Those of you who follow me on Facebook know I’ve been struggling with trying to obtain a DLC (downloadable content) for an older video game called Knights of the Old Republic hereinafter referred to as KOTOR.  This game was released in 2003 and won Game of the Year — deservedly so, it’s a terrific game, and in researching for this post I discovered why.  My friend Drew Karpyshyn wrote the game, and it’s bloody brilliant.  An absolutely great story.  It’s a pity Lucas didn’t hire Drew for the prequels.  We would have had far better movies.  But I digress.  Back to the game.

I started playing this game because my terrific editor Stacy Hill (who is a fellow Game Girl) loved this game.  We bonded over our love for Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect so when Stacy told me this was a great game I listened.

I played it.  I loved it.  In the course of play I discovered there was downloadable content which gave you new shiny crystals for your lightsaber and I wanted them.  Partly because I wanted all the help I could get for the final boss fight, but also because I’m a completist when I play a game.  I want to do every mission, and explore every nook and cranny of the world.

Thus began two weeks of enormous frustration.  I searched for the game on X-Box Live.  No go.  I tried to access the DLC’s from the disc and kept getting bizarre error messages.  I began to panic that my disc was corrupted or worse that my console was dying.  I spent hours in an on-line chat with support at X-Box Live and finally I got my answer.  The servers for KOTOR were “no longer serviced”.  Which meant I couldn’t get the DLC and it had never been placed on a disc that I could discover.

Now I have to roll back a little to Wednesday night last week when I went to see GRAVITY with my friends Brett Shapiro, Sage Walker and Hank Messenger.  Brett is a game guy, knows a tremendous amount about the industry and he was mourning the fact that games are not respected as art, not even by the companies which create them.

Add to this a conversation with my friend and fellow writer Matt Reiten that the new X-Box console will not be backward compatible so all my beloved games — Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, KOTOR would not be playable on the X-Box 1.  I was shocked and furious, and resolved to buy another 360 console and just keep it in the closet until the inevitable death of my current console.

As I looked at this confluence of events I realized there was something far more important at stake here then me having to (potentially) repurchase games or not get to play certain games or buy an extra console.  What’s at stake is the value and preservation of art.

Because theses games are art.  A new kind of art, but most definitely art and just as worthy as books or movies or television shows or paintings for that matter.  When companies treat these games as mere commodities, as widgets if you will, they are devaluing the work of the artists and writers and programmers who worked to create something of value.  We live in a throw away society, but these games should not be treated with that lack of respect.  They are stories and adventures and paintings, and performances on the part of the talented voice actors.  They need to be preserved.  Coded in such a way they can be updated so they aren’t lost.  Of course not every game is brilliant.  Not every book or movie is brilliant, but the Library of Congress and the National Film Preservation protect and preserve all that they can because our throw away society shouldn’t forget what’s come before.

We don’t discard the Mona Lisa because painting styles have changed.