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We still listen to and perform the music of 300 years ago (Bach), read and perform literature of 400 years ago (Shakespeare), and the look at the paintings of 5

by jowiar 13y ago

We still listen to and perform the music of 300 years ago (Bach), read and perform literature of 400 years ago (Shakespeare), and the look at the paintings of 500 years ago (Leonardo, Botticelli, etc.). Sure, a bunch of the games produced today are semi-glorified slot machines, but most movies of 60 years ago were crap. Most Baroque music was crap. Most Elizabethan drama was crap. Most Renaissance Art was crap. Quality lasts, and if quality managed to survive a time when conveying information across the world took decades and when literacy rates were basically nil, then given modern literacy, and storage and communication technology, it's crazy to say the quality media of the present day isn't going to last. It's going to require some work, but if the media matters to people, people will do what it takes to make it last.

bane 13y ago
Good point. 90% of everything is crap. But that last 10%...that 10% contains everything from "Big Trouble in Little China" to Bach's "Magnificat" (BWV 243). Same for games, in that 10% we get everything from Super Mario World to Skyrim.
- richy_rich 13y ago
  Yes, but it took something like 100 years after Bach's death before people generally believed it to be awesome IIRC. There were doubtless composers who were more popular at the time that we've never heard of. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just thinking that it'd be better to keep everything and let the future decide.
ANTSANTS 13y ago
I think the parent's point was not that modern games are not worth preserving, but that the way they are implemented requires an enormous effort to preserve them far beyond the cost of just copying media, that may not be warranted for anything but the most important and well-loved of games. Most of these mobile games are continuously upgraded, and more importantly, reliant on an external service to implement purchases and access restrictions and such. You cannot just load such a game up in an emulator if the server containing half the code (yes that's hyperbole, it's a smaller but no less important amount) no longer exists. People have reimplemented the servers for very important online games in the past. Off the top of my head, Phantasy Star Online (one of the first MMOs) and Vanilla World of Warcraft both have fanmade reverse-engineered recreations of their server software that allow people to play the original game as it was when they were released, even though Sega and Blizzard respectively have long since shut down their official servers. To reiterate, they did this with only information from the game client, neither the source nor binaries of these games' server software were ever made available. I can only imagine how tremendous of an effort this must have been for the fans, but they did it out of love for these games and the time they spent playing them. Now imagine that one of the various free to play IAP games gets shut down tomorrow. Game binaries that worked fine yesterday are now useless. Chances are, no one cares nearly as much as the aforementioned MMO fans (it's a hell of a lot of work, and I'm going out on a limb and saying that skilled reverse engineers are more likely to be interested in MMOs than cow clickers), and the reverse engineered replacement never gets started. The game disappears from history, except as a Youtube video and a memory.

by jowiar 13y ago

bane 13y ago

Good point. 90% of everything is crap. But that last 10%...that 10% contains everything from "Big Trouble in Little China" to Bach's "Magnificat" (BWV 243). Same for games, in that 10% we get everything from Super Mario World to Skyrim.

richy_rich 13y ago
Yes, but it took something like 100 years after Bach's death before people generally believed it to be awesome IIRC. There were doubtless composers who were more popular at the time that we've never heard of. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just thinking that it'd be better to keep everything and let the future decide.

ANTSANTS 13y ago

I think the parent's point was not that modern games are not worth preserving, but that the way they are implemented requires an enormous effort to preserve them far beyond the cost of just copying media, that may not be warranted for anything but the most important and well-loved of games. Most of these mobile games are continuously upgraded, and more importantly, reliant on an external service to implement purchases and access restrictions and such. You cannot just load such a game up in an emulator if the server containing half the code (yes that's hyperbole, it's a smaller but no less important amount) no longer exists. People have reimplemented the servers for very important online games in the past. Off the top of my head, Phantasy Star Online (one of the first MMOs) and Vanilla World of Warcraft both have fanmade reverse-engineered recreations of their server software that allow people to play the original game as it was when they were released, even though Sega and Blizzard respectively have long since shut down their official servers. To reiterate, they did this with only information from the game client, neither the source nor binaries of these games' server software were ever made available. I can only imagine how tremendous of an effort this must have been for the fans, but they did it out of love for these games and the time they spent playing them. Now imagine that one of the various free to play IAP games gets shut down tomorrow. Game binaries that worked fine yesterday are now useless. Chances are, no one cares nearly as much as the aforementioned MMO fans (it's a hell of a lot of work, and I'm going out on a limb and saying that skilled reverse engineers are more likely to be interested in MMOs than cow clickers), and the reverse engineered replacement never gets started. The game disappears from history, except as a Youtube video and a memory.