The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) will now collect and archive Australian video games for the purposes of preservation, it today announced.
“Today we welcome video games into our collection of more than 3 million items. The collection represents the cultural diversity and breadth of experience of all Australians, and it is constantly evolving just like our creative industries,” said Jan Müller, CEO of the NFSA.
“We aim to be the national leader in collecting multimedia and new media content, and it would be impossible to accurately represent modern life without games. It is essential that games be collected alongside other audiovisual media, to ensure their continued preservation and access.”
The first lot of games selected — eight in total — includes the following:
- The Hobbit (Beam Software, 1982)
- Halloween Harry (Interactive Binary Illusions / Sub Zero Software, 1985/1993)
- Shadowrun (Beam Software, 1993)
- L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011)
- Submerged (Uppercut Games, 2015)
- Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)
- Florence (Mountains, 2018)
- Espire 1: VR Operative (Digital Lode, 2019)
The NFSA worked with industry organisations including the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) and Games Developers’ Association of Australia (GDAA), to curate the list of titles to be preserved.
“It’s very exciting to see a national collecting institution acknowledging the increasingly important role of video games in the life of all Australians,” Ron Curry, CEO of IGEA, said of the endeavour.
“Games are a major part of contemporary popular culture; an artistic, storytelling and technological achievement, as well as an industry that contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian economy. We look forward to working with the NFSA as they start adding games to their vast collection.”
Which Aussie games would you recommend the NFSA preserve next?
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