In the Cloud: Effects of Platformisation in the Preservation Ecosystem of Video Games and Software-based Art
Patricia Falcao
Platformisation, the centralisation of production, distribution and communication means in online platforms, is probably the most impactful evolution in how cultural artefacts are created, distributed and preserved in the 21st century. There are many platforms with different functions and characteristics, and they have different impacts on the production and preservation ecosystem of an artwork. Examples include social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X which are both a subject and medium of art, platforms such as Steam, the App Store or Github which are at the core of software distribution, and Discord, Slack or Stack Overflow where discussions about games and software-based art happen. Even though these platforms are very different, they raise some common concerns for preservation, namely around the dependency on an online resource where users have little to no control on the resource's evolution and longevity.
This is true in both the video game and the software-based art preservation contexts. Using the examples of the game TerraTech by Payload Studios, available on Steam, and the artwork Go Rando, by artist Ben Grosser,available on Chrome store, this presentation uses these two platforms to illustrate how platformisation, and the changes it drives in the ecosystems of artworks and videogames affects preservation, both positively and negatively. It also asks how practice is changing, or how it should be changing, to address these new ecosystems.
approaches to preservation from document to data