Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you? You know? I thought today
Speaker 1: I would talk about the issue of video game preservation.
Speaker 1: I was inspired to do this because of something that
Speaker 1: recently happened with Ubisoft, a game company that's well to
Speaker 1: put lightly, It's had a pretty darn controversial few years.
Speaker 1: But Ubisoft makes lots of different game titles, and one
Speaker 1: particularly popular franchise from them is the Assassin's Creed series. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the entries in this long running franchise came
Speaker 1: out way back in two thousand twelve, and it was
Speaker 1: called Assassin's Creed three Liberation, and it's notable for a
Speaker 1: few reasons. One was that the player controls the character
Speaker 1: named Aveline de grand Pre, who happens to be the
Speaker 1: first female assassin in the series that the player could control.
Speaker 1: Before that, they were all male protagonists. Later on, would
Speaker 1: be Soft released a remastered version of the game titled
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Liberation h D. Anyway, Steam, which is the
Speaker 1: video game store, the digital video game store so it's
Speaker 1: an online store. It's run by Valve, which used to
Speaker 1: primarily be known as a video game developer now is
Speaker 1: mostly known as the company that runs Steam. Anyway, Steam
Speaker 1: posted a message on July eleven, two thousand twenty two
Speaker 1: that's said, at the request of the publisher, Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: Liberation h D is no longer available for sale on Steam,
Speaker 1: which is fair enough. These things happen. Companies will allow
Speaker 1: something to technically kind of go out of print, although
Speaker 1: in this case that's kind of a misnomer because we're
Speaker 1: talking about digital sales. But it would be Soft decided
Speaker 1: to stop selling copies of this game now it would
Speaker 1: be Soft had also previously announced that it would be
Speaker 1: ending multiplayer functionality for several of its games, including Assassin's Creed.
Speaker 1: Now that could be disappointing to hardcore fans, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, you can kind of understand why it's happening,
Speaker 1: because supporting multiplayer means that a company has to run
Speaker 1: servers that host those multiplayer sessions, which also means maintaining
Speaker 1: those servers and responding if something goes wrong with them.
Speaker 1: So for older games, the player base that's still accessing
Speaker 1: multiplayer might be so small that it's difficult to justify
Speaker 1: the ongoing expense of keeping those servers online, particularly if
Speaker 1: it's a game that doesn't have a subscription model to it.
Speaker 1: Right Like, if it's a game where multiplayer was part
Speaker 1: of the features of the game that you got with
Speaker 1: the purchase of the full game, and it's not an
Speaker 1: ongoing expense, then the company is footing the bill for
Speaker 1: providing that service even after people are no longer really
Speaker 1: buying the game. Um, it's a bummer, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of understandable from the perspective of the business. However,
Speaker 1: these days, a lot of games require at least some
Speaker 1: sort of online component, typically as part of digital Rights
Speaker 1: Management or DRM, which is terrible, but here's how it goes.
Speaker 1: The basic idea is that the game you're running on
Speaker 1: your local device, like on your computer or whatever, checks
Speaker 1: in with a home base server that belongs to the
Speaker 1: company in order to verify that the copy of the
Speaker 1: game that you are playing is legitimate. And at that
Speaker 1: point the home base server says, yeah, go ahead, let
Speaker 1: let them play the game. Or if the game isn't legit,
Speaker 1: or if the connection can't be made for some reason,
Speaker 1: the server tells your local machine, hey, don't let us
Speaker 1: jerk face play that game. They probably stole it. So
Speaker 1: for players who just want a single player experience, right like,
Speaker 1: it's a game that's just meant to be played on
Speaker 1: your computer. There's no online component, there's no multiplayer component.
Speaker 1: If those those folks have a poor internet connection or
Speaker 1: no connection to the internet, this kind of DRM is
Speaker 1: a huge hassle because it means there's no real way
Speaker 1: to access the game legitimately. But that's the nature of DRM.
Speaker 1: I've done full episodes about this in the past. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get back over to Ubisoft. So, in its initial
Speaker 1: message that was published on Steam, the implication was that
Speaker 1: the Assassin's Creed game wouldn't just be unavailable to purchase
Speaker 1: from that point forward, but would in fact be rendered
Speaker 1: completely unplayable. That people who had purchased a copy of
Speaker 1: this game would be unable to access their game at all,
Speaker 1: even if they were just trying to play local single
Speaker 1: player mode, nor would they be able to run any
Speaker 1: of the downloadable content or DLC that they had purchased
Speaker 1: for the game. Steam would issue a follow up s
Speaker 1: eatement that said people who own the game already would
Speaker 1: still be able to play it, they would even be
Speaker 1: able to read download it. So on Steam, you have
Speaker 1: a library of games. These games may or may not
Speaker 1: actually be downloaded to your computer, but it's a record
Speaker 1: of all the games you have purchased throughout your time
Speaker 1: using Steam, and if you want, you can read download
Speaker 1: a game to install it on a new machine. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you're upgrading your computer. You've decided to, you know,
Speaker 1: switch to a brand new new computer system that can
Speaker 1: run the latest games, but you also have a soft
Speaker 1: spot for some older games. Well, you can re download
Speaker 1: them to your new machine. So ubisof said players will
Speaker 1: still be able to do that. They'll still be able
Speaker 1: to access the game that they purchased. However, they will
Speaker 1: not be able to access online content or DLC for
Speaker 1: that game. That would be unavailable anyway. That whole ness
Speaker 1: prompted this episode because with so many games requiring online
Speaker 1: services to function, even if the games themselves are otherwise
Speaker 1: confined to a local device, what happens when the company
Speaker 1: that provides that online service goes out of business, because
Speaker 1: that has happened more than once in the video game world,
Speaker 1: or what happens if a company like Ubisoft decides to
Speaker 1: shift resources away from continuing support of older games that
Speaker 1: have smaller player bases, the thing you purchased suddenly becomes inaccessible.
