[game_preservation] Acquisition selection

[Henry Borchers]

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of writing my master's thesis about video game
preservation and I was wondering how those of you who work in archives with
video game collections make your selections in regards to curation and
acquisition. Is it feasible to simply accept everything for your collection
or do you have to set limits?  If you do have to set limits, how do you
decide what to focus on? Certainly, many people would like to know that "the
classics" are safe and sound. However, as we all know, for every
extraordinary game there are many ordinary ones.  What role do these
ordinary games play in your archive?
Based on my experience with film archives, I know that film archives have to
be very selective on what they agree to preserve because of the costs and
the time. They simply cannot preserve and restore every film that comes
through their door. How does this work for video game archives? 

I'm very curious to hear what your thoughts are on this.

Sincerely
Henry Borchers
Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image Master's Student
University of Amsterdam