Video Game History Foundation

"VGHF" redirects here. For the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, see Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

Video Game History Foundation

Logo introduced in 2020
Abbreviation	VGHF
Formation	February 27, 2017;7 years ago (2017-02-27) [1]
Founders	Frank Cifaldi
Type	Operating community foundation (IRS exemption status): 501(c)(3)
Purpose	Video game archival and preservation
Headquarters	Oakland, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Method	Donations
Key people	Director: Frank Cifaldi [2] Founding Board Members: Chris Melissinos Simon Carless Steve Lin Mike Mika
Website	gamehistory.org

The Video Game History Foundation is a non-profit foundation founded by Frank Cifaldi. The primary aim of the foundation is the archival, preservation, and dissemination of historical media related to video games.

History

In a talk given at the 2016 Game Developers Conference, Cifaldi expressed concern over the state of video game preservation. Noting that a significant amount of feature films produced before 1950 are now irrecoverably lost, Cifaldi found himself wondering if the early history of video games would ultimately suffer the same fate. ^[3] In highlighting the disparity between modern film preservation and game preservation, Cifaldi lamented that the games industry was doing "a pretty terrible job of maintaining [its] legacy". ^[4] He said that The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of film, was a major inspiration for the VGHF. ^[5]

Prior to the founding of the VGHF, several members of its founding board had collaborated with and donated to the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Videogame Museum, and the Strong National Museum of Play. ^[6]

The foundation launched in February 2017, an event which was marked by a collaborative livestream between the VGHF and video game news outlet IGN. ^[7]

In October 2023, Kelsey Lewin stepped down from the role of co-director, leaving the organization. ^[8]

Activities

Founder Frank Cifaldi in 2023

Per the Video Game History Foundation's mission statement, the foundation's primary goal is to catalog, digitize (rip), and preserve the history of video games. The media preserved by the foundation covers a broad spectrum; in addition to video games, the foundation also archives source code, design documents, press kits, posters, video tapes, newspapers, and photographs. Particular attention is given to preserving the promotional ephemera produced during a game's release window, which may not necessarily be preserved as thoroughly as the games themselves. Cifaldi has characterized this ephemera as being immensely valuable to historians, commenting; "I think that the greatest discoveries we're going to find are on materials that people don't know are important." ^[9]

The foundation seeks to aid and facilitate video game museums and archives by donating collected material after its preservation. Artifacts in the foundation's possession are often transitory, and are donated to a permanent home after their digitization and archival. ^[6]

A "digital library" of the VGHF's collected assets is currently under development, a task which Cifaldi estimated would take several years given the size and scope of the project. As an intermediary solution, the foundation periodically selects assets from their "backend library" to upload and publish online. ^{[10] [6]} The VGHF has also contracted with Wata Games which manages the evaluation and rating of sealed games for video game collectors prior to sale or auction. Wata has supplied the VGHF details of any prototype games that they have received for review to add to Foundation's database. ^[11]

The Foundation launched its Video Game Source Project in October 2020, an effort to collect the original source code and other assets for classic video games which it will house in its archives and make available for researchers. ^[12] The first two games added to this include The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge . ^[13] They also included Power Up Baseball, an arcade game that had been in development by Midway in the 1990s in the style of NBA Jam but cancelled due to poor testing results. ^[14]

References

1. "New Foundation is Looking to Level Up Video Game Culture". smithsonianmag.com. March 1, 2017. Archived from the original on January 26, 2018. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
2. Pierce, David (13 November 2023). "The fight to save old video games". theverge.com. Archived from the original on 19 November 2023. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
3. Hall, Charlie (March 16, 2016). "Emulation isn't a dirty word, and one man thinks it can save gaming's history". polygon.com. Archived from the original on December 5, 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
4. Parkin, Simon (March 17, 2016). "Emulation and the challenge of selling old games". gamasutra.com. Archived from the original on January 26, 2018. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
5. "IGN Save Point Live Stream". IGN. February 27, 2017. Archived from the original on November 25, 2019. Retrieved January 25, 2018– via Youtube. The Film Foundation, which is actually a big inspiration for the Video Game History Foundation[...]
6. "What We're Doing". gamehistory.org. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
7. "IGN ENTERTAINMENT AND VIDEO GAME HISTORY FOUNDATION TEAM UP TO PRESENT IGN SAVE POINT LIVE STREAM". ign.com. February 21, 2017. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
8. Bek, Nate (October 9, 2023). "Tech Moves: Seattle tech vet Liz Pearce joins climate startup; Absci names AI chief; and more". geekwire.com. Archived from the original on 19 November 2023. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
9. Bowman, Mitch (February 27, 2017). "Inside The Video Game History Foundation". polygon.com. Archived from the original on November 17, 2021. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
10. "IGN Save Point Live Stream". IGN. February 27, 2017. Archived from the original on November 25, 2019. Retrieved January 25, 2018– via Youtube. We have this notion of building a digital library of these assets, which is a big ongoing thing. [...] We have this ongoing, massive, probably years long project to have this digital library, but in the meantime, what we're doing is mirroring some of the special collections from our backend digital library and publishing them online.
11. Carpenter, Nicole (July 12, 2021). "A copy of Super Mario 64 sold for $1.5M, raising eyebrows". Polygon . Archived from the original on July 12, 2021. Retrieved July 12, 2021.
12. "The RetroBeat: The Video Game History Foundation is on the hunt for source code". VentureBeat. 2020-10-30. Archived from the original on 2021-02-12. Retrieved 2021-01-07.
13. Bailey, Dustin (October 15, 2020). "New project aims to save source code for classic games, starting with Monkey Island". PCGamesN . Archived from the original on October 28, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
14. Mackovich, Sam (January 29, 2021). "NBA Jam for baseball almost happened: Here's Midway's lost 1996 arcade game". Ars Technica . Archived from the original on January 29, 2021. Retrieved January 29, 2021.

Further reading

• Parrish, Ash (February 27, 2024). "The VGHF built an archive of gaming history — and is making it available online". The Verge . Retrieved March 22, 2024.