Speaker 1: Even if the code is fine, and even if you
Speaker 1: have a machine that otherwise could run the game without
Speaker 1: a problem, you still can't access the game. That approach
Speaker 1: means it becomes difficult to preserve such games, and in
Speaker 1: some cases it could even be illegal for you to
Speaker 1: try and do it. In other cases, it might not
Speaker 1: be illegal, but it might be practically impossible, and so
Speaker 1: these games are lost in time like tears in Rain.
Speaker 1: Let me know if you've got that reference. Now, some
Speaker 1: of y'all might be saying, I didn't even know video
Speaker 1: game preservation was a thing, or maybe a few of
Speaker 1: you could be saying, why is it important to even
Speaker 1: preserve video games in the first place. And it's totally
Speaker 1: fair that not everyone is into video games. That's cool, right.
Speaker 1: I'm not into every kind of art there is. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean the arts bad. I'm just not into it that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of folks who are really into
Speaker 1: video games, including those who consider video games to be
Speaker 1: a type of art. I happen to be one of
Speaker 1: those people. I don't necessarily think video games, at least
Speaker 1: not most of them, typically qualify as high art. But
Speaker 1: I do think there's a lot of artistic expression that
Speaker 1: goes into creating video games. Whether it's from character design
Speaker 1: or level design, or even gameplay elements, or the textures
Speaker 1: that you use to enhance visuals or the story that
Speaker 1: plays out over the course of a game. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of avenues for artistic expression. Some of them
Speaker 1: you might not classically think of as artistic, like gameplay elements.
Speaker 1: You might think, oh, you know, pressing a to jump,
Speaker 1: that's nothing. But you look at some of these games
Speaker 1: and some of the elegant approaches to gameplay elements in them,
Speaker 1: you start to think there is an art to this,
Speaker 1: and people who are particularly artistic can create really transformational
Speaker 1: experiences through that. So even if you strip all the
Speaker 1: art away, right if you if you deny that there's
Speaker 1: anything artful about video games, the fact remains that people,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people in many of these cases,
Speaker 1: I mean some of these games have hundreds of folks
Speaker 1: who worked on these Well, those people worked really hard
Speaker 1: to make that game happen. They labored over getting the
Speaker 1: various components up to snuff, and then they also worked
Speaker 1: really hard to make sure all these different components actually
Speaker 1: work together so that one thing doesn't break something else.
Speaker 1: And let's be fair, video game companies are not always
Speaker 1: successful in doing this. There are plenty of examples of
Speaker 1: broken games out there. Some of them got less broken
Speaker 1: over time thanks to patches and stuff, but we have
Speaker 1: seen no shortage of you know, games that just didn't
Speaker 1: work properly. But I still feel like the work of
Speaker 1: the people who who dedicated their time and their their
Speaker 1: skill and their knowledge to creating these games should be
Speaker 1: acknowledged and it should be preserved. I think two big
Speaker 1: things that prompt people to question the need to preserve
Speaker 1: games are that there's still this perception among some people
Speaker 1: the video games are meant for kids, like video games
Speaker 1: are for babies. They're just silly diversions, and there's really
Speaker 1: no reason to put any effort into preserving those things.
Speaker 1: There's another perception that undermines the concept of preserving video games,
Speaker 1: and that's that they are so tightly connected to commerce.
Speaker 1: They are a product, you know, like you would go
Speaker 1: out and buy a hammer, but you wouldn't necessarily want
Speaker 1: to preserve the hammer for posterity. And you know, not
Speaker 1: all games are made specifically to be sold, but the
Speaker 1: vast majority of them are, so they aren't really considered
Speaker 1: art by some folks. However, I would argue that most
Speaker 1: art is actually meant to be sold. It's not just
Speaker 1: meant to hang on a wall, and the artist makes
Speaker 1: no money from it. I mean, if art was never sold,
Speaker 1: artists wouldn't make a living. Um, you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: patronage or it's selling it through an exhibition or whatever.
Speaker 1: Art and commerce always have a relationship with each other.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you'd run out of artists because they all starve
Speaker 1: to death. And of course there are countless examples in
Speaker 1: say the fashion world, where people spend truckloads of cash
Speaker 1: on designer goods and they consider these art. Like the
Speaker 1: fashion world, that is art art that has been made
Speaker 1: to be worn in some way. But even while people
Speaker 1: are spending those truckloads of cash on the latest fashions,
Speaker 1: they do so knowing that the stuff they are buying
Speaker 1: is going to be out of fashion in six months
Speaker 1: to a year, Like the thing that is avant garde
Speaker 1: and desired today is going to be almost dismissed in
Speaker 1: a year's time, which that is the stuff that wrinkles
Speaker 1: my brain. Video games. I get fashion. I mean, you
Speaker 1: just have to take one look at me and you
Speaker 1: would know he doesn't get fashion. That's fair. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that fashion is silly or frivolous. I just
Speaker 1: don't get it. But let's talk about video game preservation.
Speaker 1: So one of the methods I have talked about in
Speaker 1: fairly recent episodes of tech stuff is the main platform
Speaker 1: and MAME is m a m E and it stands
Speaker 1: for multiple Arcade Machine emulator. Name's purpose is to emulate
Speaker 1: or you know, simulate if you like, the circuitry and
Speaker 1: program ng of various game platforms. Now, the games themselves
Speaker 1: come in the form of rams, r o ms or
Speaker 1: read only memory. There there are people who have copied
Speaker 1: the code off of classic video games to preserve those ROMs.
