With increasing frequency video games are coming to be accepted as being more than simply

mindless entertainment or toys for children. Many of us have known for years that this notion of
games being escapist and devoid of substance is ludicrous, but it is only recently that the public
eye has started to truly change the way it views games. This trend got me thinking about a
problem faced by games as an artistic medium and the ways in which it hinders the positive
impact that games could have as essential pieces of our culture.
There is an enormous wealth of knowledge in classic literature. Great authors throughout
the centuries have had their work immortalized in leather and pulp, to be read and interpreted for
years to come. These timeless works are an invaluable part of our culture and shared history.
They can teach us about our past and about the victories and failings of our ancestors. A book
can serve as a window into another time; a shard of the writer’s soul, forever frozen, as a
photograph of the world in which it was made. All of this could be said equally for games, and
yet it is rare for a game of even the highest caliber to see much more than a nostalgic replay once
a scant few years has passed since its release. Often these games are simply left behind, forgotten
or mentioned only occasionally. It is high time we acknowledged the cultural relevance of these
works, and revisit and revere them the way we would the works Shakespeare or Dickens.
It is truly tragic that so few people today have experienced the masterworks of yesteryear.
I rarely come across people my age (children of the late 80s and early 90s) who have played or
even heard of many of the greatest games from before our time; games like Earthbound, Grim
Fandango, and MULE are all fantastic experiences, vaults of knowledge and history waiting to
be emptied by anyone with the desire to simply play them. Yet for the most part these games lay
inert, dusty and forgotten even by those who embraced them in their time.
I suppose this unfortunate reality has some basis in logical sense. The pace at which this
industry produces new material is unprecedented, and the rate at which the style and substance of
these works change is mind boggling. It’s nearly impossible to play every game that comes out
in a year, let alone find time to play games from decades past, which at a glance may seem far
less worth your time than newest and best endeavors on offer at present.
We need to foster change in the way people approach games. We need to encourage them
to set aside time in their schedule to take a break from the current stream of blockbuster titles and
play a game from years ago, much as one would take time to read The Sun Also Rises or The
Odyssey or even The Lord of the Rings. I believe the first step will be to shift from thinking
about games as a “fire and forget” medium of entertainment, and realize their potential to be
enduring pieces of our culture. I don’t know anyone who reads books or watches movies with the
mindset that they have to watch every good movie as soon as it is released or shortly thereafter.
It’s is a sense that since you’ll never be able to read every book worth reading or see every film
worth watching, there’s no rush; people don’t try to keep up on every book series they might
enjoy every month of every year, so they don’t feel like they’re missing out when they read
books they missed in years past or take time to read truly ancient texts for both recreation and
enrichment.
Conversely, with video games there is a much stronger collective desire to stay “caught
up” with every new title that looks interesting, leaving almost no time to steadily work through a
back catalog and so many worthy titles get lost in the shuffle and completely forgotten. Part of
this difference I think, is likely due to the fact that there are far more books in the world than
games and so the way we approach our consumption of them is necessarily different. This is
becoming less and less true each year however, and we have reached a point where the library of
existing games is comparable to that of books or films in its impenetrableness, and I feel that on
some level most people have begun to realize this. However it has not changed the
fundamentally different way in which most view the medium.
Another reason for this I believe is simply a matter of availability. With books you can
walk into almost any public library and find a large portion of critically acclaimed works of
classic and contemporary literature, and it’s relatively simple to find most old movies and TV
shows in some form on Amazon or Ebay. Games however face a unique challenge in this regard,
and that is the challenge of compatibility. With the rate that hardware and operating systems
change and evolve, the preservation of old games becomes very difficult such that even people
who actively seek many old games have trouble finding them. Services like Steam and Good old
Games have stemmed this loss somewhat, but it is still a very relevant issue.
In the end I don’t think there is any clear solution to this problem. There are certainly
countless people who would question why I even consider it a problem, and would argue, “It’s
not hurting anything, why worry about it”. The fact remains that it is “hurting things”. It is a
disastrous trend that is akin to a shelf in the Library of Alexandria being turned to cinders with
the closing of each year, and the wealth of remaining works being overlooked, forgotten, or
worse, dismissed. The best thing I can recommend you do is to make time in your gaming
schedule during the release gaps of spring or mid-summer, or whenever you have a break
between new game to take a look to the past. Pick up a copy of an old revered title or fire up an
emulator and pay homage the masterworks and landmarks of our young medium. I can guarantee
you won’t regret it.