Fangame Preservation

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People have been making Mario fangames for decades, and the library of fangames has swollen to a very large size. However, many fangames (and video games in general) are in jeopardy of being lost. This article explores some of the issues affecting the preservation of fangames and small-scale indie games. Preservation of commercial video games is also an interesting and worthy discussion, but it's beyond the scope of this article.

Why preserve old games?

While most of the games hosted on MFGG never reach more than a few thousand downloads, Mario fangaming is large enough to influence a wide audience. Many people have fond memories of playing older games, and their experiences playing older games often influenced their decisions to become professionals in the fields of game development, art, music, or information technology. Plus, many games remain enjoyable years after their release, and preserving fanworks helps keep alive a piece of online history.

Threats

Video game preservation refers to efforts to ensure the physical survival of old games and making them easily accessible to the general public. A variety of factors hinder game preservation efforts:

Unreliable third-party file hosts

Many fangames, as well as screenshots and documentation associated with them, are hosted on third-party sites. Sites like Mediafire tend to delete files that aren't downloaded for a long time, and some sites have gone out of business altogether. Personal websites also tend to die after a few years. Even the more reliable file hosts, such as Box and Dropbox, are not 100% dependable - especially if someone deletes, moves, or renames a file by mistake.

Image hosts are especially troublesome in this regard - for example, on older versions of the MFGG forums, most links to Imageshack and Photobucket are no longer working after the image hosts retroactively changed their policies regarding hotlinked images.

Lack of backwards compatibility

Developers of operating systems often face trade-offs as they design their systems: Backwards compatibility with older software often has a performance cost or increases development time. Likewise, makers of game development tools are not always interested in maintaining compatibility with older operating systems. Therefore, older games often face compatibility issues when running on older systems. Some games might not even load, while others might crash frequently or have graphical bugs. For example, games made with Game Maker 8 may crash in Windows 8/8.1 if multiple instances of the same sound play.

Games made with Clickteam products tend to support a large variety of Windows versions than Game Maker.

This problem can be mitigated using virtual machines or tools such as DOSBox.

Software dependencies

Some games rely on third-party libraries to run properly - DirectX, XNA, and Java are three common examples. Some older games are incompatible with newer versions of these libraries, and some libraries are difficult to run in a virtualized environment.

Network dependencies

While such games constitute a minority of games on MFGG, some games require servers to support online functionality. These servers seldom run forever, and when that happens, the game might cease supporting online functionality - or might not even run at all.

Takedown requests from developers

Occasionally game developers find that they're no longer proud of their earlier efforts and request the removal of older projects. On MFGG, we certainly don't want any developer to feel hurt or embarrassed by something they made years ago. It's also totally understandable if you don't want to keep every old demo of your now-finished game. On the other hand, we'd ask for you to consider carefully before removing an older work - you might be surprised to find that many people still play your game and enjoy it.

Takedown requests from copyright holders

In nearly two decades of operation, MFGG has never received a takedown request from Nintendo or any other company or individual alleging infringement of copyrights or trademarks. However, a few fangames on other communities have been targeted with takedowns.

Unstable source code

A surprisingly large percentage of developers are careless in preserving game source code and other important assets - in fact, even big-name commercial game studios often lose track of their source code and assets, which hinders later efforts to re-release or remake games. For both amateurs and professionals, keeping source code and assets makes it easier to maintain older projects by recompiling them with newer development environments or making them open-source.

Many small-scale developers have only one up-to-date copy of their source code, a recipe for disaster. Physical media can - and often does - fail at the moment of greatest need. Always keep multiple backups of your work, ideally in multiple locations.

Difficulty in finding legacy development tools

Even when source code is available, it may be hard to find ways to open it. Newer development environments might be unable to open or compile older games, or might handle certain functions differently. For example, many game engines made for Game Maker 7 run differently in Game Maker 8. Some of the companies that make popular development tools keep older versions on their sites, but some don't. For example, YoYoGames doesn't host old version of Game Maker, so finding old versions can be difficult.

Opportunities

Fortunately, not all news is bad news! Many people take a keen interest in preserving classic games, and there are new technologies that help support game preservation efforts:

Virtualization

Virtualization allows older operating systems to run in the background of a host machine using tools such as VMWare and VirtualBox. Setting up a virtual machine (VM) requires some degree of technical sophistication, however.

Tools such as DOSBox and WINE serve a similar purpose.

Collectors

Many MFGGers have acquired a large collection of fangames on their computers, and if you're having trouble finding an old game, there's a good chance that one of the "oldbies" will be able to help you find what you're looking for.

Stable communities

While many fangaming sites have come and gone, some have lasted for many years. For example, MFGG's mainsite has been running continuously for 15 years, and almost all forum content during that time period still exists on the server. (Of course, third-party images and download links have been less fortunate.)