Current Events > Why doesn't anyone want to have the game preservation argument anymore?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Feeling trolled, might be cute later.

I would argue that in a pure digital world, software piracy being accepted within reason is an outright moral imperative. Because you can't trust corporations or even indie devs to preserve their own work.

If games can't be preserved, what value is there in considering games to be works of art?

Does the industry itself honestly see games as art, or was all this fighting for first amendment protections just disingenuous, just an excuse to avoid government regulation.

Government regulation that might actually benefit players. Imagine a world where the industry just wasn't legally allowed to do many of the gross things they do.

I know a lot of that sounds crazy, and it kind of is.

But I've been mulling over these exact points for years now.

Because I *gets modded*

Because it's rare people are absolutely on the side of it; think of how many remakes remove something "problematic" and the hoard of "And that's a GOOD THING" posts.

MuscleRobo posted...

Because it's rare people are absolutely on the side of it; think of how many remakes remove something "problematic" and the hoard of "And that's a GOOD THING" posts.

no need to overly care about this, a remake is something new.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


This is a fair and interesting point.

I'm not sure I have anything to add to it, but on the same page I'm not sure how it matters in this conversation.

MuscleRobo posted...

Because it's rare people are absolutely on the side of it; think of how many remakes remove something "problematic" and the hoard of "And that's a GOOD THING" posts.

That goes into another debate entirely I feel like.

People are afraid to speak out about censorship because the anti-censoriship talking point has been co-opted by the alt-right.

The art argument feels a bit odd to me. Does art only have value if its preserved? What is performance art? What are temporary exhibits, etc.

There's lots of reasons why digital media is a loss for consumers but I dunno about this one

pinky0926 posted...

The art argument feels a bit odd to me. Does art only have value if its preserved? What is performance art? What are temporary exhibits, etc.

There's lots of reasons why digital media is a loss for consumers but I dunno about this one

It's not that I haven't considered this, as much a lot of my argument is based in my sincere belief that games are closely related to literature and animation/film.

Performance art can be preserved, and it often is. How many times have you watched 80's stand-up routines on YouTube?

Part of how this information stays in the zeitgeist is through preservation.

It's not what all art is, but a huge part of the power of art is in that it can be used to tell a story to the future, and with this power history can evolve instead of repeating itself.

is it any different than movies or tv series recently?

Feels like a lot of people have skipped the argument and are just preserving old games anyway. So many old console and pc games are being preserved one way or another; Roms for every snes game are out there for example.

Thanks to the internet an interested public are making it happen for most of the really influential games.

Rai_Jin posted...

is it any different than movies or tv series recently?

No, it's not.
At all, actually.

In fact, I read the history of the film medium as an outright warning to what could happen to games.

Did you know that roughly 70% of silent era films are considered to be lost media?

Even classics, are often partially reconstructed.

https://youtu.be/CBrj4S24074?si=6zgiBwn-60SosYSv

There are still morons who think emulation, the only true way to preserve games, is immoral.

masterbarf posted...

There are still morons who think emulation, the only true way to preserve games, is immoral.

Theyre not morons, they're just ignorant.
Emulation has been used in an official capacity since the 90's.

what if you could officially buy "roms" for emulators from the game companies?

Rai_Jin posted...

what if you could officially buy "roms" for emulators from the game companies?

We already do. That is what virtual console was.

I think it's a good thing.

Remakes have nothing to do with preservation, in fact using remakes as a method of preserving games is itself incredibly problematic and incredibly anti-consumer. That's the style of preservation that the industry wants because it's entirely monetized.

What was great was Nintendo's old Virtual Console before they killed it for a supremely shitty subscription service.

RasterGraphic posted...

That goes into another debate entirely I feel like.

People are afraid to speak out about censorship because the anti-censoriship talking point has been co-opted by the alt-right.

This. The changes to old games should not be encouraged.

But the group most vocal about it, are insufferable ****.

I agree with this thread's general sentiment. The preservation of digital media is a good thing to strive towards. But I disagree completely that art must be preserved to be considered art. All art is transient. Life is transient. The Earth itself is transient; one day, the sun will destroy it! Some art might survive for millennia. Some might only survive for a few years, or months, or weeks, or hours, or seconds. But it's all art, no matter how long it's preserved.

Enclave posted...

