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Video Game Collectors -- Are You Concerned?
h8b1llg8ts
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there and I'm growing a little concerned.
With the release of the first CD based system, over 15 years ago, it seems the shelf life of our CD based video games seem to be in jeopardy. Now again, there is no scientific data backing up any of this and the majority of the research I can find is based on CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD manufacture companies. Which states the shelf life is more like a hundred years. Well I don't know about you but I really don't trust any research done by the same company that produces the product. We can all thank the cigarette and drug companies for that.
Though the concusses of impartial research I could find on the subject puts shelf life about 30 years. Which puts us at over half way there. Though it all has to do with the condition of the game and the quality of the CD. Now of course, there is the opposite spectrum with Nintendo's Wii Shop or the fully functional emulation done by companies like Game Tap or homemade emulations. But that doesn't help any of the Xbox and Sony owners who are still running on partial software emulation. And what about those of us who collect and enjoy our Sega CD and Panasonic 3DO games? Who, if anyone, is going to support those games?
So it seems that my shelves of games are dying in some sense or another. The question is where can we turn to extend that life?
With the release of the first CD based system, over 15 years ago, it seems the shelf life of our CD based video games seem to be in jeopardy. Now again, there is no scientific data backing up any of this and the majority of the research I can find is based on CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD manufacture companies. Which states the shelf life is more like a hundred years. Well I don't know about you but I really don't trust any research done by the same company that produces the product. We can all thank the cigarette and drug companies for that.
Though the concusses of impartial research I could find on the subject puts shelf life about 30 years. Which puts us at over half way there. Though it all has to do with the condition of the game and the quality of the CD. Now of course, there is the opposite spectrum with Nintendo's Wii Shop or the fully functional emulation done by companies like Game Tap or homemade emulations. But that doesn't help any of the Xbox and Sony owners who are still running on partial software emulation. And what about those of us who collect and enjoy our Sega CD and Panasonic 3DO games? Who, if anyone, is going to support those games?
So it seems that my shelves of games are dying in some sense or another. The question is where can we turn to extend that life?
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MAX: Liz I really, really wish that this could be something, you know, more. But it can't. We're just...
LIZ: Different.
VOICE-OVER: It's September 24th, I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. But then the really amazing thing happened. I came to life.
LIZ: Different.
VOICE-OVER: It's September 24th, I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. But then the really amazing thing happened. I came to life.
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I have vinyl that still plays after 50 years of on/off use.
That's my point though. Music has back-ups. Vinyl, tapes, CD's, MP3's.
What does the gaming industry have?
LIZ: Different.
VOICE-OVER: It's September 24th, I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. But then the really amazing thing happened. I came to life.
As far as I'm aware, the issue isn't that optical media will be damaged as a result of constant use. The issue is that the data layer of a CD or DVD can degrade with time, causing damage to the data contained on the layer.
I've only ever read about this issue with writeable media, but I don't doubt that it could occur with stamped, retail discs as well. I haven't done the research, but it is something I'd be upset about if it happened to my collection. It's kind of annoying having to replace a battery in a Super Nintendo cart, but at least that's reparable. There's no hope, unless you've imaged and archived your games, of doing anything to reinstate your optical media if the data goes south. Even archiving the game isn't a great solution... it's just not the same as having the original in working order.
The process for producing each is substantially different.
Who is protecting our souces of media? If something needs to be reprinted where do you go for those games who have lost their Licensing?
LIZ: Different.
VOICE-OVER: It's September 24th, I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. But then the really amazing thing happened. I came to life.
That's why I make the distinction. I probably shouldn't have worded that the way I did, though. I have absolutely no idea if there's any correlation between the two, and "I don't doubt . . ." implies I'm at least somewhat knowledgeable. I perhaps should have said, "I wonder if."
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Is that true for non-standard CDs? Like the 3D0 etc.
