Preserving Videogames: Gameplay as Cultural Heritage

Since they first blipped and bleeped to life in the 1970s, videogames have become one of the most pervasive global cultural forms. Today, there are more opportunities to play than ever with smartphones, connected-televisions, tablets, and consoles all vying for the attentions of players. Moreover, videogames have become the subject of academic enquiry with the discipline of game studies thinking critically about this medium. Whether it involves examining the structures, forms and narratives of games, their hardware and software interfaces, or the cultures and practices that support and surround gameplay, ‘game studies’ has become a staple of contemporary academic media and popular culture studies.

However, while a diverse array of game studies books, journals, courses and conferences abound, they typically share one thing in common: they focus on Europe and the US. A game studies student might easily be forgiven for thinking that Japan played but a supporting role in game history, culture or development, and yet a game fan would likely revere names such as Sega, Capcom and Nintendo. The co-founders of the UK’s National Videogame Archive (in collaboration with the Science Museum) aim to redress this imbalance. In this talk, they discussed their work on Japanese game culture, the challenges of videogame preservation, and the ‘living museums’ of arcades and stores in Tokyo’s Akihabara district.

About the contributors