Technical properties of play a technical analysis of significant properties for video game preservation

Digital preservation for video games and electronic entertainment is an important endeavor to preserve the history and significance of the game design and development field. However, in practice, it is often difficult to tell what parts of preservation strategy must be emphasized in order to preserve the gameplay experience at an appropriate level of expectation of each stakeholder group. In preservation, we often talk about the concept of “significant properties” to determine which aspects of an experience must be preserved in order to faithfully recreate the experience for the stakeholder. This paper examines the concept of “significant properties” from a technical/layered approach, examining how the concept of significant properties relates to console hardware, firmware, peripherals, and play experience.