Nintendo of America is one of many companies investing in game preservation, and a new job listing gives us some insight into what those efforts look like. The company is looking to hire a "digital archivist" to build a library of historical material that can last for generations.
"We are seeking a Digital Archivist, Historical Systems to support the preservation, organization, and accessibility of historical hardware and software information," the company says in its job listing. "This role will design and implement a structured framework for organizing technical records, engineering documentation, source materials, and institutional knowledge related to legacy systems and platforms."
That's a lot of technical words for a position that ultimately boils down to 'build an internal library.' A company like Nintendo of America may have vast piles of historical development documents, advertising materials, and software prototypes on hand, but if nobody knows where any individual thing can be located, it may as well be lost altogether.
While many players might hear the phrase "game preservation" and think of efforts to ensure games are playable on modern devices, the field is far broader than that. Organizations like the Video Game History Foundation specialize in preserving not individual games, but development documents and other historical ephemera providing context on how historical games were developed, released, and played in their time.
Game publishers are starting to invest in this area themselves. PlayStation has a vast vault of historical materials, and Blizzard is building the same sort of archive. For the most part, these archives are never intended to be viewed by the public, but their work can help developers looking to build on historical games. Archived materials might, for example, show up as bonus features in remastered games.
Nintendo's digital archivist "will establish standards and processes that ensure historical information remains discoverable, usable, and preserved for future generations." The company describes this as a 12-month contract position, so it's presumably hoping that its hire will set up an archive and workflow that employees can then add to autonomously.
Perhaps the most notable duty in the job listing is this: "Interview subject matter experts and long-tenured employees to capture institutional knowledge." Nintendo's made a point of hanging onto longtime staff even as other companies lay off developers with decades of experience, but even in an environment that values experience many of gaming's most notable developers are reaching retirement age. Saving their stories and experience for the next generation is going to be a massive boon.
