The Video Game History Foundation, a nonprofit group, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help its overreaching goal of preserving the history of the video game industry. In its Patreon page, the group explains that they are dedicated to figuring out ways on how to save as much video game history as they can. The group says they intend to make it accessible to everyone.
According to the group, their main goal is to make sure that storytellers have what they need to tell the story of video games. The group is working on a tremendous backlog of material. Frank Cifaldi heads the initiative. Cifaldi previously worked on games press like 1UP and Gamasutra. He also worked as a game developer on games like Mega Man Legacy Collection. Cifaldi is also the founder of the website Lost Levels in 2003 which catalogs information of games that were not released.
Cifaldi believes that video games are more than just playable codes. He says what is important is the ephemeral material that was produced around the game. It is the stories, the marketing. He said that all of these things are in danger of disappearing. Cifaldi said that they must go out and find it and make sure that it is safe.
Cifaldi notes that their group will be starting out small but he suggests that in the future there is the possibility of opening up a library, helping developers to ensure their codes are kept secure, and maybe working with museums. Cifaldi states that he knows the kind of materials that historian needs to tell stories being a historian himself.
He says that Video Game History Foundation is now focusing on gathering, digitizing and making video game artifacts available to whoever wants access to it. He explains that to a historian, that means a wealth of material to work with. To the non-historian, it means a lot of cool stuff to play with as reported by GameSpot.
Cifaldi and his team will continue to conserve and look for materials that are worth preserving across the globe. They aim to save these materials for historians and archivists who will one day document the history of video games. Video games are part of the history and culture of humanity so the group thinks this is a very worthy endeavor as reported by Polygon.
