“You can gauge just what was going on in the industry at that point in time,” he says. This aspect of the collection, Young says, is both rare and critical since it allows academics to see how a game was marketed and discussed.
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There are also 5,000 video-game magazines, including full runs of famous gaming titles like Nintendo Power and Electronic Gaming Month. The U of T Mississauga Library has set up a space for anyone who wishes to make an appointment to play a game from the Syd Bolton Collection (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)
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“Having been in this space now for 20 years, I can look back at all kinds of absolutely landmark, influential works of which there is now no trace.”Ĭrucially, the Syd Bolton collection also includes all the manuals that came with the games, which can be equally as interesting for scholars’ research. “Obsolescence is such a tragedy in digital media,” she says. She says the Syd Bolton collection will let her students actually experience the gameplay of old titles they might otherwise only have seen on YouTube or read about on Wikipedia. Siobhan O’Flynn, an assistant professor, teaching stream, in U of T Mississauga’s department of English and drama who specializes in game studies, teaches a class in which students learn about game history and game ethics while designing their own games. U of T academics are already envisioning ways they’ll use the collection. “This collection would be the foundation on which all those activities would be built,” he says. U of T Mississauga is even considering launching its own game studies program, Young notes. The academic study of video games is now booming as generations of students and scholars who grew up playing the games are eager to explore everything from the history of game-interface design to gender representation in marketing materials and the business side of gaming. There are also several rare consoles, including the Panasonic 3DO. U of T Mississauga’s collection also includes dozens of different video-game consoles required to play the games, including every version of the PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles issued up to 2018. Library of Congress boasts only 7,000 games.įurthermore, U of T Mississauga now has games ranging from iconic, famous titles – like the Atari 2600’s Space Invaders or Super Mario 64 – to rare, deep cuts that sold only handfuls of copies.Ĭhristopher Young works on a game cartridge from the Syd Bolton Collection (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn) “There are only a few places in the world, let alone North America, that have a collection of this size,” says Young, who is serving as the collection’s first curator. who spent decades filling his home with long shelves jammed full of games before his death in 2018. That’s because many viewed games as disposable consumer products as opposed to crucial pieces of art and culture.Īt U of T Mississauga, that all changed in 2020 when it acquired its Syd Bolton collection, one of the largest, most comprehensive academic video-game collections with over 14,000 titles. The collection was put together by its namesake – a computer programmer in Brantford, Ont.
Scholars trying to research a 25-year-old game were often out of luck since video games were almost never collected by libraries. Yet, video games have been difficult for academics to study. “Everything we’re doing today, using phones and interactive technology – games paved the way.” “Video games were the canary in the coal mine for digital life. “They’re arguably the largest entertainment industry in the world – with a huge impact on everyday life,” says Christopher Young, the head of collections and digital scholarship at the University of Toronto Mississauga Library. They’ve enchanted gamers around the world for nearly a half century and influenced mass culture with their pioneering inventions in aesthetics, storytelling, music and graphics. From Space Invaders to Super Mario, video games are one of the most influential forms of media on the planet.
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