The Escapist's news, reviews, and editorials will soon be part of the world's first searchable video game writing collection, managed by the Entertainment Media Council.

The Entertainment Media Council and DEFY Media have announced a new partnership to preserve the history of video game writing and criticism. This new initiative aims to build the world's first nonprofit media library, offering a searchable collection of news, reviews, and other video game writings that will be maintained for corporate and academic research.

"We are losing our history," EMC president and CEO Morgan Ramsay said. "Although the video game industry has become an essential feature of popular culture, until now there has been no compelling effort to preserve the journalistic lens through which we have watched this industry evolve. Our initiative, in cooperation with every media company that has played a role in the conversation about video games, will ensure there is a singular resource for serious research, for those who would remember our past to shape our future."

While the internet has taken great leaps to archive video games for future generations, video game journalism hasn't always received the same attention. As more and more video game criticism is produced, researchers have to rely on web search engines that provide unfiltered results. It's an important distinction with huge implications for academia, which is why compiling writings in a research database is so useful.

"The video game industry has produced some of the most trailblazing editorial and journalistic content in entertainment," Adam Silverman, SVP of Business Affairs at DEFY Media explained, "and we're proud that The Escapist editorial team, who stand among the most respected and followed game-focused journalists in the world, are part of this legacy. The introduction of the EMC database provides a fantastic opportunity to centralize the history of the video game industry in a manner that will provide accessible information to journalists, audiences craving more content, and gaming enthusiasts for generations to come."

EMC will be procuring and licensing full-text historical and editorial content about video games throughout the next year. Once complete, it will be made available to corporate and academic researchers as an online subscription service.

Source: Entertainment Media Council

Disclosure: The Escapist is a property of DEFY Media.