When I started writing this article Ross Scott's "Stop Killing Games" campaign was making great strides in Europe. Due to my long turnaround on finishing articles, maybe that's no longer the case when this goes up, but it's what was on my mind when I started writing. Now obviously I'm for game preservation. I've written on similar topics here and here among other places. I've also set up Windows 3.1 in a virtual environment, and since have done the same for Windows 95 and 98. This has allowed me to set up several programs that I've picked up at garage sales and thrift stores, despite not working at all on modern Windows (indeed, with most being 16 bit programs, Windows won't even let you run them in the first place.) This includes one program that I got for free because the owners thought that it was literally impossible to run it on computers anymore, but which I have got working fine. So I'm big into software preservation.
What I would like to discuss here is rather why anyone would be opposed to software preservation. While I am pleased to see the positive reception that Stop Killing Games has gotten across the internet, there has been some opposition. I am most interested in the opposition among some younger people, because it has revealed a dramatic shift in terms of how they relate to technology. For example, there has been quite a bit of confusion about whetehr the intiative applied to multi-player games. This is because in the minds of many younger people the only way to implement multiplayer in any game (other than maybe mutli-controller console games) is by using a company server. Now I can think of many other implementations, including:
There are literally thousands of games that have active multiplayer using one of the above approaches. You can literally find matches right now in games like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (not the HD edition), Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Unreal Tournament. But there is at least a whole generation who is unaware of this and think that multiplayer must necessarily be tied to a company providing active support. This is a bit shocking to consider with how long the above styles of multi-player have existed. But on the other hand the mainstream has been changing for a while. The last game that I remember that relied on private servers as the primary way of playing multiplayer was Team Fortress 2, which is nearing its 20 year anniversary. Even Team Fortress 2 now pushes you to Valve administered matchmaking on Valve servers. The private servers still exist, but they are buried and new players will miss them. In the last decade or so almost every mainstream game with multiplayer has been done only only over the internet through the company itself, so it's not too hard to see why a younger player might be unaware of the alternatives. And that made me think about what else in gaming culture has been lost.
Further outline: LANs, physical media and such.