Conserving Portal

Defining and Documenting the Object

Résumé

As the History of Games International Conference has demonstrated, the past decade has seen an exponential rise in video game scholarship and preservation as video games edge their way into cultural institutions, most notably libraries, university archives, and museum collections. Commercially released video games were never intended to be collected for their historical significance, but their cultural impact is undeniable. The saturation of video games in contemporary culture is more evidence of their importance and validates their place in cultural institutions, including art museums. These institutions beginning to collect or acquire complex works, such as video games, are faced with new challenges from acquisition to exhibition to conservation. Conservation is particularly challenging because the choices a conservator or preservationist makes now will determine how, or even if, a video game is accessible to a future audience.