![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/f3df524e68c434273f1c039a87eccfab.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nSheffield 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
<\/p>\n
Engineers at the National Videogame Museum maintain the arcade machines to keep them playable [BBC\/James Vincent]<\/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
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":"Sheffield is preparing to level up the mission to save the nation’s video games for posterity with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130650,130648,130649,130647,130644,111,139,69,130646,145,130645,2673],"class_list":["post-216293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-arcade-machines","tag-british-film-institute","tag-cultural-assets","tag-national-archive","tag-national-videogame-museum","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-playing-games","tag-technology","tag-video-game-design","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}