Speaker 1: And originally these ROMs were programmed directly onto microchips. So
Speaker 1: if you were to open up a classic arcade game,
Speaker 1: you would see a whole bunch of circuit boards with
Speaker 1: chips on them, and this is the game, like, the
Speaker 1: game is physically coded onto the circuit boards, and those
Speaker 1: microchips include the ROMs the read only memory that is
Speaker 1: the game itself. So in order to create a copy
Speaker 1: of that, you have to strip the code off of
Speaker 1: the ROMs, and that's not always easy. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: pretty complicated. And then you also have to create software
Speaker 1: that imitates the operation of that actual circuit so that
Speaker 1: the ROMs will run properly, and that also is a
Speaker 1: non trivial thing. So the arcade machines and then later
Speaker 1: on cartridge based consoles and also computers would have games
Speaker 1: that were programmed in physical circuitry. UH. Cartridges in particular, right, like,
Speaker 1: that's there's a circuit board in a cartridge and that's
Speaker 1: what the game has programmed on. Then later on you
Speaker 1: would have things like images that would be put on
Speaker 1: optical discs. We'll get to that too. So the main
Speaker 1: platform mimics the circuitry, allowing the copied code from whatever
Speaker 1: the original ROM was to play on a computer. UH
Speaker 1: doesn't always play perfectly well. Sometimes the emulator is just
Speaker 1: an approximation of how the game would work. In other cases,
Speaker 1: the approximation is incredibly accurate, to the point where it
Speaker 1: feels like you're playing the original arcade machine. It depends
Speaker 1: heavily on the level of emulation for that particular game,
Speaker 1: as well as the specs on the machine you're running
Speaker 1: Maime on the first place. We'll come back and talk
Speaker 1: more about Maime and emulation and the reasons why this
Speaker 1: is important for preservation after we take this quick break. So,
Speaker 1: the original purpose of MAINE was to serve as a
Speaker 1: way to preserve games. Now, obviously a lot of people
Speaker 1: have used MAIN software to create like a home arcade
Speaker 1: machine that's capable of running hundreds or thousands of different games.
Speaker 1: Like you can even go online and find companies that
Speaker 1: offer these things where they will have a computer, often
Speaker 1: powered by a Raspberry Pie, which is a very basic
Speaker 1: computer that's running main emulation software and has a like
Speaker 1: a smart card just loaded with gigabytes of ROMs on it.
Speaker 1: But that was not the original intent of creating main
Speaker 1: Like what the idea wasn't hey, let's create a way
Speaker 1: for people to get access to these hundreds of arcade
Speaker 1: machines in the comfort of their own home. It was
Speaker 1: the idea that we need something that can preserve these
Speaker 1: games because the hardware that the games are built upon
Speaker 1: will degrade over time and eventually the last remaining cabinet
Speaker 1: of any given game will stop working, and at that
Speaker 1: point the game is lost. So this is a way
Speaker 1: of preventing that loss from happening. It just so happens
Speaker 1: that It also means that you could create a full
Speaker 1: Arcade in one machine by downloading lots of ROMs. However,
Speaker 1: you should know downloading ROMs can be illegal. It's technically
Speaker 1: copyright violation because you're downloading a copyrighted work without legitimately
Speaker 1: purchasing that work. Doesn't mean that doesn't happen everywhere. It does,
Speaker 1: but it's still illegal. Now, never mind that in some cases,
Speaker 1: at least, there's no way for you to buy a
Speaker 1: legal copy of the game, or if the then may
Speaker 1: be that the only legal way to buy the game
Speaker 1: is to find someone selling it on a market like eBay,
Speaker 1: and it might be for an incredibly expensive price that
Speaker 1: that might be the only and there's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: those will work. By the way, like you might go
Speaker 1: out and spend a couple of thousand dollars buying a
Speaker 1: Classic Arcade cabinet, find out that you need to do
Speaker 1: a lot of maintenance on it in order to make
Speaker 1: it work properly. The circuitry if it's treated well will
Speaker 1: typically hold up for a very long time, but things
Speaker 1: like the actual buttons and controls they wear out. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just wear and tear. So yeah, it could get
Speaker 1: to a point where there's just there's very few avenues
Speaker 1: for you to make a legitimate purchase of a game. Uh.
Speaker 1: The way MAME is supposed to be used is that
Speaker 1: someone who has a legal right to a roan, like
Speaker 1: they own a game, or maybe they even own the
Speaker 1: I P for the game, Well, they can download the
Speaker 1: RAM for their own use and they can run the
Speaker 1: main software on a computer. They can activate that RAM,
Speaker 1: and it's totally legal. So for example, let's say that
Speaker 1: you went out and purchased an arcade machine of a
Speaker 1: classic game like Elevator Action, which I absolutely and ironically
Speaker 1: love and no I cannot justify it, but I love
Speaker 1: that game. Well, let's say you bought a cabinet of that.
Speaker 1: You went out and you you purchased a copy of it.
Speaker 1: You could then legally download a RAM of Elevator Action
Speaker 1: and that could serve either as a backup or as
Speaker 1: a replacement for the RAM on the arcade machine itself
Speaker 1: if it had stopped working. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: making a backup of a recording for your own personal use.
Speaker 1: That's acceptable, that's fair use. But if you didn't already
Speaker 1: own a copy of Elevator Action, then downloading the ROM
Speaker 1: would essentially be piracy. In fact, not essentially it is piracy.
