Insert Credit has posted some of their thoughts on the Game Developers Conference sessions. Of particular interest to me was their commentary on preserving video game history and video game criticism and cultural analysis. Do yourself a favor and read these. It brings up a lot of what I've been thinking lately.

Obviously in working at a museum like the Walker, we're fairly concerned about archiving works, but even to us (and many other institutions), new media archival is a big challenge. Hardware becomes obsolete, as does software, and new standards are made. What concerns me is not how to archive media for the next 10 years, it's the next 100 that's the most troubling.

While there is a definite process for the archiving of media like film, but no such formal process exists for digital media. We may still have arcade machines that play Pac-Man today, but that is not a guarantee in 2104. Some may say that emulation could take care of this, as it does today in MAME, but again, who's to say that MAME will last 100 years? What about systems like the Vectrex, with its vector monitor and limited production run? True archival of that system over the next 100 years is a daunting task. There's a very real problem with software and hardware incompatibilities and degradation, as we move ever forward without a real process of archiving digital work.

This should probably start at the institutions most concerned with archiving, that being museums and hopefully the companies/individuals who created the original content. Unfortunately, even museums are cutting back on digital media initiatives, which doesn't bode well for that side of the equation. Like the former Curator of New Media at the Walker, Steve Dietz, once said, "For society not to be concerned with preserving [digital media] is akin to burning books". Now, perhaps the intentions are different, but the results are the same. Steve has always been one to appreciate the importance of digital media archiving, proven by his support in me and my Arcade Console project that he curated for a Carleton College exhibition. It was great as a platform to actually talk about these issues in a public forum.

On to my other point, that of gaming criticism. Since my short stint as a gaming journalist in the early 90's, gaming journalism has changed little. In some ways it has gotten worse. I think the entire notion of what gaming journalism *is* has become a self fulfilling prophecy. No one has stepped forward to give an alternative viewpoint to the norm, to step outside what has come to pass for journalism over the course of 20 years, and in essence we haven't grown at all from it. Mr. Bittani's comments in the Insert Credit piece just drive this point home.

I've often wondered if we just weren't ready for it. Gaming isn't that old, and perhaps it's just not a mature field of study. But having worked at the Walker and having seen their panel discussions and screenings for films, and the amount of dialogue and ideas presented at them, I truly believe there can be a similar dialogue to be had with games and gaming. Perhaps gaming is just lacking some sort of cultural legitimacy, and perhaps art institutions should be giving video games and interactive entertainment the same attention as film. Perhaps it will only happen from a grassroots movement. Perhaps the gaming industry itself needs to mature, I'm not sure.

But I will say there is way too much to say about gaming that hasn't been said for it to sit quietly. Going back to the issue of archiving our past, as games and developers/designers age, it becomes more and more important to have these conversations and to encourage these dialogues. I really feel we'll be missing out on a huge part of gaming if we don't.