A lot of press has been given to the steadily increasing growth in the archival presence of videogames and they begin to enter the phase in their history where people realize that they actually deserve a physical history. Now curators at the British Library have taken a new path: creating a digital archive for the world of letters that has formed around videogames. “While game experts have previously tended to concentrate on archiving physical items such as computers, disks and cassettes,” The Independent explains in a recent article, ”the Library feels gaming websites perfectly illustrate the impact of the industry on society.”

The appreciation for videogame culture and criticism, one of the co-directors for the National Videogame Archive explains, comes from a broader appreciation of what it means to be a “gamer”: 

“Being a gamer isn’t just about playing games. It involves writing about them, reviewing them, debating which version is best, sharing strategies and tactics, writing solution guides, drawing pictures of characters, making movies, writing stories that develop game narratives…We need to make sure that all these practices, all these materials, many of which are shared online, are preserved so that we can understand what games mean, how they are played, and what their impact is.”

I wonder what the people of the future will make of flame wars. 

–Yannick LeJacq

[via The Independent]