Of course, I'm no laser scientist (oh man how cool would it be to have "laser scientist" on my resumé), and it's not like I've done any double-blind experiments or anything. It's just that I've been taking very good care of my discs ever since I've had them (basically, I freak out whenever I see one that's not in a case), and I've never had a DRE happen to me. At least not on my own games (rentals, used games and friend loans are a different deal, obviously).
hahaha
Me, I'm not concerned. If the product breaks as it is expected to over time, it's still the product. It's not a matter of negligence or anything.
All publishers have underground bunkers of server farms with all their games stored that they have ever released.
Trust me, even the most obscure games from 15 years ago are well safe in hand should all the physical media burn up.
Oh so its like that cave scientists are using to freeze-store seed samples of every plant on the planet?
The redundancy in this area is much more than you think.
Nothing is ever thrown away. The assets and code for Dungeon Keeper is still somewhere in Lionhead HQ.
These things take up no space. Any game pre-2001 is less than 700mb. You can get free filehosting larger than that on the internet these days.
Bullshit. Software companies lose shit all the fucking time. They're run by human beings, and human beings routinely fuck up. It's the way we are. There was an internal memo at fucking Microsoft asking if any employees still had DOS 2.0 disks lying around, because the folks in Archives couldn't find a release copy.
You're right, though; there's a great deal of redundancy in this area. Just, most of that redundancy is on sites we don't link to from here.
The Virtual Console and XBLA seem to offer some hope, but the issue that Aethelred raises is also a concern.
Frankly, I believe the concern to be slightly misplaced since books, movies, music, etc. have all suffered from irrevocable loss due to various reasons. It's pretty much almost the nature of things. In the long, only those considered 'important' receive any type of special attention for preservation or revival.
Unfortunately for games, even the most important works hardly stand up to much scrutiny. They are based in a technological background and since technology is constantly moving forward, so too does the way in which the games are both created and interacted with. The medium itself is almost designed in a way to encourage planned obsolescence. Very few games will ever likely be considered so important that efforts to maintain them, even for archival purposes, will ever be undertaken.
It most cases, reviving (or remaking) older titles is less about a nostalgic 'Hey! Remember this?' and more about making money on what is likely a long running franchise.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
I first thought of system not lasting longer then the games but I was blinded by my Atari and Intellivision working just fine. But now that you meantioned it there are more intregate working parts in my 360 and look how well those "state of the art" systems have held up.
After, more research I have found that the Library of Congress does not hold any of these IP and the only true source back up is the US Copyright office. But after any IP is not renewed who knows where it goes?
LIZ: Different.
VOICE-OVER: It's September 24th, I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. But then the really amazing thing happened. I came to life.
I will want to play this game on and off for years and years and years, but the studio is dead. Will they keep making it, or the ps2 for that matter, in ten years time? My poor demon punching baby, will nobody think of the god children? ;_;
In theory. In practice anything more complicated than the SNES will have a vast array of semi-documented custom ASICs. We can't even reliably emulate the Saturn in software, let alone build a hardware replacement, for instance.
It also has backups. We can't discuss them here in detail, but game preservation is a pretty serious topic for some corners of the gaming community. The companies themselves have done a decent job of keeping the classics alive, and the community ensures almost all else is playable.
It's not an ideal situation, but at the very least we know the code isn't going anywhere.
A bigger issue to me is the source code and files. Having the actual code saved means you can actually update the game to run on newer platforms without requiring emulators. I'm hoping that most companies are hanging onto all that.
Take your current collection and digitize it as an iso. Then burn said iso, or keep it on your system in a File Library. I keep copies of all my DVD's and Games on an external hard drive library (its currently at 2000gb).
God damn that sounds like it took forever.
its not like my PS2 will play my burned backup copy of the game that I'm concerned about, will it?
On the plus side, by the time your console and discs explode there will likely be a word-we-can't-discuss for that console, or some other way of using the ISOs.
Does the said word start with "Emu" and end with "lator"? If you bought the game and wish to play it, then the use of the "word-that-shall-not-be-said" is perfectly legal (atleast in my eyes.)
It sure is, but you still can't talk about them on this forum. Gabe's personal request, and he's kinda paying the bills.
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