Speaker 1: As for Mame itself, Mame is totally legal to download.
Speaker 1: Mame doesn't have any games on it natively, It's just
Speaker 1: a program that emulates different kinds of hardware. Name is
Speaker 1: kind of like a console in a way. It's the
Speaker 1: thing that lets you play the games, but it is
Speaker 1: not the games themselves. So theoretically you should not be
Speaker 1: downloading ROMs for games that you don't already own. However,
Speaker 1: a lot of games are otherwise unavailable, like the companies
Speaker 1: that made some of those games have long since vanished,
Speaker 1: so there's nowhere for you to go to to buy them.
Speaker 1: Or sometimes another company has come around and scooped up
Speaker 1: the old I P from someone who has gone out
Speaker 1: of business. Sometimes that can be hard to track down,
Speaker 1: Like you might think, oh, there's this great game I
Speaker 1: loved when I was a kid. The company that made
Speaker 1: it went out of business. I have no idea who
Speaker 1: owns that intellectual property. Because chances are someone bought it
Speaker 1: when uh the old but he went out of business.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of cases we're finding a
Speaker 1: legitimate way to purchase the game you want just doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to exist, and that is frustrating. That being said,
Speaker 1: there are some game creators who have granted permission for
Speaker 1: folks to download ROMs of their games. So these are
Speaker 1: creators who have the right to do that right. They
Speaker 1: are the folks who actually own the intellectual property in
Speaker 1: the first place, so they have the capacity the authority
Speaker 1: to grant permission to people so that they can download
Speaker 1: the ROMs. And the main website does link to ROMs
Speaker 1: that meet that qualification. However, you're not going to find
Speaker 1: any real big names in that list. In fact, you
Speaker 1: may not recognize a single title. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of dozen titles that fall into this category. I actually
Speaker 1: looked them over and I didn't recognize any of them.
Speaker 1: None of them were titles that I was familiar with.
Speaker 1: So to get the stuff that you you know and love,
Speaker 1: you would have to go elsewhere. Now, I mentioned Arcade Machines,
Speaker 1: but that is not the only hard where that MAIM emulates.
Speaker 1: Since two thousand fifteen, the main platform has integrated a
Speaker 1: separate emulator called MESS m E s S, which stands
Speaker 1: for Multi Emulator super System. So Main's primary purpose was
Speaker 1: to preserve arcade games that otherwise would eventually disappear once
Speaker 1: that last working cabinet gave up the ghost. MESS focuses
Speaker 1: more on consoles and computer systems, most of which are
Speaker 1: well out of production, and MESS supports nearly one thousand
Speaker 1: systems in total. Not all of them are fully functional, however,
Speaker 1: so while you could count all the ones that are
Speaker 1: included in the emulator and you would get up to
Speaker 1: more than nine hundred, you'd have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: some of those are only partially functional. They are really
Speaker 1: big names on that list, by the way, including the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System or any s. The Super Nintendo Nintendo
Speaker 1: sixty four is on their Sega Genesis, also known as
Speaker 1: the Mega Drive is there. The Sake of Dreamcast is
Speaker 1: on their older consoles are on there too. The AT
Speaker 1: twenty hundred and Colico Vision and in Television are all
Speaker 1: on there, and obviously lots more game consoles as well
Speaker 1: as for computers you name it. I mean there's everything
Speaker 1: from Texas instruments to Apple to computer systems, to Commodore computers,
Speaker 1: to Amiga and more. Now, these are all devices that
Speaker 1: have long since been out of production, which means you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to buy a new one. You
Speaker 1: might be able to find a working used one somewhere,
Speaker 1: but chances are emulation is going to be the only
Speaker 1: way you will experience a lot of the programming that
Speaker 1: was originally made for those devices. Now again, in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, that software is not technically abandoned ware,
Speaker 1: meaning you know, abandoned ware is something where there's no
Speaker 1: legitimate owner of that i P anymore. It has been abandoned.
Speaker 1: It is just existing on its own with no owner
Speaker 1: above it. Someone somewhere owns the i P for most
Speaker 1: of the software that's out there, So you might think
Speaker 1: of it as abandoned ware because nobody has done anything
Speaker 1: with it for a very long time, But legally speaking,
Speaker 1: it's not because it does still belong to some company
Speaker 1: or person out there. Now. It may be that that
Speaker 1: entity doesn't care if folks download ROMs or images of
Speaker 1: that of that program or game or whatever. Image in
Speaker 1: this case means essentially a copy of the code, not
Speaker 1: an actual picture of something. But you can't just assume that,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly not the case everywhere. I mean, some
Speaker 1: companies like Nintendo, for example, are really well known for
Speaker 1: being super protective of their work, even if there is
Speaker 1: no way to purchase the titles from the company itself anymore.
Speaker 1: Me just look at Nintendo, and you look at how
Speaker 1: for first part games the price never comes down. Like
Speaker 1: you could look at first party games that Nintendo cells
Speaker 1: to this day, and the games themselves might be years old,
Speaker 1: but the price hasn't budged. That really gives you a
Speaker 1: hint at Nintendo's perspective on this kind of thing, which
Speaker 1: I'm not saying is a wrong perspective. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: it indicates that you're not likely to find Nintendo saying, oh, sure,
Speaker 1: go ahead download images of our games. We don't care that.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that ever happening. However, let's put aside
Speaker 1: the ownership question for a moment to get back to
Speaker 1: the central point of this episode. The main and mess
Speaker 1: platforms and others that are like them aim to provide
Speaker 1: a way to preserve the games and other programs as well,
Speaker 1: but we're focusing mostly on games that had been made
Speaker 1: for these old platforms that are no longer in production.
