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Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

embracergamesarchive.com

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Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#61

Post by voidspark »

Zardoz89 wrote: post #51
mzajc wrote: post #23

From their FAQ > Can I visit the archive? > The archive is for everyone, and we welcome all inquiries. However, we prioritize requests that support gaming culture, gaming history, and the games industry. /../ While the archive is not open to the public, we hope /../ The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes. I'd much rather support initiatives…

Here is an actual video game archive worth donating to https://library.gamehistory.org

Archive, library, and museum are three different things.

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#62

Post by MyPasswordSucks »

> We aim to assist and grant access to people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions. While the archive is not open to the public, we hope our website and social media channels will offer insight into the work being done by our team. [1]

Then maybe people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions can provide those needed contributions. Very poor form to be coming to the public, hat in hand, asking them to help finance your private vidya collection.

1: https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#63

Post by jasonlotito »

mzajc wrote: post #23

From their FAQ > Can I visit the archive? > The archive is for everyone, and we welcome all inquiries. However, we prioritize requests that support gaming culture, gaming history, and the games industry. /../ While the archive is not open to the public, we hope /../ The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes. I'd much rather support initiatives…

[flagged]

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#64

Post by biglyburrito »

bitwize wrote: post #35
shakna wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embracer started out as Nordic Games. They ran around buying and gutting every IP they could get their hands on. Nordic became THQ Nordic, whilst continuing to eat everyone around them, whilst also nearly going bankrupt multiple times, before eventually ditching the name because investors didn't like people noticing just who they were. They are the group that ate Dark Horse, CoffeeStain, Gearbox, Square Enix, Saber I…

Square Enix is still independent. They've got their fingers in so many pies, they're almost in the "too big to fail" category. The SE-Embracer connection is that SE spun off Crystal Dynamics and its properties like Tomb Raider, selling them to Embracer Group.

lol they absolutely are NOT too big to fail

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#65

Post by kouteiheika »

Jolter wrote: post #45
devwastaken wrote: post #27

this will be demolished before 5 years time. physical archives dont work, theyre inefficient and costly. people get bored. the best archive is torrent seeding.

Physical archives have literally worked for thousands of years. You do have a point in that commercial ventures like Embracer don’t tend to last for very long. Presumably the collection would not be auctioned off piecemeal if the company goes under, but rather sold as a unit to some other entity.

No, the OP is right, although perhaps for the wrong reasons.

In a 100 (or a few hundred) years none of the games from that physical archive will be playable, as both the physical media and the physical consoles needed to play those games will become unusable. Physical archives work only as long as the physical medium itself lasts.

The only way to actually preserve games is to digitize them. Period. Collecting physical media and consoles is a fun hobby, but in the long term it's completely useless if the goal is preservation. If you want to preserve games you should be dumping whatever undumped games still exist, contribute to databases like no-intro.org, and download and seed/share what has already been dumped. This is what will help preserve those games, not a physical collection that will turn into an unusable paperweight sooner or later.

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#66

Post by Aeolun »

Y_Y wrote: post #4
biglyburrito wrote: post #2

Sorry, but I don't trust Embracer with being a good steward of games in any capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group#History

Is there something specific in that corporate saga you're referring to? I'm not inclined to trust corporate do-gooding either, but it would be nice to have some detail.

The whole history of that company is just a big list of flags. It’s depressing how many good studios are owned by these people.

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#67

Post by voidspark »

SteveMoody73 wrote: post #22
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other archives or museums are there for video games that are accepting donations of physical game media? There are probably a lot of HN readers with old games in the attic that are bound for the landfill once they get around to it.

Not a museum or archive as such but in the UK there is this https://www.rmcretro.com/ Has a large collection of old systems and games, magazines and anything else they can get hold of. It's also open to visitors.

> Not a museum

That is two museums. It's in the title: "Hands-On Vintage Technology Museums" and mentioned all over the front page.

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#69

Post by duskwuff »

EA-3167 wrote: post #55
johnnyjeans wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. I have very little respect for artists with sentimentality over such trivial bullshit. Speaking as someone who makes games. The jewel case doesn't matter. It detracts from the thing-itself, like a showroom car that travels everywhere in a hermetically sealed container. That's not a car anymore, it's waste. Just because it gets driven 5 miles a year doesn't change shit. If someones spending money to preserve my…

The issue here is that a picture of a book is not a book, a copy of a game is the same game. Barring people with excellent and well-adjusted monitors looking at uncompressed images, the pics we see are (potentially excellent, but still) approximations of the original. With software the notion of an original is meaningless though.

> The issue here is that a picture of a book is not a book, a copy of a game is the same game.

That... depends. A lot of older games shipped with physical artifacts which were an important part of the game: manuals, code wheels, custom controllers, "feelies" in Infocom games, etc. You can't easily make a copy of those. (And preserving them isn't just a matter of throwing a copy on a hard disk.)

Re: Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions

#70

Post by ForOldHack »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #21
failrate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.themade.org/

> " To donate items to the MADE, bring your donation to the front desk during open hours. " Quite a long trip for many. That seems to signify that they're not a large enough organization to be an archive.

So sorry, I am just a block away right now. I should go and take a photo. It's a great place. They have a Vetrix vector game computer, but they said it was ... Delicate... And I said and probably irreplaceable.
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