Play it Again - Popular Memory Archive

BACKGROUND: The digital future has a history and it needs remembering. Vital human and technical data is in danger of being lost. In the 1980s, Little is known about Australian and New Zealand's game history of the 1980s. A number of institutions around the world are currently exploring what is involved in incorporating digital games into their collections. For the most part, however, the knowledge about digital games is not held by cultural institutions but by knowledgeable fan communities. This project addresses these knowledge gaps. Play It Again is an Australia Research Council funded game history and preservation project focused on locally-written digital games in 1980s Australia and New Zealand. A collaboration of Flinders University (Adelaide), The University of Melbourne and Victoria University (Wellington) theAustralian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (New Zealand Film Archive), and the Berlin Computerspiele Museum. CONTRIBUTION: The PMA provided a model for: - The exhibition of born digital content, addressing the loss of the "original" artefact and the remediation of work for display; - The exhibition of historical videogames as situated in understandings of their use; and - How museums might work with and accept contributions from retro game fans / online communities. SIGNIFICANCE Described by historian Jason Scott of the Internet Archive as "a gold standard" (@textfiles) the Play it Again Project team have presented on the PMA at academic and museum conferences forums and workshops around the world. Stuckey has presented on the project at the Making the History of Computing Relevant International Conference at the London Science Museum (2013), New Zealand's National Digital Forum Te Papa, Wellington (2013), Museums and the Web conference (2015) the Society for Screen and Media, Montreal (2016) and other venues.