Speaker 1: Without the emulators, we would gradually lose access to that work.
Speaker 1: We would be fully dependent upon companies re issuing work
Speaker 1: which they might not ever do. And computers changed so
Speaker 1: quickly that a lot of stuff that was made for
Speaker 1: older systems becomes impossible to access otherwise without an emulator.
Speaker 1: Right Like, you can get old PC programs and try
Speaker 1: to run them on a modern PC, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: just becomes inoperable. You can't even use it. I remember
Speaker 1: distinctly having a version of the classic Star Wars arcade game,
Speaker 1: the wire frame game that you saw in the arcades
Speaker 1: way back in the eighties, and I had a PC
Speaker 1: version of that game, and I said it aside and
Speaker 1: kind of lost track of it. And then we upgraded
Speaker 1: computers a couple of times. This is when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and I found the game and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to play this. I haven't played in a
Speaker 1: very long time. Loaded it up. Could not play the
Speaker 1: game because now it ran so screamingly fast that just
Speaker 1: touching the joystick would make it uh jerked to the
Speaker 1: left or jerked to the rider up or down or whatever.
Speaker 1: And things were moving so quickly on the screen you
Speaker 1: couldn't see anything, and you blink once and you would
Speaker 1: see game over. So it became impossible to play. I
Speaker 1: needed to have an emulator in order to run that
Speaker 1: code at the proper speed, and I did it, so
Speaker 1: that game just became inaccessible to me. Let me give
Speaker 1: you another less frivolous example. So both of my parents
Speaker 1: right novels, and when I was a kid, my parents
Speaker 1: bought an Apple to E computer. My dad used it
Speaker 1: primarily so that he could write books in short stories
Speaker 1: using the Apple, although he would also play the occasional
Speaker 1: computer game on there too. In fact, I remember him
Speaker 1: being particularly fond of the game Wizardry, which was kind
Speaker 1: of a a D and D style dungeon crawler computer RPG.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Dad used a relatively primitive word processor program
Speaker 1: on the Apple to write out his first few books,
Speaker 1: and he saved these chapter by chapter onto floppy discs.
Speaker 1: It would take more than a dozen floppy disks to
Speaker 1: hold a single novels manuscript. In fact, I once accidentally
Speaker 1: deleted an entire chapter of his work because he had
Speaker 1: left the computer to go do something else and he
Speaker 1: had not saved the file for a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I thought he had just left the computer on, so
Speaker 1: I was thought I was being conscientious and not wanting
Speaker 1: to waste electricity, so I turned the computer off. Whoopsie.
Speaker 1: So if you ever wondered why the novel Moon Dreams
Speaker 1: didn't go the way you thought it was going, that
Speaker 1: was probably because of me. Anyway, flash forward, It's been
Speaker 1: a couple of decades since we had a working Apple computer.
Speaker 1: So assuming the data on those floppy disks is still intact,
Speaker 1: which is a very big assumption because magnetic storage is
Speaker 1: not permanent. It will degrade over time. But assuming it's
Speaker 1: still intact, we would still have to find either a
Speaker 1: working Apple to E computer and a copy of that
Speaker 1: work processing program in order to access those files, or
Speaker 1: we'd have to get an emulator that would run on
Speaker 1: a modern computer, plus an external floppy disk drive could
Speaker 1: connect to a modern computer, possibly through an interface like
Speaker 1: USB or something. Otherwise, that data is just going to
Speaker 1: slowly rot on those floppy disks, which honestly is probably
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen. Now. The good news is those are
Speaker 1: really books all published, right, so you can actually track
Speaker 1: down copies of the books, though it could take a
Speaker 1: lot of searching. Most of those books have been out
Speaker 1: of print for nearly forty years. But as for the
Speaker 1: earlier drafts of those books, some of which were had
Speaker 1: notable differences from the published version of the book. There's
Speaker 1: one children's novel in particular, my dad wrote where I
Speaker 1: thought the original draft was in every way superior to
Speaker 1: the published version of the book. Those might be lost forever.
Speaker 1: So emulators are one method we can use to preserve
Speaker 1: games and other types of coded content. And that works
Speaker 1: pretty well for local games, as in games that are
Speaker 1: meant to run on a local device that may or
Speaker 1: may not be connected to the internet. But like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, there are a lot of games, an increasing
Speaker 1: number of games in fact, that rely in part or
Speaker 1: entirely on some sort of online component. And let's tackle
Speaker 1: the d r M games. And like I said, I've
Speaker 1: talked about DRM a lot in fairly recent episodes, so
Speaker 1: we won't go into too much detail here. Now some
Speaker 1: games might just need an initial check in, but increasingly
Speaker 1: lots of games require a persistent online connection. These games,
Speaker 1: and and just to be clear, it's not just games
Speaker 1: that do this, lots of different software does this too.
