ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage

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JOCCH publishes papers of significant and lasting value in all areas relating to the use of ICT in support of Cultural Heritage, seeking to combine the best of computing science with real attention to any aspect of the cultural heritage sector.

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ever, this does not mean the games industry can be expected to bear the cost of games preservation. The success of the industry in securing fiscal concessions at a time of widespread austerity is evidence of the competitive imperatives in this industry, and bears testament to the effectiveness of their lobbyists. The barriers to entry in the games development domain are now so low, and the infrastruc-tural requirements so minimal, that it is relatively simple for studios to set up for business anywhere in the world, or to relocate from one country to another in a way that is impossible for traditional “smokestack” industries. The industry is in the middle of a transition from selling relatively expensive games on shiny discs in shrink-wrapped packaging to providing inexpensively produced (and priced) content for download from the cloud. Not only is this shortening supply chains and undermining the business models of traditional companies, but it is leading to the emergence of new games studios that are smaller, leaner, and more dynamic than anything that has gone before. It also means that any government intending to pass onto the games industry the costs associated with preservation will not be in a strong position to impose its will.

There are a number of steps that
can be taken on an international level
that would do much to improve the
prospects of ensuring games preserva-
tion in the public interest takes place
without imposing undue burdens on
government or the industry. The final
report of the Blue Ribbon Task Force
on Sustainable Digital Preservation
sets out four key recommendations:
˲Leading cultural organizations
should convene expert communities to
address the selection and preservation
needs of commercially owned cultural
content and digital orphans.

˲Regulatory authorities should bring current requirements for mandatory copyright deposit into harmony with the demands of digital preservation and access.

˲ Regulatory authorities should provide financial and other incentives to preserve privately held cultural content in the public interest.

˲Leading stewardship organiza-

it is not legally safe
to assume every
game enjoys
the same protection.
this makes it
effectively impossible
to carry out legal
due diligence on
the scale required.

tions should model and test mechanisms to ensure flexible long-term public-private partnerships that foster cooperative preservation of privately held materials in the public interest.

To this final recommendation, I would add the suggestion that the industry should be encouraged to make available as much information as possible on the hardware and software dependencies of their products. This is neither commercially sensitive nor difficult to provide at the time when software is released. It is, however, absolutely vital in ensuring long-term access to preserved digital material, and becomes increasingly difficult to uncover over time. It would be possible to seamlessly incorporate harvesting this information along with the details the industry already provides to age rating agencies such as PEGI.

Announcing the games and animation industry tax breaks, U.K. Finance minister George Osbourne told Parliament it was his intention to keep Wallace & Gromit exactly where they are. With the proper level of cooperation between the industry and government it should be possible to save Wallace & Gromit, Laura Croft (and the rest) for future generations.

 

David Anderson ( [e-mail]) is the Ci TECH Research Centre director at the School of Creative Technologies, University of Portsmouth, U. K.