There’s more than thirty years of videogame history in Britain, and that just might be worth the time of the country’s national library.
The musty tomes, journals and manuscripts in the British Library could soon be sharing shelf space with the likes of Fable and LittleBigPlanet, if digital specialist Paul Wheatley gets his way and is able to set up a videogame archive.
Wheatly said there was value in preserving the history of videogame development in the UK, something that the videogame industry agreed with him about. He said that he’d heard all kinds of horror stories about items being left to gather dust and degrade under people’s desks, and was reluctant to let that continue. He said that at the very least, he would like the Library to support the work carried out by the National Videogame Archive, and hoped that it could collaborate even more closely than that.
Some of the most influential and best-loved games to date have come from British developers. Whether it’s big names like Tomb Raider or Grand Theft Auto, or classics like GoldenEye or space simulator Elite, there’s a lot to archive, and it’s gratifying to think that people at Britain’s national library think they’re as worthy of attention as the books, newspapers and patents its collected over the years.
Source: Edge
