Crumbling Culture

Our culture is falling apart. This really isn’t too surprising, because every other era has had the same thing happen. Any archaeologist will tell you this. Artifacts are lost, information forgotten, and the little that survives is buried and most probably gone forever. What does survive is feverishly searched out and preserved by dedicated historians. The difference now is ours are disappearing faster.

Paintings fade, statues crumble, film deteriorates, but our recent cultural artifacts seem to be giving in to time quicker. Film isn’t exactly the most stable medium, and restoring it is difficult. Vinyl records are very susceptible to heat, as well as just wearing out over time. As is the case with modern technology, it’s generally built to be replaced, not last. My last computer’s last hard drive is proof of that.

Game Museum Amsterdam is doing incredible things for the preservation of games. Their displays are a testament to how important some people consider popular culture to be in their lives and what could be done to protect them for the future. Despite work like this, games are still an example of technology putting an expiry date on its existence.

At the back of my cupboard is a shoebox filled with my collection of old Gameboy games. I don’t play them very often, but every couple of years I get nostalgic. The most recent time I felt compelled to dig them up, I was shocked to find my games had an expiry date that had long since ticked over.

My saves had been deleted. All 200 hours I’d dumped into Pokemon Gold were nowhere to be seen. It was the internal battery in the cartridge. It had expired last year. With flash memory too expensive to put into the already costly cartridges, Nintendo opted for battery powered save states. Right about now the majority should be past the point of no return and no longer be able to hold a save when removed from the console.

I tried to fix it, but I couldn’t. Repair kits are easy to find, but the force required to break the solder was far too much for my fragile conviction. The alternative appears to be taking a soldering iron to it, but then I risk blowing my fingers off if I ignite the battery. I’m going to have to settle with my games not holding a save, but I shouldn’t have to.

Old arcade games that use CRT monitors are becoming harder to repair thanks to old parts simply not being made anymore. A common problem with CRT screens is ‘screen burn’ where oft repeated images become permanent additions to display. Replacing the tubes in the back of the box isn’t easy. With LCD and plasma screens replacing the old monitors in production, old CRT’s aren’t being made, let alone the replacement parts.

This is where emulation sites make their case for providing downloads of console games and software to run them on a computer. I may not be able to save my Pokemon game anymore, but I can run a copy of it on my PC. The legality of this is under constant scrutiny. There is a case to be made that it provides a backup copy should anything happen to the original software, but game companies are staunchly against it.

Another form of preservation is the HD remake, but even this can result in far less than ideal copies of games. Take Sega as a recent example. Their port of Crazy Taxi recently suffered at the hands of licensing laws and lost its iconic sponsored locations like Pizza Hut and the Levi store, plus the unforgettable soundtrack by Bad Religion and The Offspring. That game means nothing to me if I can’t drive around San Francisco while ‘okayYAYAYAYAYAHHH!’ blares at full volume. The Jet Set Radio remake looks like it’s lost 20% of its original soundtrack for the same reasons, which is a shame considering how important music is to the world that game creates.

In the wake of Diablo 3’s launch, the debate about always-on DRM has flared up once again. While frustrating at launch, if DRM servers went down permanently games could become unplayable. This could presumably be patched out, but putting aside the resources needed during a legal nightmare seems unlikely for a company. It would be like Apple going under and losing all the music you purchased on iTunes.

We have libraries for books and museums for art, but games straddle an uncomfortable line between the two. They are in many ways a shining example of the technology we use to create modern artifacts limiting their lifespan. It’s time we started taking preservation of these relics seriously.