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https://ift.tt/2tP5jblprokopetz:
That post about the ephemerality of video games as an artistic medium bugs the hell out of me because it correctly identifies the problem, but entirely misunderstands the reason the problem exists.
Like, yeah, Super Nintendo decks are getting increasingly hard to find these days, but there’s absolutely no danger of Super Nintendo games becoming unplayable, because of a little thing called emulation. You can download a small program right now that will run on any modern operating system and perfectly simulate a Super Nintendo right down to the last transistor. Load up your cart image and away you go!
In principle, this can be done for any hardware or software platform, and considerable efforts have been made to do just that. The primary barriers standing in the way of doing so are not technical, but legal. The reason there isn’t a widely available emulator that will simulate, say, Windows 95 running on a 233 Mhz Pentium II so you can boot up that dusty old copy of Septerra Core you found in the back of your closet isn’t because there’s no demand for it, nor because it’s technically impossible, but because Intel and Microsoft will sue anyone who tries to distribute such an emulator into a smoking crater.
And make no mistake, this isn’t because they’re reflexively litigious assholes, though they’re certainly that. It’s part of a calculated strategy on the part of major hardware manufacturers and media publishers to enforce artificial obsolescence of legacy software - particularly entertainment software, though by no means limited to such - so that you have to keep buying the same media over and over again in order to have a version that’s compatible with available platforms. The ability to force you to buy a fresh copy of your favourite game every five years or so if you want to continue playing it is free money for them - of course they’ll do everything in their power to grab it.
Like, absolutely, lament the fact that you can’t play the favourite video games of your childhood anymore, but recognise that this isn’t some bullshit object lesson about the impermanence of human achievement. It’s part of a deliberate and ongoing destruction of our cultural history by entrenched media monopolies in order to force you to buy more shit.
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