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As someone who likes good video games and hates bad video games I also look forward to the PS6 being 100% lost.
Bad art is still worth preserving is the issue
AAA slop is fundamentally not art. Your yearly FIFA is not art. It is a skinner box designed to extract as much money as possible. Gameplay and art direction and writing are not its concern. On the art/product spectrum it is so far into product that it has fallen off a cliff.
Nope. Still art. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news :(
Idk if I agree… even a really well made plastic spoon is still just a product. It doesn’t matter if artists and designers worked on it. Some things are not art. Not everything is art. Just because “games” are art, doesn’t mean all games are art. Like chess and soccer are not art. They are just games. What we call art when we refer to games is closer to an amalgam of all previous artforms than what previous generations called games. And FIFA more closely falls into that, what we used to call games before the 20th century.
Chess as a ruleset isnt art, but an individual chess set absolutely is. The construction of the pieces and the design of the board are art. Soccer isnt are either, but a really well made soccer ball absolutely can be.
There are simply too many artists involved with the creation of a Fifa game for it to not be art. The grass, the character models, the crowds, even the programming is a form of art. The individual pieces of art, a shoe texture for example, come together to create something completely lacking in any artistic merit. But bad art is still art.
I used to collect PS2 games and would specifically seek out bad games that no one cared about. I've played An American Tale: Fieval Goes West three times start to finish. It's dreadful, but there's still art in there.
Yeah… crafts are not art. That’s why we have craft and design museums separated from art museums. A really well made ball is a “piece of art” metaphorically. But it does seem people believe the metaphor to be literal.
Like a good craftsperson is an “artist” because they make beautiful ethereal objects, not because they make art.
I simply disagree with this narrow definition of art
I mean that’s fine. Art is hard to define.
But in general we know the difference between art and craft. A soccer ball can be art, if it’s art. If it’s a soccer ball, it’s an object and not art. Even if it’s the best soccer ball ever.
But like, if a toilet can be art, of course a soccer ball can be as well. It’s just that not all soccer balls or toilets (or games) are art.
You mentioned that artists worked on FIFA making the grass etc. They might as well be artists (and make art on the side). But making grass for a product whose sole purpose is to make money (and not transport you or convey an emotional/cognitive place) is not art.
A factory worker making a great toilet isn’t making art. But Duchamp grabbing that signing it and placing it in a gallery is.
Art is not about how well crafted something is at all. And you can’t craft your way into making art.
Also something not being art is not a criticism or negative judgement at all. There’s a lot (like most tbh) of really shitty art and a lot of really good non-art.
amalgam of all previous artforms
Unlike real art?
not sure what you mean. I do think games can be art. But not all games are art. Just like not all recorded audiovisual productions are art. Some are just commercials or talk shows.
There is a beautiful human tradition of taking a book and giving it to someone else like you’re giving them a ticket to another world. In this modern age we’ve been lucky enough to do that with movies and albums, too. And even the best of video games.
But, alas, the tragedy, who is gonna pay for that
Sony has found a solution!
i remember back in the day when we used to buy games as a group and did a dvdrip of that for everyone.
Piracy at this point just makes the most sense both materialy and from a moral stand point. The only time I buy a game anymore is if its indie and even then at times they get to big and start doing petty tyrant shit.
piracy is the only extant form of media preservation that exists in games right now, you might find it morally reprehensible but there is literally no other institution that will keep games alive in 25, 50 years' time
As the director of a historical video game preservation institution, and someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to this cause, this is accurate. We have attempted to work with the industry's trade organization to find a legal path forward, but they refuse to offer a meaningful alternative.
The full statement from the Video Game History Foundation:
This is unfortunate news for those who still prefer buying games on physical media, and is certainly a hit to consumer rights, the resale market, and game creators whose businesses rely on the physical market. But from the perspective of professional preservationists, this doesn't have as much of an impact as you might expect.
The reality is that the vast majority of video games produced over the last two decades were not made for dedicated home video game consoles, let alone pressed to physical media. And even when they were released on physical media, a day-one digital patch was all but guaranteed, meaning that even though a disc is preserving data in an accessible way, it may not represent the game that people actually played. Museums and archives have been preparing for this future for a while, with the expectation that putting discs on a shelf isn't going to be a long-term solution for preserving new games.
What continues to baffle us is what the industry expects institutions like ours to do about it. If platform owners are deciding to eliminate physical media and older digital storefronts, then we'd also like to see trade groups like the Entertainment Software Association offer meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research. Everyone agrees this is a serious problem, but the ESA has repeatedly opposed the efforts of cultural heritage institutions to reform digital copy protection laws to make it easier to do this work. The industry needs to meaningfully come to the table on this issue, because asking museums to download a copy of Grand Theft Auto VI and hope it'll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution.
I've actually watched those attempts at negotiation via the Copyright Office (basically a few video conference that are a couple hours long) and the ESA makes the most absurd maximalist arguments about how they should be able to control their works...truly infuriating.
Even with industry stonewalling, the VGHF does great work—check out their blog for some highlights; their podcast where they talk with people involved in game preservation, history, and development; and their free digital archive where you can peruse (and do full text searches of!) game magazines, art assets, trade show ephemera, and game development material (they've got a huge Cyan collection for the Myst/Riven fans).
A plus - They also want to rewrite history.
They know wind has changed and a lot of games which narrative made sense on its time will become bizarre and unaceptable very soon. Just as an example imagine all wars games showing US as heroes and "good guys"
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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