Sony’s newly hired games preservation engineer has addressed clarification on his job role.
Earlier in the week, Garrett Fredley announced his role as senior build engineer in PlayStation’s “newly created Preservation team”.
As speculation grew on what this meant, Fredley has followed up by sharing a 2019 video from GDC on what preservation means.
“For anyone asking what Game Preservation is / what I do, I did a GDC talk a few years ago on the subject when I worked at EA,” he stated on Twitter.
“My work is similar, although larger in scope.”
In the video (spotted by TheGamer), Fredley explains that game preservation is a process where games can still be brought back and played after 100 years of storage. It’s about storing the tools, data, documentation, servers, clients, and compilers necessary to recreate a game from scratch – not just putting raw code in an archive.
He continues by discussing the benefits of preservation, such as allowing future developers to produce patches and updates should a security vulnerability be discovered. Of course, it also allows for the possibility of game remakes and remasters.
It’s unclear as of yet what this means for Fredley at Sony. He continued on Twitter: “TBD on whether I’ll have much of a role to play personally in any emulation work, although I’ll share what I can if it comes up. It’s only my second day.”
TBD on whether I’ll have much of a role to play personally in any emulation work, although I’ll share what I can if it comes up. It’s only my second day 😅
— Garrett Fredley (@SomeCronzaGuy) April 26, 2022
Still, hiring Fredley is a sign that Sony is taking preservation seriously – particularly with the inclusion of classic games coming to the revamped PS Plus subscription.
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