Autumn 2024 Edition

The preservation issue tackles one of gaming's most urgent challenges: how do we save our history when everything is digital? Through investigative reporting, we examine the technical, legal, and cultural barriers to game preservation, speaking with archivists fighting to protect our medium's heritage.

Our lead story follows the shutdown of a beloved MMO and the community's desperate attempt to preserve it before deletion. We document the technical challenges of emulation, the legal gray areas of server preservation, and the emotional impact on players losing a virtual home.

The issue includes profiles of individuals running private game museums, storing thousands of cartridges and disks in climate-controlled environments. We explore why physical media still matters in an age of streaming and downloads, and what happens when companies abandon their back catalogs.

Additional features examine the work of organizations like the Video Game History Foundation, the challenges of preserving online-only games, and interviews with developers who've lost access to their own source code. This issue makes the case that game preservation isn't nostalgia—it's cultural responsibility.