IUs MARLA preserves games through artifact collection, play, and a third space. Students curate the space, fostering discussions on rare games and new gaming culture, documented academically.
Description:
Cultural Impact: In the MARLA lab at Indiana University Indianapolis, faculty and students are working on a games preservation project.
Project Components: Game artifact collection, playable digital artifacts, and the creation of a third space within the school.
Purpose of the Space: This space encourages play and provides access to older games for scholarly work. Students actively curate the space, showing interest in older and niche games.
Presentation Focus: How this space fosters conversations about rare but influential games across genres, develops interests in past games, and reveals that experiences with historical games typically do not happen with original hardware.
Developing Culture: This evolving culture of new experiences with older games includes meta-discussions and is documented through ephemeral conversations, video essays, and academic coursework.