Why doesn't the game industry care more for its heritage?

[Melf]

Yes, this is specifically about emulation, but hopefully without all the legal/moral mumbo jumbo.

What I'm referring to is the fact that the industry doesn't really seem to care about its history. All the compilations we've seen lately have been mostly "me too" efforts for a quick buck, as most of them were either missing key titles or very skimpy on the extras. No one really seems to want to preserve what's happened so far, and this is a terrible decision IMO.

Imagine if a movie was released in select theaters only, and then maybe not even brought home to DVD. Once it left the theaters, it was gone forever (like many arcade titles). And if it did get a DVD release, it might be very limited and then disappear once printing stopped. Think of all the great movies that would be lost to time.

This is essentially what's happening in the gaming industry. One need only fire up MAME to see all the incredible - and still highly playable - games that never came home and were never released in a complilation. Why, just last night I was playing through Banpresto's Gundhara, which is an awesome run-'n-gun that I never even knew existed.

I guess my point is that emulation has such a strong historical value to today's gamers that the industry should really get a clue and support it. If they're not going to release their entire back catalogues (Data East, where are you?), then they should make the games available on their websites or something. They shouldn't just let so many great games disappear forever.

Opinions?

[Demonic Weasel]

That pretty much sums it up. However supporting emulation would mean that they'd have to switch their money making efforts to that field, and they'd actually have to do work to get the money.

[David J.]

Car companies do this with cars all of the time...

[Melf]

True, but a car has all kinds of parts that wear out and need to be replaced. Games are much lower maintenance. I just wish the industry gave more respect to where it came from. Classic games are more than just a way to make a quick buck.

[Kikoskia]

Maybe so, but you're looking at it through the eyes of a gamer, not a game company.

When has a game company ever really sat down and said 'I know, let's release something that earns us no money!' willingly? It's commercially shooting yourself in the foot. If it doesn't earn them money, nine times out of ten they don't even consider it an option.

[Joe Redifer]

Car companies do this with cars all of the time...
There are car emulators now? Damn I bet those are huge downloads.

I like emulation except it just doesn't seem the same as playing the real thing. I have yet to see (or hear) an EXACT Genesis emulator. MAME is freakin' awesome but with every new release they break tons of old games. So you have to keep dozens of copies of MAME on your system and try to remember which games work with which versions of MAME. Downloading newer MAME ROMS only rarely helps.

[David J.]

Well no. How often do you see a car company look at it's past products without pissing off all of it's fans or even adknowledging or have history on some of their past products. Or kit cars for that matter.

Bad point I know, but I picked up a motor trend for the train ride today and oi vey.

Anyway... Mame isn't meant for games, it's meant to document arcade hardware. Somethings aren't documented well, so they might be buggy, or fixing something might break something else.

[Melf]

I know it isn't cost-efficient, but it's still important. As time goes by, the younger generation of gamers are more and more indifferent to older titles. Emulation has helped to reverse this, but the fact that it has no real official backing hurts the effort. I can imagine asking someone in 10 years about Congo Bongo or Bump-'n-Jump. :(

[j_factor]

When has a game company ever really sat down and said 'I know, let's release something that earns us no money!' willingly?

Sega does this all the time.

[Kikoskia]

So is it any suprise that they are no longer a hardware company? :p

[16bitter]

This may be tangential, but it reminds of the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act. Basically, the rights can be held by the creative company for so long now that about any work you could name -- considering the nature of corporate America -- is legally, at the least, in danger of becoming extinct with the power given to the originating owners/company over such a long period of time.

Products, therefore, that used to become a part of the public domain much more quickly now are technically out of it for literally a century under this act, possibly more under basis of renewal. It favors business, but it does not favor the rememberance/posterity/vitality of the given work.

Video games fall into the same area, with emulation condemned even though we are often given no other alternative considering the limited number of so many old -- or even, at times, new -- games.

It is a sad joke.

