Sujet : Re: GOG Preserves Old Games... but do they?
De : zaghadka (at) *nospam* hotmail.com (Zaghadka)
Groupes : comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.actionDate : 22. Nov 2024, 20:15:15
Autres entêtes
Organisation : E. Nygma & Sons, LLC
Message-ID : <e8l1kjlj7jmuu4gjof2p2cj00lhkh5k6u8@4ax.com>
References : 1
User-Agent : Forte Agent 3.3/32.846
On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:52:15 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
GOG recently announced* a launch of it's "Good Old Games Preservation
Program", saying that games that are part of the program they will
"commit our own resources to maintaining its compatibility with modern
and future systems." Yay! Who could argue against that? An
increasingly large number of games (they quote '87% of games created
before 2010' are inaccessible). But...
>
GOG's idea of preservation is focused on rejiggering the code to work
on modern PCs so they can sell it, and I have to wonder... if you
change the game, is it really preserving it? It's one thing if you
take the original game and containerize it in DOSBox or some sort of
virtualization, but GOG --and partners like Nightdive Studios-- more
often create new code entirely.
>
Now, on the one hand... does it really matter? However they do it, it
gets it so we can play the old games again; that's all that matters.
right?. Except that NEW code has a expiration date too; stuff that
runs on Windows64 will one day be as obsolete and hard to run as C64
assembly code.
>
Worse, this new code gets new copyright... and that only makes the IP
rights of these titles even more complicated. In 2045, people wanting
to update (and play) these 'preserved' titles will have yet another
hoop to leap through as they have to navigate the maze of ownership
for those old games.
>
Better, I think, were GOG to focus not on individual games so much as
pouring its resources into groups that create emulators; the DOSBox
team, or the guys who're building PCSX2, or WinEmu, or MAME. Or even
poor beleaguered Archive.org! It could help create a solid open-source
framework -with a rich patron to help fend off the litigious companies
opposed to emulation
>
[cough cough Nintendo cough cough]
>
and give it a legitimacy it has long
needed.
>
But that's not what GOG is doing. Right now all GOG is doing is
bolstering its own bottom line. Which is fine for a company, but
hardly deserves the praise that's getting heaped on it as a 'preserver
of old games'.
>
I think we're overthinking this. There are also forensic preservation
projects such as eXo and MESS. It's true that neither has gotten Win95+
games to work properly (eXo won't for his own reasons and MESS is too
slow and only goes as far as running Win95), but many of the files are
there. If GOG provides the gameplay on modern hardware, we have complete
preservation.
GOG is definitely a part of the preservation effort. We're making perfect
the enemy of the good here.
In addition, there are enough archivists out there preserving forensic CD
images (I do this myself but not exhaustively) that the only real problem
is long-term storage rot, not the ability to preserve the cultural data.
Getting it to run on period hardware often needs no-cd cracks, though.
Copy protection schemes have thrown the most serious wrench into
preservation, as publishers were warned. Publishers also didn't care.
Preservationists do their best with this. I believe there is Library of
Congress copyright advice that it is legal to crack obsolete protections
for preservation purposes as "Fair Use." There is no advice on what
constitutes a lawful preservation project though.
-- ZagNo one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I hadspent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten