The amount of writing lost is also immense. Not to mention media like movies, tv and so on. The idea that “oh they will manage” is not a new one. Look into the victorian “third spice”.
I admit I haven’t read these studies in full, but these seem to be referring to actual hard copies of the games; isn’t there far more of this stuff located on people’s hard drives via pirated copies, roms, etc? I’ve no idea how long hard drives can last, especially compared to hard copies of that content, but surely it’ll still be available for future historians (depending on how far in history we’re talking; I don’t think any of this stuff, not even the dvds or cartridges will be viable in 200 years)
As for stuff before 1985 that never got uploaded to the internet somewhere, preserving that would’ve been shockingly difficult I would imagine and definitely very easy to lose forever regardless of what form it exists in
That attitude is what leads to us losing so much of our cultural archives.
Only 3% of games from before 1985 are still available for reissue. And only about 13% of games issued from before 2010 The rest of these games are considered, by archivists, “critically endangered”.
Only 5% of physical art is likely to survive the next century
The amount of writing lost is also immense. Not to mention media like movies, tv and so on. The idea that “oh they will manage” is not a new one. Look into the victorian “third spice”.
I admit I haven’t read these studies in full, but these seem to be referring to actual hard copies of the games; isn’t there far more of this stuff located on people’s hard drives via pirated copies, roms, etc? I’ve no idea how long hard drives can last, especially compared to hard copies of that content, but surely it’ll still be available for future historians (depending on how far in history we’re talking; I don’t think any of this stuff, not even the dvds or cartridges will be viable in 200 years)
As for stuff before 1985 that never got uploaded to the internet somewhere, preserving that would’ve been shockingly difficult I would imagine and definitely very easy to lose forever regardless of what form it exists in