Ironically, we're talking about the loss of our collective past as far as this specific interest in a format that is arguably even worse in this matter -- the internet. The loss of information if things stay like this will be devestating as far as this sepcific medium. Few care. At least right now.

[Psy]

This may be tangential, but it reminds of the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act. Basically, the rights can be held by the creative company for so long now that about any work you could name -- considering the nature of corporate America -- is legally, at the least, in danger of becoming extinct with the power given to the originating owners/company over such a long period of time.

Products, therefore, that used to become a part of the public domain much more quickly now are technically out of it for literally a century under this act, possibly more under basis of renewal. It favors business, but it does not favor the rememberance/posterity/vitality of the given work.

Video games fall into the same area, with emulation condemned even though we are often given no other alternative considering the limited number of so many old -- or even, at times, new -- games.

It is a sad joke.

Right, think in 2080 when some of these videogames copyrights would expire, if images of these games were not already archived on the internet think how hard it would be for historians to find a)workering systems b)working legal copies of the game.

[extrarice]

This may be tangential, but it reminds of the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act. Basically, the rights can be held by the creative company for so long now that about any work you could name -- considering the nature of corporate America -- is legally, at the least, in danger of becoming extinct with the power given to the originating owners/company over such a long period of time.

Products, therefore, that used to become a part of the public domain much more quickly now are technically out of it for literally a century under this act, possibly more under basis of renewal. It favors business, but it does not favor the rememberance/posterity/vitality of the given work.

Video games fall into the same area, with emulation condemned even though we are often given no other alternative considering the limited number of so many old -- or even, at times, new -- games.

It is a sad joke.

Ironically, we're talking about the loss of our collective past as far as this specific interest in a format that is arguably even worse in this matter -- the internet. The loss of information if things stay like this will be devestating as far as this sepcific medium. Few care. At least right now.
A good read on the history and original purpose of copyrights (and what is wrong with the system now) is Free Culture (http://www.free-culture.cc/) by Lawrence Lessig. (you can download a free copy of the book off the website). It's horrifying to think of the current length of copyright, really. This past century we've seen incredible advancements in the technology for the recording and archiving of history: motion pictures, television, records, compressed waveform audio (MP3s, ogg-vorbis), amazing storage sizes of optical and magnetic media, and of course the Internet - distributed knowledge. But unless the copyright system changes, each generation risks forgetting about the generation that came before, since it's very difficult, in a legal standpoint, to archive and preserve the culture of this age.

As for the original topic, game companies ignoring their heritage, I think we're at the precipice of a resurgence of heritige. A return to the classics. Look at Nintendo (yes, I said the N word on a SEGA forum) and their upcoming Revolution. Backwards compatible with every Nintendo home console made. A good chunk of the back catalog will be available for download onto the Rev. Sega has expressed interest in publishing some of their old games for it.

Customers are getting tired of the ZOMGWOWGRAPHIX rat-race that defined the current generation of hardware (PS2, Xbox, NGC). Gamers are looking more for enjoyment and quality of play now. Older gamers are reminiscing about their youth and the consoles they left behind in their quest for "bigger, badder, better" (apologies to SNK/Playmore). "NFL Gameday (insert year here) just isn't as fun as Tecmo Bowl was..." and such.

The gaming market is either going to bottom out, taking a lot of great companies with it, or the companies are going to realise that pretty graphics and wow-factor hype just isn't going to cut it anymore. Nintendo has realized this and instead of just doing more of the same, they are trying something new to recapture the imagination and enjoyment that should be present in all videogames. The DS introduced a new way to play, with the touch screen. The Revlolution's motion-sensor "wand" is 100% pure potential.

Sheesh, I kinda wandered there... :sweat:

[Nazza]

On the subject of emulation, while a lot of the games are a lot better on console I've played a few games that I've found more enjoyable on an emulator (e.g. Alien Storm). It's interesting to note that game companies don't go after the people who download the games and run them themselves as they know there's no way they'd make money from suing low-income people, whereas the music industry is doing exactly the opposite and going after these people who can't possibly pay off $2 million fees.