Walkthrough and let's play: evaluating preservation methods for digital games

Abstract

Heritage organizations have lately become increasingly interested in preserving digital games. Initial probing into the field of digital game preservation has shown that it faces some unique problems. Different technological preservation methods that aim to keep digital games playable in the future have been proposed, but they can only preserve the game in a playable form for future generations, not convey the ways people play games now. In order to understand the ways games are played, we need to look into ways of preserving the playing context. In this paper, I discuss two preservation candidates born within the digital game community, walkthrough texts and Let's Play videos, and evaluate their suitability for long term preservation.