My friend Max asked me why there’s no annual publication of the best games journalism. This is why: none of us care about our history.
The vast, unplayable history of video games – Boing Boing
I have friends who have been working for many years on many different aspects of game preservation and game conservation. They are upset that this well intended author did not seem to do the work to find out about their efforts. Instead the author worked from an apparent surface understanding. That conservation efforts are not readily known may be a failing of these self-same friends, bookish academics as well as fervent fans of the games they hope to conserve. Conservation of ephemeral popular culture is itself a fraught field. Visual and Material Culture Studies may only be as old as Videogames. What happens, then, when what one wants to conserve is immaterial by definition? What — and how —does one conserve of the pattern of electrical charges on a microscopic substrate?