Speaker 1: These games have what's called an always on DRM or
Speaker 1: persistent online authentication requirements. So if you lose your connection
Speaker 1: to the internet, you're likely to get a little pop
Speaker 1: up notification within the game explaining that the connection to
Speaker 1: the authentication server is down and that this is going
Speaker 1: to affect your experience in some way. For example, the
Speaker 1: game might no longer count any progress toward achievements because
Speaker 1: it can't verify that you're not cheating, or it might
Speaker 1: be unable to save your progress in the game as
Speaker 1: you play it. Now today, a lot of games will
Speaker 1: save progress locally on your computer, and then once you
Speaker 1: have re established a connection with the authentication server, it
Speaker 1: might give you the option to either revert to the
Speaker 1: save that was established by the server the last time
Speaker 1: you are connected, or you can choose your local save,
Speaker 1: which is probably more recent, and then that will just
Speaker 1: overwrite the older one on the server and you can
Speaker 1: go from there and there's no other interruption. But if
Speaker 1: that server, that authentication server goes offline, either due to
Speaker 1: malfunction or the company chooses to no longer support it,
Speaker 1: then legitimate owners of this game suffer they're unable to
Speaker 1: access all the features of their game, or in some
Speaker 1: cases that they are not able to launch the game
Speaker 1: at all. Thus, there is a single point of failure
Speaker 1: for this game, and it's not even within the player's
Speaker 1: control to address it. Their hardware might be working just fine,
Speaker 1: but because of this connectivity requirement, they are unable to
Speaker 1: play the game that they legally purchased, which doesn't seem fair. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk more about that and how this
Speaker 1: ties into the issue with piracy in just a moment
Speaker 1: and then get back into video game preservation. But first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, So we were talking
Speaker 1: about how any sort of issues with connecting to an
Speaker 1: authentication server can create an untenable experience for a legitimate
Speaker 1: owner of a video game copy. Well, meanwhile, you've got
Speaker 1: people who are engaged in piracy, who are illegally downloading games.
Speaker 1: They're stealing games, they're cracking those authentication requirements because obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're stolen a game and the server detects that
Speaker 1: this is not a legitimate copy, you're not going to
Speaker 1: have access to those features. So you've got to get
Speaker 1: around that, right, So pirates can launch their copy and
Speaker 1: play it with no problems, at least for games that
Speaker 1: are local. Single player games. It's a little bit different
Speaker 1: from multiplayer games because getting around authentication servers for online
Speaker 1: play requires a lot more work, but at least for
Speaker 1: single player experiences, it's not an issue once the game
Speaker 1: has been cracked. Yeah, you might not have access to
Speaker 1: things like achievements, but you'll be able to play the game.
Speaker 1: So a lot of folks have gone on to say
Speaker 1: that always on DRM is just playing bad technology, like
Speaker 1: it's it's just doesn't work. It's it's a bad idea
Speaker 1: because it does not do what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to prevent piracy, but people are still pirating games,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile it creates a bad experience for legitimate owners.
Speaker 1: You know, the people who actually spent money to purcha
Speaker 1: just a real copy of the game. They're the ones
Speaker 1: who get affected by always on DRM. The pirates have
Speaker 1: worked away around it, so it's a double whammy, right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do what it's supposed to do, which is
Speaker 1: stop piracy, and instead it impacts the people who are
Speaker 1: legally purchasing the games, which you could argue drives more
Speaker 1: and more people to piracy. It's kind of a self
Speaker 1: defeating tool. Anyway, back to the video game preservation. So
Speaker 1: in this case, the Cracked games might be the only
Speaker 1: games that can stick around, because if a company were
Speaker 1: to go out of business or to shift assets away
Speaker 1: from supporting a particular title, like Ubisoft is doing, then
Speaker 1: at that particular title might lose some or all of
Speaker 1: its functionality. The Cracked games, which have severed this connection
Speaker 1: to home base will continue to work, or at least
Speaker 1: work as much as they possibly can, since online functionality
Speaker 1: will still be affected if the company stops running servers
Speaker 1: to support whatever that functionality is. Let's consider the MMO
Speaker 1: world for a second. MMO stands for massively multiplayer online,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a general category and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of subcategories under it, and MMO pretty much
Speaker 1: describes one aspect of what these games are all about. Namely,
Speaker 1: these are games that are played online, so an Internet
Speaker 1: connection is required, and they support a large number of
Speaker 1: simultaneous players, thus the massive multiplayer. A popular subset of
Speaker 1: MMO games are m m O rpg s, or MMO
Speaker 1: games that are role playing games. A famous one that's
Speaker 1: still going on is World of Warcraft. That's kind of
Speaker 1: like the flagship example of m m O RPGs. Historically speaking,
Speaker 1: but there are other games that came and went and
Speaker 1: would have totally disappeared if it weren't for dedicated fans
Speaker 1: who would commit their own resources to keeping instances of
Speaker 1: the game running by running their own own servers. One
Speaker 1: such example is Star Wars Galaxies, which is obviously a
Speaker 1: game set in the Star Wars universe. That game originally
Speaker 1: launched back in two thousand three, and it received numerous
Speaker 1: updates and expansions, but the player base diminished slowly over time.
Speaker 1: By two thousand nine, Sony Online Entertainment, which ran the game,
Speaker 1: alerted players who had characters on certain servers that those
Speaker 1: servers would soon be shut down and the player would
Speaker 1: be given the capability to transfer their character to one
Speaker 1: of the remaining servers that Sony would continue to operate. However,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, Sony would shut down the
Speaker 1: whole shebang. So why did it do that? Well, one
Speaker 1: reason was that the Star Wars based m m O
Speaker 1: RPG Star Wars the Old Republic was about to launch,
Speaker 1: so the company wanted to dedicate its resources to supporting
Speaker 1: the new game and also push people to move over
Speaker 1: to the new title. Keep in mind these m m
Speaker 1: O RPGs. The way they generated revenue is that these
Speaker 1: were subscription based services. Right for the most part, you
Speaker 1: would subscribe and pay a monthly fee in order to
Speaker 1: maintain access to the game. So unlike most video games
Speaker 1: where you purchase it once and that's it, this was
Speaker 1: a model where you are having a recurring payment to
Speaker 1: the company. And this is before we get into stuff
Speaker 1: like you know, uh, in game content and micro transactions,
Speaker 1: which is the predominant revenue generation model that we see today. Like,
Speaker 1: that's how how video game companies are really making revenue
Speaker 1: now is that they have ways to continue to sell
Speaker 1: you stuff within a game so that you keep on
Speaker 1: spending money on a title. Uh and a lot of
Speaker 1: those titles end up being free to play, but to
Speaker 1: get access to all the cool stuff, you've got to
Speaker 1: cough up the big bucks anyway. So and he decides
Speaker 1: to shut down Star Wars Galaxies. Now, Star Wars Galaxy
Speaker 1: has had a pretty robust set of features, including a
Speaker 1: player centric economy in which players could buy and so
Speaker 1: goods that other players had crafted or that they had crafted.