Remakes have nothing to do with preservation, in fact using remakes as a method of preserving games is itself incredibly problematic and incredibly anti-consumer. That's the style of preservation that the industry wants because it's entirely monetized.

I agree.

TheOnionKnight posted...

I agree with this thread's general sentiment. The preservation of digital media is a good thing to strive towards. But I disagree completely that art must be preserved to be considered art. All art is transient. Life is transient. The Earth itself is transient; one day, the sun will destroy it! Some art might survive for millennia. Some might only survive for a few years, or months, or weeks, or hours, or seconds. But it's all art, no matter how long it's preserved.

It's not that all art needs to be preserved, and you are very much correct.

It's just that we can do so much better than effing 70 percent.

But I fear we are heading in that direction.

Remakes are wack. Fucking up the art and balance of great games is not preservation. Generations from now, I can't imagine people having interest in some corporate cash grab, inferior version over the originals. Remakes are a short sighted fad for people who don't care about gameplay, refinement, or artistic intent.

MuscleRobo posted...

Because it's rare people are absolutely on the side of it; think of how many remakes remove something "problematic" and the hoard of "And that's a GOOD THING" posts.

Such as?

One trend I find problematic is the "remaster" that is actually a remake in disguise. Remasters are supposed to be a way of preserving and improving the original art. For movies and music, this generally works. But many video game "remasters" can't help but re-create the art and often this is destructive to the original's intended look and feel.

For a pretty blatant example, let's look at Ninja Gaiden II Black, which is in actuality a remake in Unreal Engine 5.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e0c00faf.jpg

yea but the PS5 looks way better and the 360 picture looks like dogshit so im not sure that's the best example.

edit: i was nodding along, thinking the 360 picture was the butchered remaster and i was about to completely agree. I mean, I agree in principle, i just think that 360 screenshot is too dark and i cant see anything.

You need a better screen if you can't see anything in the 360 screenshot. It's supposed to look dark and murky, because this is a night time scene, but I can easily make out the silhouettes of everything. PS5 version makes it look like a day time scene, and the effect of Alexei lurking in the shadows is completely lost.

The_cranky_hermit posted...

Remasters are supposed to be a way of preserving and improving the original art. F

It takes a lot of ego for a developer to think they are improving the art as if the original developers were incompetent. People should be clamoring for accurate ports with low latency if they care about the games.

The_cranky_hermit posted...

One trend I find problematic is the "remaster" that is actually a remake in disguise. Remasters are supposed to be a way of preserving and improving the original art. For movies and music, this generally works. But many video game "remasters" can't help but re-create the art and often this is destructive to the original's intended look and feel.

For a pretty blatant example, let's look at Ninja Gaiden II Black, which is in actuality a remake in Unreal Engine 5.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e0c00faf.jpg

Like it or not, people get what they asked for.

Folks complain about "paying for roms".
So companies decide to NOT emulate, and look how the results turn out.

Because it was never about game preservation. It was a convenient excuse for them to pirate and feel guilt free over it. I bet 99% of the people who champion game preservation won't make what they have available to others. They download what they want, but refuse to do any seeding on their end.

RasterGraphic posted...

We already do. That is what virtual console was.

I think it's a good thing.

no, I mean that you can load directly on a third party emulator. Or was that possible?

I don't think the majority of people that pirate games and argue that it's for preservation are doing so in good faith. Like, it's true that keeping a digital library up so that nothing becomes lost media should be a good thing, but realistically people are usually pirating games because games are expensive and they don't want to pay for them. Not always the case, but I doubt most people actively consider the moral implications of self-serving actions.

I don't really have a problem with piracy itself - companies don't always have all their games readily available so sometimes piracy is literally the only way to play something. What I am annoyed at is that publishers have Denuvo in new releases that tank performance to combat piracy, but I don't think consumers are mostly to blame for that.

Shit, Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii lost its entire online city area when the servers went offline. A lot of super cool and charming content that would be lost media if fans didn't get their own servers running that you can connect to via dolphin

Corpos don't care about preservation, and the people who put time and effort into designing these areas don't get a say in the matter, so if fans preserve the content themselves, then good

The argument falls apart when people arent just downloading old games that havent been rereleased like Guardian Legend or Little Samson. It falls apart when they are also downloading Elden Ring and Mario Odyssey.

They arent preserving games, they just want them for free.

I do believe games should be preserved though, and Im happy that there have been so many good retro compilations of good quality this gen,