Sheffield project aims to build first UK video games archive

Sheffield is preparing to level up the mission to save the nation’s video games for posterity with a new cultural history project.

The National Videogame Museum in the city is home to Behind the Screens – the first effort to create a national archive of video game design.

Keeping games as cultural assets is becoming more important as developers rely less on physical releases, but the project also wants to record people’s experiences of living through games.

Behind the Screens is supported by the British Film Institute’s Screen Heritage Fund.

One of the early jobs of the project is to conduct the first comprehensive survey of games materials held by development studios.

It hopes to then create a networked national archive of games design to keep for future generations.

The project will also talk to players to collect their experiences of playing games and what they have brought to UK culture.

At the National Videogame Museum they maintain dozens of arcade machines from the industry’s early days, but they also curate developers’ notes and downloadable content no longer available to consumers.

John O’Shea, from the museum, said it was a dual job involving screwdrivers and servers.

“What we do is really carefully check every component and make sure that the games are going out and working in the best possible way,” he said.

“If you think about a game like Space Invaders, it includes electronics, computer coding, but the materials break down over time so we have our engineers caring for that.

“Now video games are social spaces themselves. If you think about Fortnite, you’re spending a lot of time within this space, not just passively, but actually creating things.

“We want to celebrate that as a really rich cultural experience.”

The plans include an oral history of the cultural impact of gaming which will form part of an exhibition.

Nick Poole, from the gaming industry body UK Interactive Entertainment, said games were sometimes overlooked.

“This is a cultural medium that’s defining culture for billions of players around the world daily,” he said.

“A lot of that culture is intangible. It’s the games people play online, it’s what they’re doing behind the screens.

“It’s so important to be able to capture those moments and tell that story.

“It is literally everywhere and it’s changing lives, but unlike some previous media it’s not always going to be kept physically.”