On April 25, Garrett Fredley proudly presented himself on Twitter as the new senior engineer of the brand new team”Game Preservation“. Very quickly, the comments multiplied under his post, wondering above all what this role corresponded to.
In fact, this isan often unknown profession which deserves explanation. The new member of the family sony then provided answers.
What is “Game Preservation”?
Even if we want to avoid anglicisms as much as possible, the literal translation that we propose in the title is not perfect. The purely English term does not (yet) have an equivalent in other languages. In French, we could speak video game archiving and preservationit would stick more to what we want to express.
To put it simply, it is store logically and securely data, code, compilers, documentation and basically all the tools that allowed the creation of a game. Therefore, if the game needs to be recreated, remastered or otherwise exploited in the future, it is possible, even decades later.
Through this sometimes complex process, a game is archived in its entirety, rather than subsisting only through sometimes incomprehensible source code. By having at your disposal all the tools that allowed its original creation, working on it again becomes child’s play. Better still, since we use exactly the same processes, we can reproduce the bugs and security flaws identically for correct them more effectively.
It is therefore an essential shadow profession which allows video games to cross the agesthe process being close to a cryogenization finally: on arrival, we find the product in the exact state in which it was before its lethargy.
What is Garrett Fredley’s role in all of this?
Having already worked in the same position at EAhe explains that even if his role is still to be precisely defined, he will have more or less the same tasks as before but on a wider perimeter.
For those who want to learn more about his job, he shares a video of him giving a short presentation to the GCC 2019 to explain his motivations and the details of his job.
We will end with these very wise words which remind us once again that Twitter tends to put the cart before the horse:
playstation
In a few weeks, PlayStation players will be able to take advantage of the new formulas offered by Sony for PlayStation Plus. In addition to being able to enjoy a full panel of games, it will be easy to change the subscription plan.
Every month, Sony offers its subscribers new games through PlayStation Plus, and those for May 2022 have apparently leaked. On the program, FIFA 22, Tribes of Midgard and Curse of the Dead Gods.