Similar to why a recording of classic films are important. They serve as cultural touchpoints connecting individual experiences from a time and place long past. We retell stories from written literature for centuries and those are relatively difficult to preserve historically where video games are just a matter of storing a ROM on some file system
Many reasons. There is probably not a straight forward answer if you never tried to answer (its my first time) this question. But I’ll give it a go.
Most importantly and in the long run (and I’m talking about hundreds of years) future generations can study old games, to learn how the past was working. For the short term (I"m speaking about now for next decades) its partly about nostalgia so you can play the games, if companies fail to preserve them. Also preservation allows us to play and see the games in their initial state in example. Game developers also can study old games, which is important to make new ones. Reading books how the golden era was this and that is one thing, then playing those games and seeing how it works is another. Even if its not 100% authentic recreation, its still helps.
Why do you preserve old books, films, music, art? Why do we preserve old technical devices we found, old bones of animals or even humans? Compared to those, its much more complicated to preserve videogames, not only the bits and bytes as they are available, but also to have them playable. Videogames is part of our society and preserving them is preserving part of our humanity.
Video games are part of our culture and reflect our society the same way as movies, books, and other media. And, like with old books, preserving and studying old games allows us to understand the environment and time in which they were created, as well as the concepts and ideas that they drew upon, or that newer games drew from them.
Games are art, and art is valuable for how it enriches.
Not all art is good art, and there are plenty of games that no one is trying to preserve.
Capitalism is currently also killing off lots of non-video game art that it can’t profit off of. Tons of old shows, movies, books, and music are out of print, and being held and often lost by the IP holders.
If we allow art to become solely a vehicle for generating profit, we are going to lose out on so much beauty, talent, culture, and history.
What do you think about no preservations from 100 years ago? 1000? 2000?
We could certainly continue to live and evolve and make the same mistakes again without such history. But it gives us historic context, fills our curiosity, and allows us to analyze long term developments.
Video games are a cultural good. Like music. Music was, is, and remains part of our culture. It enriches us. It’s useful for entertainment, for creativity, for curiosity, and to share culture and interests with one another.
I imagine preservation fulfills our innate desire to collect and preserve what we gained. Loss of what we find meaningful or influential sparks negative emotions.
I have indeed replied to my own posts on posts that I made on several Lemmy/Kbin instances (from fedia.io). It's caused because I rarely reply anyway. Because I don't find these comments(on my posts, from other people) interesting to reply
Because I like to play a game I paid for, which will run on my hardware. Especially when I avoid all the modern live service is a necessity horseshit. If people are not confident in releasing new games which others would buy despite having old games, I will stop buying games.
I miss that game… And real arcades. All the “arcades” around here have nothing bullshit mobile games you can literally download and play for free on your phone, and they want like $1-2 per play at the cabinet now. I ain’t paying any money to play Angry Birds or Flappy Bird.
At least they still have skeeball and the basketball things…
As for light gun games on PC, the only things I’ve ever seen are emulated. Either arcade games like that Terminator one with the machine guns that actually have kick to them, or NES/SNES games using the zapper/super scope 6. The emulators do support the actual hardware if you have it and a way to connect it, and there used to be light guns made for PC, but I don’t know if they would be USB or serial port (they were from the 80’s and 90’s).
The best light gun shooter I’ve ever played is a small VR game: Space Pirate Trainer. You’re just standing on a landing pad shooting down waves of robots, but it’s incredibly well balanced, has an ingenious dual-wielding system allowing you to prioritize protection or various kinds of firepower. You’ll leap around, duck and throw yourself to the ground trying to evade the merciless onslaught. It’s a ton of fun and a surprisingly good workout at the same time.
I’m mentioning this game, because I think that VR shooters are the modern-day successors to light gun shooters. Many players are so fully immersed in the latter already that they are instinctively ducking and evading enemy fire with their bodies, even though it has no actual effect on these games. In VR however, it does and the way you are aiming and firing is identical, albeit not limited by a static screen.
That does sound like a lot of fun. VR has been completely off my radar, but I can definitely see your point about it being a successor. Hadn't even thought of it. What VR system do you use?
I’ve still got a Samsung Odyssey+, which is a WMR headset, a standard from Microsoft that they have unfortunately sunseted (update 24H2 drops support), which is why I can’t recommend it. I’m sticking with 23H2, which should give me until November of next year to find an alternative. It’s a shame, really, because these headsets are cheap, easy to use, work with most games and all have rather excellent screens. Controllers aren’t the best, but still good enough even for demanding games.
There’s a local barcade that’s good times. You get to drink local craft brews and play arcade games and pinball. They had Time Crisis 2 last time I was there.
As far as light gun shooters, your best bet is probably VR. I can’t personally make any recommendations though, as I don’t have a headset.
Thanks for mentioning this! I found out about this lightgun after posting. It gets some decent reviews, though there are some threads discussing how the setup can be onerous. I also saw some games on Steam listed as "sinden lightgun ready." I'm going to research it a little more but tempted to get it.
I only did a cursory check on Steam, but it indeed still looks like a thing, with some games saying they are "sinden lightgun ready" (which seems to be the main lightgun out on the market currently)
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