A short film about video game history and the archive

The Grand Bear Video Game Archive, is an online hub for carefully curated information and sources about the video game medium. Though a relatively new art form, video games have quickly surged in popularity internationally and as such require thoughtful care for preserving these works as well as documenting those that are soon to expire from wear or disinterest. 

 

The medium of video games finds itself in a place similar to that of early film history, film companies and distributors of that era, would often times discard old film stock to save space and with the advent of “talkies” which took the world by storm, silent films at the heart of early film history were cast away. Today there remains less than 10 percent of silent films from before 1929. The same incentives and adversely disincentives for preserving early video game history are in effect today with video games in particular coming at a distinct disadvantage. 

 

The medium unlike the film industry and the music industry has had no universal format, though there has been a rise in digital video game products that effectively allows certain works to be used on a variety of operating systems, for the majority of video game history, hardware has been a necessary component in engaging with a particular video game work. From the complex board embedded in an arcade cabinet to the cartridges and a variety of disc based software, the video game medium is starting on a flat foot when approaching preservation. On top of this all of these formats are then sequestered off from each other along the numerous hardware systems we know as home consoles as well as different operating systems found in the PC marketplace. 

 

These material restraints of having the exact right hardware and software, that were intentionally not made to be sustainable, puts a set timer on all of the mediums physical media. On top of this constraint and like in the silent film era, the vast majority of developers and publishers in the games industry have preserved little of the development of video game works in question. This includes previous iterations of these experiences, design documentation, minutes of meetings, and overall conceptual documentation. The reasons for which are cost saving and overall a tendency by the industry writ large which actively hides these components and only presents those usually in the form of advertisements or commercialized publications. That are usually sanitized of complications or other pertinent information useful in better understanding the creation of any given video game work. 

 

In conclusion, the medium and industry from a historical point of view is an area which deserves devoted historians, archivists, and especially the players themselves to work together to retrieve what information is still available and preserve it.

 

This then is the mission of the Grand Bear Video Game Archive. If you have primary source documentation, secondary sources, or even want to contribute in writing for the archive please fill out a form on the contact page. 

 

Sincerely, 

 

Nick Fiore (Editor In Chief)