Video gamers in the US can no longer play many of the games from the past.
A recent study from the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) found that most of the games video game developers published since their inception were lost to time and are no longer playable on any of the current platforms.
The VGHF is a non-profit organization dedicated to "preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games" by archiving old games for educational purposes, per the Foundation's official website.
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Video Game Loss Details
Video games in the US have gone mainstream - gaming is now a hobby (or a job, in some cases) widely accepted enough that people no longer tease gamers. The medium is also a popular method to share stories with - an interactable movie if you will.
Despite video games' popularity, however, time is no friend to it - technological advancements made playing older video games almost impossible. This problem has reached the point that old games have become unplayable on current platforms or are incompatible with the hardware we have.
While this is a problem for gamers who wish to try out games from earlier years, like the 90s, it gets worse as we look further back in time - a problem VGHF found.
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The VGHF concluded in its report on the commercial availability of classic video games that such games are almost impossible to access. It found that of the 4,000 games released before 2010, about 87% of classic video games released in the US are critically endangered and difficult to access for various reasons.
The VGHF said that accessing and playing classic video games require people to maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library or get a pirated copy of one. By comparison, around 14% of American silent films from 1912-1929 still survive today inaccessible and available formats, compared to 13% of games from the 80s up to 2010, per Eurogamer.
"None of those options are desirable, which means that most video games are inaccessible to all but the most diehard and dedicated fans," the VGHF said. "That's pretty grim!"
The Study's Goal
While knowing that 87% of the video games released in the US are critically endangered is a good thing, the VGHF wants people to know more than that. The VGHF's goal in publishing its study is to get expanded exemptions for libraries and organizations preserving them.
The VGHF believes that the current limit is far too small that it limits their ability to preserve various media such as books, movies, audio, and video games. The study allegedly proves that the video game industry only managed to make 13% of its history available to people despite the arguments from the industry's main lobbying group - the ESA or the Entertainment Software Association.
"We should be thinking ahead to the infrastructure needed to address the problems of the present and the future," the VGHF wrote on Twitter.
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