Speaker 1: They could become bounty hunters or smugglers or you know,
Speaker 1: a Jedi or whatever. It was a game that received
Speaker 1: pretty positive reviews, and the players who were still with
Speaker 1: the game toward the end weren't really ready to say goodbye,
Speaker 1: so some of them didn't. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: different groups that set out to emulate the server system
Speaker 1: that ran Star Wars Galaxies. One such group formed the
Speaker 1: s w G EMU project, so it's s w G
Speaker 1: e m U, and that actually aimed to create servers
Speaker 1: that ran an earlier version of Star Wars Galaxies, one
Speaker 1: that it didn't include a change that was made to
Speaker 1: the game's combat system a little later on. There's another
Speaker 1: group called Project s w G that has set out
Speaker 1: to create emulation did versions of the servers running the
Speaker 1: later versions of the game, so the one that actually
Speaker 1: did incorporate some of those changes to combat, plus other expansions.
Speaker 1: So there are fan run servers out there. Some of
Speaker 1: them are still under construction, and these are keeping that
Speaker 1: game alive and otherwise it would just be gone. That's cool,
Speaker 1: but not all companies are keen to allow unofficial servers
Speaker 1: to operate. For example, Electronic Arts or E, a company
Speaker 1: that was once said on a pole from a consumerist
Speaker 1: to be the worst company in America used to rely
Speaker 1: on a company called game Spy to manage online multiplayer
Speaker 1: functions for some of their titles, titles like Battlefield Heroes
Speaker 1: and Battlefield two. But you know, there's always a bigger fish,
Speaker 1: and sometimes bigger fish have different ideas of what they
Speaker 1: want to support. So what happened with game Spy. I
Speaker 1: g N merged with GameSpy in two thousand four, then
Speaker 1: Ziff Davis acquired I g N, and then Ziff Davis
Speaker 1: decided to shut down a whole bunch of services that
Speaker 1: had been run through I g N and GameSpy because
Speaker 1: it was, you know, an expense. It was it was
Speaker 1: having to maintain and run these things, and Ziff Davis is, like,
Speaker 1: why are we paying to do this? Hardly anyone uses it,
Speaker 1: shut it down, and that included online multiplayer functions that
Speaker 1: games like the Battlefield ones I mentioned we're using. So
Speaker 1: a group of fans began to run servers that would
Speaker 1: allow players to keep playing the online multiplayer functions of
Speaker 1: those games. To get to be able to do that,
Speaker 1: they had to get copies of the games that would
Speaker 1: be compatible with this approach, and you know, their their
Speaker 1: view was that this is the way of preserving a
Speaker 1: game they love and preserving a part of the game
Speaker 1: that was a big part of the experience. There are
Speaker 1: players who bought the battlefield games just for these multiplayer
Speaker 1: modes because that's really where the meat of the game was.
Speaker 1: Like there there are plenty of examples of games out
Speaker 1: there that might have some limited single player content, but
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the experience is really aimed at multiplayer.
Speaker 1: So why should you just accept that the thing you
Speaker 1: bought no longer has all the features that it was
Speaker 1: supposed to have available to you? Why should that be allowed?
Speaker 1: So the fans ran the servers for a few years,
Speaker 1: but in e A sent a legal note to them
Speaker 1: and asked them to shut it all down, which they did.
Speaker 1: And when you think about you can understand EA is
Speaker 1: a big company. It's got deep pockets. You don't really
Speaker 1: want to get in an i P dispute with them.
Speaker 1: And EA was saying, hey, you know what, you don't
Speaker 1: have the authorization to do stuff like distribute content that
Speaker 1: has our logo on it and our trademarked content and
Speaker 1: intellectual property on it. And the people running the server said,
Speaker 1: you know what, You're totally right, we don't have that authority.
Speaker 1: It's not our right. We can't present ourselves as representing
Speaker 1: a company when we don't have any connection to that company,
Speaker 1: so they shut it down. Now, for many fans and preservationists,
Speaker 1: this kind of activity has become a huge point of frustration.
Speaker 1: If there are no legitimate ways to access or to
Speaker 1: preserve a game, then there is a risk that that
Speaker 1: game is just going to fade into obscurity forever. All
Speaker 1: that work will just be forgotten. The game's industry has
Speaker 1: argued that the nature of their work means that an
Speaker 1: old title can re emerge on a new platform pretty
Speaker 1: much any time, and technically that is true. If a
Speaker 1: company deems that there's enough of a market to justify
Speaker 1: the effort that would be involved, they can make those
Speaker 1: old titles available again, and in some cases it could
Speaker 1: be a relatively trivial effort, but in others it could
Speaker 1: require the creation of an emulator, or they might have
Speaker 1: to port the original game to new platform, and that's
Speaker 1: not really the same thing as preserving a game, because
Speaker 1: ports of games can really alter fundamental aspects of a title.
