I believe game preservation is extremely important in the historical sense, like that of art. Much the same way we preserve the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, we should preserve video games. The best way to preserve them, in my opinion, is digitally. Digital copies are much easier to preserve because they do not take up nearly as space as the physical thing, and security is better. Just as books are now being catalogued into digital form, so should games be. There should be, as there already is on the internet (just less organized), a library dedicated to video games.
As such, it is crucial for emulators to exist. If it weren’t for emulators, I never would have been able to play Super Mario for the NES or the very first Legend of Zelda . Games, especially since so much of what they are lies in the experience, should be preserved in a way that allows people to enjoy that experience again and again. So, it shouldn’t be just YouTube videos of someone else playing the game, though those are important, too. Emulators are the most functional way of creating a library of video games that will be accessible regardless of what future consoles hold. What I mean by this is that anyone can access the games, much the same way a .pub or .pdf book is accessible to everyone.
That said, the problems arise when we start talking about recent games. Emulating the PS4 right now would infringe on copyright laws even if you worked for Sony and had access to all the appropriate information. But I really don’t think we should have to wait for the PS4 to become irrelevant like the NES or PSX. Just as libraries take on new books, so should a library of video games keep new titles. I believe libraries in the United States have already begun this project of preserving video games, but they are trying to keep the hard copies, not create a digital library. However, this is the first step, and I applaud them for that much. Emulators, hopefully, are the next step.
If, only if, emulators for all video games are organized into a library (just as physical and digital books are) will they work properly as game preservers. If we go on as we are, someone will eventually get sued for building an emulator with information they didn’t have permission to take – if that hasn’t happened already.
This does not, however, make consoles irrelevant. Emulators only exist because of the console, not the other way around. Some brilliant mind has to come up with the console in the first place, before someone can copy it to digital form. Still, emulators do remove the purpose of preserving the console itself. Thus, it might very well be that one day, consoles will become digital themselves, and we will see the rise of the computer console. Sony and Microsoft will be selling digital systems that we can download, rather than something to carry home from the store. They’d still be making money, so that would probably be cool with them.
If we build such a library, legalities will be much easier to deal with and, hopefully, console companies would be happy to contribute. Nonetheless, a library of emulators and video games is the best way to preserve the games themselves – for the sake of both protecting our history and art – that we may always experience it again and learn from it.