The Library of Congress: Gaming Wing In Progress?
The Library of Congress believes video games are just as integral to our cultural record as movies, literature and music, reports Kotaku. Because the Library of Congress houses the Copyright Office, the LoC has actually been collecting video games since the 80’s through copyright deposits. Now, they’re collaborating with major universities to begin a two-year initiative “with the sole intent of figuring out just how institutions can preserve video games for years to come, while making the content accessible for use and study.” The initiative will deal with the issues that will ultimately determine how videogame history is recorded–for instance, how much support commercial game publishers will be willing to offer the project, and the ethical implications of recording activity in virtual worlds. Brenda Gunn, of the University of Texas’ Videogame Archive, is quoted explaining the importance of commercial partnership for the initiative: “This is a significant point in that [LoC] is saying libraries and archives can’t do this alone; the funding simply is not there…the level of ongoing support for this videogame archive will have a direct impact on the what level of access [we] can provide.” UT also gets a nod from Kotaku for enlisting Warren Spector, NCSoft’s Richard Garriot, and “Fat Man” George Sanger to help build their videogame archive.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.