Hello, Here is an interesting article about video game that can be lost forever. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/12/why-some-video-games-are-in-danger-of-disappearing-forever/ And there is even few works of Andrew Borman !
This is indeed sad that this project had been taken down. Konami has been a big disappointment this year.
I do feel more should be done. Borman already does alot of work but it shouldn't really be his job to save what the lazy developers can't be asked to save. Other people do preserve stuff but what bugs me is when some try to profit from saving lost betas/games/etc. Same apply's to hoarders that bugs me. Release it or don't bother. Game preservation should be made LEGAL. I'm sure company's would rather a small income from a cancelled project then nothing at all and being lost forever.
If there was no legal issue, a lot more would be ending up online by me. I know you know this Demon but others may not, but I think there is a difference between holding onto something for the day when there are organizations built for this sort of thing to handle it properly, versus stuffing a disc in a drawer and forgetting about it. Ultimately though it can't just be myself, Frank, Demon, or a handful of other people taking the brunt of the risk, whether you look at it financially (where I can't simply throw away tens of thousands of dollars) or legally. Fans are a brutal bunch, always looking to put down for what isn't released rather than appreciating what work has been done to get the existing content out. The system is coming, one can only hope that the Volition release signals that times are changing. The current system as it stands is not sustainable. No one should have to go without money for food or a bus ride just because of some video games. Some companies is care less, like Sega, but for every successful community dump like the BS prototypes, there are situations like the Rare prototypes where I end up having to take a $1000 loss on top of the hundreds I planned to contribute because I received notices from Microsoft's lawyers. Some not smart people would say to ignore lawyers, that just isn't the way of going about things. We are literally picking through other people's trash right now. Which is better than nothing. We need to work with, not against, the wishes of game developers. My way of doing things has had a huge impact on being able to record more than just the binary, which is only the tiniest of material worth preserving. The stories of the game developers need to be recorded too, and that simply won't happen with the slapdash approach of leak everything. Hopefully there will come a day where companies will want to push out their prototype material, as that is the only opportunity we will have for real preservation of every step of the game development process. Boiling things down to Leak vs Hoarding with no in-between is dangerous, and does more harm than good. It doesn't create discussion around these things like some would have you believe, it only divides what is already a small group of hobbyists trying to do the job of a business.
As much as I agree with you Borman, I can also see some sense in companies wanting to bury early prototypes of their projects. As you said earlier, fans are the hardest people to please, and once they play a prototype that has a functioning feature missing from the final game, they're going to complain and get mad. Its also not always an easy task to get these prototypes out into people's hands. Many of them are signed with Dev encryption, meaning they won't run on retail consoles, and if we're talking about preserving older titles, this is near impossible to change, given that the sources for those early builds will be long gone and changed. People wanting to dab into prototypes are also going to want to play them, and seeing others fork out $$$'s for dev equipment that they're not even supposed to own won't make them happy (Just look at your comment section, whenever builds for PS3 and Xbox 360 leak and people are told they don't have the equipment to run it, they instantly come back with the "well that's not fair" BS) Finally, how would companies financially benefit from this? In their eyes, I can almost guarantee you that they will feel like they are giving away free copies of their game, assuming it is a content complete build. Would they make a compilation of all their milestone builds and publish them as a disc/download for purchase, or how else could they also benefit from this? Unless this hobby becomes bigger (it's a pretty niche one to get into. Most people look at the money preservationists are spending and instantly turn away), and more people pester publishers for access to early builds of games, I don't see the system changing. I'd reckon the best way to get this to change is to give publishers options to release early builds. They're first and foremost businesses, so money is always going to come into question, and if there is money to be made, and the work has been done earlier, they'll maybe consider changing their ways?
Trust me, you don't have to explain the difficulties of it. It's an uphill battle. But again, look at Volition. It was free press for something that was all but discarded. It's something that people continue to bring up. And I guarantee that it resulted in, if not money, then goodwill towards the company that will help. I'm sure with some time you could correlate their talking about SR PSP and upticks in sales or even just fan engagement, all of which helps sales. You also have the possibility of including it in rereleases and all sorts of post release support sort of situations, again pushing sales. The amount of negativity is far smaller than you might think when compared to the overall positive effect. Saints Row didn't get particularly worry about dev hardware issue. They know that people are smart and have their ways. Push the preservation point of view. There is a surprising amount of room for legal releases in many contracts, and the possibility for money is a possibility. Look at the Resident Evil 0 footage that was released too. If Capcom didn't see a monetary gain as a possibility, they wouldn't have done it. There's more, but I can't give away the farm right now. Once another company steps up, the ball will be truly rolling, and I do think it's happening.
I believe that the storage location should also play apart. A place free of natural disaster and a good natural humidity temperature for optimal storage. We got to list down by countries and location, peeps~~ Edit: Based on this link (https://www.sovereignman.com/lifestyle-design/5-countries-with-the-lowest-risk-of-disaster-3991/) 1) Uruguay. 2) Poland. 3) Singapore. 4) Estonia. 5) United Arab Emirates. Anyone from Uruguay and Poland can verify on this?