Speaker 1: But it is hard to argue against that industry perspective
Speaker 1: because it is technically possible to bring back these games.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's obvious because of the emulator community. They
Speaker 1: they're doing it themselves without the authority to do so,
Speaker 1: so it is possible. Enthusiasts and historians have already proven
Speaker 1: that's possible to bring these games back and to run
Speaker 1: them on modern hardware, sometimes with almost perfect replication. So
Speaker 1: if enthusiasts and historians can do it, then surely the
Speaker 1: companies that own the I P can do it too.
Speaker 1: And sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. They can
Speaker 1: choose not to do that. In many cases, they probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't choose to do it because the effort to do
Speaker 1: it would not end up being paid off. There'd be
Speaker 1: too few people to go out and buy the new
Speaker 1: version of the game. Uh. Even if you know there
Speaker 1: are people who really really love that game, they're not
Speaker 1: enough of them to justify the effort of doing this.
Speaker 1: So because they have the right to do it, that
Speaker 1: means we're kind of stuck, right Like, they can reissue
Speaker 1: a game if they want to, but they don't have to.
Speaker 1: And because of that, that's why we get into this
Speaker 1: situation where preserving games gets to be difficult. Occasionally, groups
Speaker 1: like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F will
Speaker 1: attempt to argue that the case for preservation should serve
Speaker 1: as an exception to copyright and fall under the umbrella
Speaker 1: of fair use, so that it should be perfectly legal
Speaker 1: to create these emulators and copies of games. But that's
Speaker 1: tough battle because the companies that own the i P
Speaker 1: tend to be pretty convincing to politicians. Now, you could
Speaker 1: get cynical and say that's because these companies spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money to lobby politicians and that the politicians
Speaker 1: listen to people who give them money, or you could
Speaker 1: just say that they can afford to have really influential
Speaker 1: all yours. Both arguments hold some validity to them. Now,
Speaker 1: the good news is there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: working to make sure these games don't just disappear. That
Speaker 1: folks in the future will be able to access and
Speaker 1: experience these games, at least on some level. The games
Speaker 1: will likely not have the same appeal because the graphics
Speaker 1: are going to be outdated, the scope of the game
Speaker 1: will be much less ambitious, but the ideas and the
Speaker 1: presentation could inspire people to create new games that they
Speaker 1: otherwise never would have imagined. They could spark something. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of creativity is building upon things that you
Speaker 1: have encountered before. Well you can only do that if
Speaker 1: you're able to encounter those things. So that's why preservation
Speaker 1: is so important. Plus, do we really want to live
Speaker 1: in a world where you can't play Elevator Action if
Speaker 1: you want to? Because I don't. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: this current situation about video game preservation, how it has
Speaker 1: sort of a uncertain ground. And I think for the
Speaker 1: large part, like the wrong community, the main community, even
Speaker 1: though you've got tons of people who are using mame
Speaker 1: quote unquote illegally, in many cases that's overlooked because companies
Speaker 1: aren't really doing anything with the i P anyway, Like
Speaker 1: they're not actively trying to reissue old arcade machines because
Speaker 1: the arcade model no longer really exists, at least not
Speaker 1: on a sustainable grand scale. But that's not the case
Speaker 1: across the board. You do occasionally get these moves like
Speaker 1: um like the fairly recent trend of companies to reissue
Speaker 1: small versions of old hardware like the Nintendo Entertainment System,
Speaker 1: the Supernintendo, where you get really, what's an emulator in
Speaker 1: a box that has you know, a couple of dozen
Speaker 1: games on it. You have cases like that, So there
Speaker 1: are ways that companies are cashing in and on this
Speaker 1: old I P and thus there is a very strong
Speaker 1: argument to say, like, we can't allow people to just
Speaker 1: download this for free because it is part of our
Speaker 1: our assets and we are actually doing stuff with them.
Speaker 1: But for every title that is getting kind of a reissue,
Speaker 1: there are hundreds that just kind of are gathering dust.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a complicated situation, and you can definitely
Speaker 1: see arguments on both sides that have validity to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to see titles preserved, but I would
Speaker 1: love to be able to see a an approach where
Speaker 1: there's collaboration between the industry and the historians so that
Speaker 1: the process can be one that isn't going to encounter opposition, right, Like,
Speaker 1: isn't going to be legally challenged and then possibly shut down,
Speaker 1: because that would just mean that all that work would
Speaker 1: have gone to waste. So that's kind of what I
Speaker 1: hope for. I don't anticipate it happening anytime soon, but
Speaker 1: I do hope. And for the record, there are some
Speaker 1: video game creators out there who definitely feel that way,
Speaker 1: who feel like preservation is a legitimate and important thing.
Speaker 1: All right, that's it for this episode. I do have
Speaker 1: another episode where're gonna I'm gonna be talking about preserving
Speaker 1: data and the challenges of preserving data in a way
Speaker 1: that is long lasting and accessible. Uh, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: It's it's inspired by a listener request actually, so look
Speaker 1: forward to that because it does tie into some of
Speaker 1: the things we've talked about here today. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover in the future, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of ways to reach out. One is
Speaker 1: you can leave me a message on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio podcast app or really I Heart Radio app. You
Speaker 1: just download it for free. Navigate to Text Stuff. There's
Speaker 1: a little microphone icon you click on that you can
Speaker 1: leave a voicemail message for up to thirty seconds if
Speaker 1: you want me to use the message in the context
Speaker 1: of an episod, so go ahead and let me know
Speaker 1: and I'll be sure to do that. Or you can
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff h s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Y. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.