This IU Indy team wants to save your favorite video games
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Beloved video games at risk of extinction due to changing tastes and poor preservation have a new save point on the IU Indianapolis campus.
Why it matters: As consumers embrace stream-anywhere convenience over physical ownership, forms of entertainment such as video games, music, films and television shows are more at-risk of being made inaccessible or unpurchasable with the push of a button.
- Video games have been hit the hardest, and preservation issues have rendered 87% of all video games ever released in the U.S. unplayable.
Driving the news: A team at the recently rededicated Media Arts and Science Research Learning Arcade, or MARLA, is trying to make sure works of art created with a digital-first mindset can be enjoyed for generations to come.
What they're saying: While MARLA is focused on protecting the likes of Solid Snake and Samus Aran, the team wants to contribute to the larger fight for preservation and create a network of like-minded nerds who want to save all their favorite stuff.
- "This problem has been boiling and bubbling, but it's only been the last year or two that's really hit the public zeitgeist," said Mathew Powers, the IU media arts and science lecturer who leads the MARLA team. "Everybody's doing this in their own little bubbles. So we need to not only do it, but we need to connect … because we've got to save this."
State of play: Earlier this year, IU classified a 1,000-square-foot lab on the Indy campus as a museum, meaning University Collections will ensure works of art within it are properly preserved, housed and made accessible.
- MARLA currently has a collection of 20 consoles and over 550 unique game titles in the "museum."
- Expect all the heavy-hitters from Sega, Nintendo and Sony.
- MARLA also includes an Atari 2600 from 1977, a Commodore VIC-20 from 1980 and Radio Shack's TRS-80, a desktop microcomputer that also launched in 1977.
Between the lines: The MARLA team told Axios the potential loss of digital games is similar to the erasure of historical art and music, noting that creators who brought these games to life may one day wake up and see their creations ripped from digital storefronts without warning due to things like licensing issues.
- They add that when games are made inaccessible, enthusiasts who simply want to relive a childhood memory are pushed to do so through emulation or piracy.
💠Justin's thought bubble: My earliest fondest memories are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with my late mother (a huge gamer) playing Double Dragon on the Sega Master System, or my late father (not a gamer) taking me to the neighborhood arcade to play Street Fighter II for hours.
- So it breaks my heart whenever I think about the fact that the console I played with mom got tossed out decades ago and that the arcade my dad always took me to is now just part of an Amazon fulfillment center.
- But playing video games makes it feel like Mom and Dad are still as close as ever, so it's nice to know there's a place in Indianapolis where those memories can be protected.
What's next: Gathering more games and putting them behind the protection of a museum collection before its game over.
- Powers said anyone with classic gaming gear they need to get rid of is welcome to donate to MARLA and add it to the collection.