Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia) and John Romero (DOOM) speak out about historical preservation of video games
Following GameStop’s abrupt shuttering of Game Informer and the total deletion of the 33-year-old magazine’s website last month, Jordan Mechner (Karateka, Prince of Persia, The Last Express) and John Romero (Wolfenstein 3-D, DOOM, Quake) are speaking out about the importance of historical preservation in the video game industry.
HISTORY PRESERVED THROUGH MEMOIR
Both Mechner and Romero are staunch advocates of historical preservation and have donated their archives to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Their recent memoirs, Mechner’s Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family and Romero’s DOOM Guy: Life in First Person, further the preservation effort by documenting their decades-long game development careers.
They hope their conversation on MinnMax will shine a light on the important work being done by organizations such as the Internet Archive, which recently lost its appeal in a copyright lawsuit that threatens the future of digital lending libraries.
“All of the games and books I’ve created in my career have been inspired and enriched by my access to libraries and archives. It’s painful to me as an author to see the nonprofit Internet Archive now under attack by publishers seeking to lock digital content into a handful of for-profit platforms,” says Jordan Mechner. “Preserving our cultural heritage of games, books, music, and other media is an ongoing, active task that only happens to the extent that we care and make it happen. Online libraries like the Internet Archive are a vital public service, and I support their mission.”
“We are living in an extraordinary era filled with abundant digital creations. Digitally archiving today’s media is easier than ever before, which should mean it’s happening frequently — preserving today’s creations for tomorrow’s learning,” says John Romero. “Why GameStop would choose to delete all Game Informer online articles boggles the mind. In our talk, Jordan and I passionately advocate for the importance of archiving digital media.”
THE MAKING OF KARATEKA
The Making of Karateka, an interactive documentary by Digital Eclipse, also preserves a slice of Jordan Mechner’s career by going behind the scenes of his first game, which he developed from his dorm room at Yale. A complementary Making of Karateka exhibit will be on display at the Chicago Gamespace video game museum from November 3-December 1: https://www.chicagogamespace.com/exhibitions/4opnm6hdig37kj0ozmci122n5yc30w
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