{"id":387256,"date":"2026-01-04T08:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T08:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/387256\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T08:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T08:20:12","slug":"sheffield-project-aims-to-build-first-uk-video-games-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/387256\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheffield project aims to build first UK video games archive"},"content":{"rendered":"

James VincentYorkshire political editor<\/p>\n

\"BBC\/JamesBBC\/James Vincent<\/p>\n

Saving games as cultural heritage is becoming more important<\/p>\n

Sheffield is preparing to level up the mission to save the nation’s video games for posterity with a new cultural history project.<\/p>\n

The National Videogame Museum in the city is home to Behind the Screens – the first effort to create a national archive of video game design.<\/p>\n

Keeping games as cultural assets is becoming more important as developers rely less on physical releases, but the project also wants to record people’s experiences of living through games.<\/p>\n

Behind the Screens is supported by the British Film Institute’s Screen Heritage Fund.<\/p>\n

One of the early jobs of the project is to conduct the first comprehensive survey of games materials held by development studios.<\/p>\n

It hopes to then create a networked national archive of games design to keep for future generations.<\/p>\n

The project will also talk to players to collect their experiences of playing games and what they have brought to UK culture.<\/p>\n

\"BBC\/JamesBBC\/James Vincent<\/p>\n

Engineers at the National Videogame Museum maintain the arcade machines to keep them playable<\/p>\n

At the National Videogame Museum they maintain dozens of arcade machines from the industry’s early days, but they also curate developers’ notes and downloadable content no longer available to consumers.<\/p>\n

John O’Shea, from the museum, said it was a dual job involving screwdrivers and servers.<\/p>\n

“What we do is really carefully check every component and make sure that the games are going out and working in the best possible way,” he said. <\/p>\n

“If you think about a game like Space Invaders, it includes electronics, computer coding, but the materials break down over time so we have our engineers caring for that.<\/p>\n

“Now video games are social spaces themselves. If you think about Fortnite, you’re spending a lot of time within this space, not just passively, but actually creating things. <\/p>\n

“We want to celebrate that as a really rich cultural experience.”<\/p>\n

\"BBC\/Team17BBC\/Team17<\/p>\n

On show at the museum are designs for the classic game Worms by Wakefield developers Team17<\/p>\n

The plans include an oral history of the cultural impact of gaming which will form part of an exhibition.<\/p>\n

Nick Poole, from the gaming industry body UK Interactive Entertainment, said games were sometimes overlooked.<\/p>\n

“This is a cultural medium that’s defining culture for billions of players around the world daily,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A lot of that culture is intangible. It’s the games people play online, it’s what they’re doing behind the screens. <\/p>\n

“It’s so important to be able to capture those moments and tell that story.<\/p>\n

“It is literally everywhere and it’s changing lives, but unlike some previous media it’s not always going to be kept physically.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James VincentYorkshire political editor BBC\/James Vincent Saving games as cultural heritage is becoming more important Sheffield is preparing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-387256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}