LogIn"The amount of stuff that's been lost about Fallout and its early development saddens me."
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."
Although Interplay said it was going to keep it, it turned out not to be the case. A few years later, he was contacted and informed that "oops, we lost it," which Cain thought would be a trap to get him into "we're going to sue you if you say you have it." Yet it wasn't, and the documentations were truly lost.
"The amount of stuff that's been lost about Fallout and its early development saddens me. I had it. I had that in digital form and was ordered to destroy it." All he had right now about the Fallout, those stories and notes that he got to share through other videos, like the happy ending that he proposed for the original Fallout but got rejected, were either from a personal journal or happened to be recorded in paper format "unknowingly."
"So many other games that came out in the '70s, and '80s and '90s – the code is gone. The art assets are gone. Sure, you can try to crack open the databases and pull out those things, but you're only getting the final stuff. You're not getting the original source code or art. I think it's even happening for the '00s and the '10s and probably now in the '20s. Stuff is being lost." (thanks, GamesRadar+)
He concluded by saying that game preservation is super important, but it's not treated as important by enough people or companies.
Last year, he talked about why some of the titles that fans loved, such as Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, and Arcanum: Of Steamworks, didn't receive sequels.
Do you believe it's important to reserve games? Let us know. Also, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.