On the Preservation of the Experience of Play in an MMORPG Environment: Livestreams and the Game Preservation Conundrum

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2023, examines whether preserving recorded livestreams from gaming content creators on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch could address a central gap in game preservation: the loss of the player experience in online environments. Current preservation methods, such as emulation, capture the game itself but not the social, interactive dimensions of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, where other players form a core part of the virtual world. The author proposes livestream archives as a potential remedy and tests this idea through qualitative research rather than offering a definitive solution.

The study draws on semi-structured interviews with experts who had more than ten years of experience in the video game field and who had made significant business or academic contributions. Participants were recruited through preservation institutions and included multiple staff members from the Video Game History Foundation, the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive at the University of Arizona, and the University of Michigan. Responses were analyzed through coding and qualitative methods, yielding a set of recurring themes rather than quantitative measures.

Interviewees identified three principal challenges to livestream preservation: the substantial server capacity and cost required to store hour-long, high-quality video; the need for new selection criteria, permissions processes, and internal regulations to determine which streams merit archiving; and the difficulty of securing funding in an already underfunded field that must justify the cultural significance of games themselves. Participants also reached three points of agreement: that preservation efforts overly emphasize physical media and digital game files at the expense of broader game culture; that livestreaming has become a major means through which audiences encounter and understand games; and that existing institutions lack the staffing capacity to take on such a project, with only the largest organizations likely able to do so.

The author concludes that the challenges are significant but that the field must move beyond archiving games alone toward a holistic preservation framework that captures the culture and experiences of players and fans. The paper frames this as an urgent call to game scholars, arguing that information about gaming culture and interaction is being lost while preservation remains focused on the game itself.