Why Are We Abandoning Gaming History?

Gamasutra contributor Felipe Pepe, who some of you probably know for his efforts to publish a free book on the history of RPGs, has published a blog post on the lack of effort made to preserve gaming history, and the history of CRPGs in particular. I can’t help but agree with the central thesis of the article:

In 2012, Frank Cifaldi published here on Gamasutra an article on how poorly gamign history is being kept, exemplified by how we don’t even know when Super Mario Bros. was released in the US. He ended his article by saying (If this is the state of video game preservation in 2012, 50 years after Spacewar!, we’re in trouble). I couldn’t agree more.

While researching CRPG history, I was shocked at how the old editions of the now defunct Computer Gaming World magazine are still one of the best sources for anything pre-Windows. At how articles often omit sources and citations. At the amount of misinformation circulating the web. At how only a handful of few websites and individuals, such as Matt Barton , The RPG Codex and The CRPG Addict, actually work towards preserving our history. At how I have to explain that Fallout 3 had two games before it.

Think for a moment on what is commonly said about pre-90’s CRPGs, on what the younger generations have heard about: Wasteland is the grand-father of Fallout Wasteland 2; Rogue lead to roguelikes; Pool of Radiance (became) Baldur’s Gate and Ultima IV was made by that weird guy that went to space and did a kickstarter recently. That’s all you’re likely to find about the first 16 years of CRPGs in the mainstream media, almost half of our history. And there’s a good chance that it was written by people that never actually played those games.

Cinema is over a century old, yet it’s expected for any decent critic or self-proclaimed enthusiast to have a knowledge ranging from ancient classics such as Battleship Potemkin and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to recent movies only shown at foreign festivals. If you tried to write about cinema having watched only post-90’s movies and one or two older Disney animations, you would be nothing more than a joke. Renting Citizen Kane once, or the fact that you grew up watching movies, aren’t remarkable achievements in a serious industry.

So how can we ask others to respect games as art, when even gamers and industry professionals don’t bother to learn about its history?

Why it’s that gaming, with such a short existence, is already forgetting its past? Why people that proudly call themselves “hardcore gamers” are ignorant and wary of anything more than a decade old? Why do we accept people writing about games that they only read on Wikipedia or watched a Let’s Play? Yes, believe me, its plain obvious that someone that struggles to understand Ultima Underworld’s interface isn’t (a long time Ultima fan).

Recently, with the kickstarter frenzy, old names came back from exile and many tales of their past glories were told usually with very detailed descriptions, such as (the classic old-school game X). But no one bothers to ask about the ones that never returned. There’s no research, no fact checking. It’s always easier to interview the legendary Lord British that mailed you to promote his new game than to go after the long-forgotten Lord Wood, who revealed he was working a fifth Phantasie game a year ago and no one noticed. In 2011, Wizardry’s 30th Anniversary was greeted with a big event in Japan, yet I challenge you to find a single article in western gaming media celebrating the date, interviewing developers or bringing any information to their audience that didn’t came from Wizardry Online’s press release.