Tim Cain, the co-creator of Fallout, has been sharing his industry experiences and insights through his YouTube channel. In the latest video, titled “Game Preservation,” he sheds light on this topic.
Cain believes that there are three major reasons why games, especially those from the 70s to 90s, got lost. Firstly, it’s that “no one thought to keep it.” There weren’t designated organizations or personnel responsible for keeping early prototypes after the game was shipped, and nobody was in charge of archiving code or art assets. Secondly, individuals wanted to keep their things private, yet over time, people lost interest in it, and finally, they got lost. Last but not least, it’s more on the organization’s side. “There’s a lot of organizations out there that demand to be the archive keeper, and then they do a terrible job at it. They lose the assets they were in charge of keeping. This has happened multiple times in my career.”
He continued to recall what happened when he left Fallout. “I was told ‘you have to destroy everything you have,’ and I did. My entire archive. Early design notes, code for different versions, prototypes, all the GURPS code – gone.”
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