As most here already know, many different projects exist and are running around the world with the express interest in trying to catalogue and collect software and games from the past for now dead systems, or for the huge back catalogues of systems like the PC. Large projects like TOSEC or Good have been running with this aim for many years now, and we have all benefited from this as others have used the dat files from these archives to create actual complete rom and ISO collections for these systems.
Some view this as just piracy, and think it shouldn't be performed as they view it as illegal. However for now dead systems, especially those from the 8bit and 16bit systems, and early 32bit consoles, many (including myself) now see this as vital to retain the software from these systems so it can still be accessible into the future as part of computing history. Otherwise some of these systems and their software will be lost to time, and in turn their contribution to the computing and gaming world along with it.
Emulation obviously goes hand in hand with this because it is not just the media the software was originally stored on that will become lost to time or degrade so much it can't be read. Hardware slowly degrades as well and eventually the original platforms will be dead and unable to be easily revived. This is especially true of systems that used proprietary drives to store their media, such as the Amiga's floppy drive, or the Dreamcast's GD-Rom drive.
Now while all of this is great for preserving the history of both gaming and computing into the future, we now have a new problem that could mean in years to come we might very well lose a huge chunk of gaming history. The problem is the internet and multiplayer games.
The most obvious to first mention is MMO style games. These require a server or they wont work. When servers are eventually shut down for a game this kills the game outright and it cannot ever be run again. The first MMO I played that this happened to was Earth and Beyond. A great space trading, combat and exploration game. After the servers were shut down that was it. Owners of the game were left with a game box and disc that had no use or ability to access the game it contained.
The next are games with extensive online functionality. Games like the Battlefield series is a good example of this. And others such as Phantasy Star Online others. For some of these the same thing happens to the online content as with MMOs. When the PSO servers were closed down for the Dreamcast game that was it. All that game content lost forever.
Some others of this type include the ability to run your own servers for multiplayer gaming. A good early example of this was Quake 3. And others include games like Freelancer. But for some they rely on the developer's servers to access the online multiplayer content, and it is these that we will lose. A recent example was the closing of the Hellgate London servers in January because the developer closed down. So that game, which is fairly new, has already lost a large chunk of its content.
The solution is obvious. Developers should make their server software available to owners of the games to be able to run the multiplayer servers for games like this from any location. This would then safeguard the full content of these games for the future.
It however isn't so easy for full MMOs. The player's PC is really just a hub connecting to the game world on the developer's servers. For this things are much more complex. But not impossible. When PSO closed down on the Dreamcast and PC, some fans of the game reverse engineered the game and build their own servers to run the multiplayer part, and it worked fine. Others are doing similar things for other games, but development isn't as far along or as successful. For Earth and Beyond some have been working on a server for a few years now, and it still isn't really anywhere need to a state capable of running the game in full.
When the servers for online games, or games with a large chunk of their content being online, get shut down, should the developers release their server software into the open source community so the game can continue?
I would like to know others views on this.
What are your thoughts on complete system software/game collections?
Do you think software and games should be collected and preserved as part of the history of gaming and of each platform?
And what about the danger of losing games over time because they rely on online content that isn't open source and is locked into the developer's servers?
