The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), alongside The Strong National Museum of Play (US), and the BFI National Archive (UK) have teamed up to call for better global game preservation, following the results of a worldwide survey that formally discovered inadequate measures for preserving this history. In late 2023, the NFSA commissioned a study of video game preservation practices, with the help of 54 global organisations – from universities and academic libraries to cultural institutions, video game companies, and beyond. The goal was to discover how video games are being preserved, and what current barriers exist .
Per results of the survey, a lack of established resources is currently one of the biggest barriers, alongside significant barriers to accessing game material, as well as a lack of international collaboration and recognition of video game preservation is so important. Video games are a relatively new form of media when compared to film, television, or radio, and for those unfamiliar, their cultural and historic value appears relatively misunderstood. Further to this analysis, the NFSA survey recognised a range of other challenges facing cultural institutions in the preservation of video games.
Key amongst these is that most public and cultural institutions lack proper resources for preservation as a whole, and therefore most video game preservation activities were carried out without dedicated staffing. While the majority of organisations perfo.