expressed when I was growing up was that something posted online would exist forever. That was a big fat lie. Too often do I come across in my searches of websites that no longer exist, of YouTube videos deleted with no mirror, of flash games no longer supported, of blogs that turn out 404 errors. Games are not much different. 87% Missing: the Disappearance of Classic Video Games from the Video Game History Foundation shows us how large a volume of work is at risk of having their availability removed from future generations of players. You see this already with a constant stream of delistings of titles from storefronts, helpfully tracked by the great resource Delisted Games (Even in the age of digital, nothing lasts forever).  The transition from physical media to all digital will only make that percentage increase as entire storefronts are shut down and companies go bankrupt leaving no owner to maintain their library, or worse, for it to become owned by a company that has no interest in keeping it available and desists others from doing that work.

I wonder if there’s not a similar sort of linguistic or perceptual loss when games media is lost.

Another new idea I had never considered before but do find backing up a similar thought I’ve had for some time now. The loss of games media, both the writing and coverage of games, as well as the games themselves, whether due to lack of formal availability or lack of compatibility with modern hardware, has created a huge lack of literacy within the space. Writing about games exists but its continued existence is left up to the whims of corporations. This even happens with blogs, whose existence is left up to the whims of their owner who might one day decide to delete it entirely instead of leaving it as part of a larger body of text that, I would hope, would exist as a resource and foundation to be built off of. Instead we find so many conversations repeating throughout the years, the same arguments being made on social media, the same opinions being published and republished and litigated like clockwork. The lack of a complete body of games being easily accessible means only that which is currently available is what remains in the conversation, leaving out a vast field of works ripe for the harvest but ignored and neglected due to their uncommercial yields.