Really great PA Extra Credits video worth watching talking about how game preservation is a big problem in gaming.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/my-name-is-ozymandias

Can you summarize some it? Only because Im in class with no headphones

The great Books, Paintings, movies and the like are handed down throughout the ages.  People and artists look at and experience these pieces of work as a basis of their education, so that a trained painter has seen the greatest paintings of the 14th century and such.

While this isn't true for most videogames.  Many get lost forever in the constant changes in hardware and software, with even PC games getting lost in the dust due to new incompatabilities.  As such a lot of history and outlook is being lost.  Sure some of the more popular games get ports... but not all the important games.

My gf is an archivist and apparently this is a major issue in the field at the moment with all digital information. With how quickly both hardware and software storage is changing digital archiving is pretty problematic.

I think for video games it's particularly problematic because as the video pointed out the media can't be viewed as it was originally intended upon a modern device - it requires the original device or a copy of the original device for that.

Unfortunately for most of todays companies games are a cash grab. They dont care about preserving the media, just what will get them their next dollar.

I remember watching an AVGN film that complained that something on the order of 75% of all movies from the first 25 or so years of film were equally lost forever

Games will do fine.