In this episode, Dan talks with Piotr Gnyp, Adam Ziółkowski, and Marcin Paczyński from GOG, a platform focused on preserving classic and indie games without digital rights management (DRM). The discussion covers GOG's origins, its commitment to making unplayable games accessible, and its preservation program that highlights the alarming statistic that 87% of games released before 2010 are lost. They share insights on collaboration with larger companies, the rigorous process of re-releasing titles, and GOG's community engagement through the Dream List feature, which allows players to vote on games for preservation. The conversation touches on the industry's increasing acknowledgment of video game culture, the potential of technology to assist in preservation, and the ongoing importance of nostalgia in gaming. The episode as a whole, emphasizes GOG's dedication to restoring classic titles while maintaining their original essence and connecting with the gaming community's interests.

Links to GOG:

https://www.gog.com/en/

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Dan: Welcome to Building Horror, a Fiorzine podcast where we talk to folks in the

Dan: gaming industry who have a passion for horror games and are developers,

Dan: artists, creators, or just passionate enthusiasts.

Dan: I'm your host, Dan Morris, head and editor-in-chief of Fiorzine.

Dan: My guests on this episode, I have Adam, Marchand, and Peter from GOG Games. Welcome, guys.

Marcin: Hi.

Piotr: Nice to meet you.

Marcin: Hello.

Dan: Thank you guys so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Dan: I'm really, really thrilled to have you here on the show.

Dan: Anyone who's listening, if you don't already know about GOG,

Dan: that is a digital distribution platform, kind of like an online store where you can purchase games.

Dan: But the real kicker with GOG and what makes it excellent for those of you who

Dan: don't know about it, you actually own the games you buy from GOG.

Dan: That's like the big, big thing that you should be concerned about.

Dan: And it's a great platform for actually, you know, getting good games at a good price.

Dan: Now, GOG stands for good old games, right?

Piotr: Yeah, that's the acronym. Yes.

Dan: Yeah. All right. So I want you guys to go ahead and tell me and my audience

Dan: all about GOG, how you got here, what your mission is, and why people should, you know, care.

Piotr: So we have this original story, Marcin, right? We have this original story.

Piotr: It was back in 2008, I think, when Martin Iwinski or Mikhail Kicinski or both of them, this is vague,

Piotr: they went to States and they went to some video game store and they see all

Piotr: of these amazing classical games not being given enough light or exposure and they were somehow lost.

Piotr: And please bear in mind that 2008 was a long time ago, digital distribution was just starting.

Piotr: So they came up with the idea to try to bring this game, this ceiling of the

Piotr: games with old, good old games into online space.

Piotr: Hence, the store that not only, that you can not only buy the games from,

Piotr: but it was designed with game preservation and classical games in mind.

Piotr: And also to give all these amazing goodies that came up with games back then,

Piotr: like maps, manuals, stuff like that.

Marcin: Yeah, so to add to that story, the main point was that it was 2008, right?

Marcin: They were coming to GameStop or wherever the store was in-state,

Marcin: and they wanted to buy a game that was just released just four years ago.

Marcin: And it wasn't there, it wasn't available. And then they wanted to buy another

Marcin: that was released for just five years ago. Well, the box is there,

Marcin: but you can no longer play it because it's on, I don't know,

Marcin: on Windows XP and you have right already your Vista.

Marcin: Right. So it's all I messed up the operating systems, but the point was that

Marcin: the there was a huge speed at which the hardware and software were progressing.

Marcin: Some of the games that were released in physical copies just two,

Marcin: three or four years ago were absolutely unplayable right now.

Marcin: So they come up with the idea that, hey, actually, we start digitalizing those

Marcin: games and immortalizing them like that through a platform that we will create.

Marcin: So that's how GOG started.

Marcin: And another important factor was here that a lot of those games were not working

Marcin: because of the very weird DRM systems that they were put into those physical

Marcin: copies that made it very,

Marcin: very hard for people who bought those original games to launch them after some years have passed.

Dan: I've had enough struggles with the Windows Live games back in the day. Like, oof, those are...

Marcin: Oh, Windows Live

Adam: Game was that.

Marcin: Yeah, we all remember the horror stories.

Marcin: So it was that time. It was a very weird period in which games were disappearing

Marcin: or were not playable in a very, very short time after you purchased it for those exact reasons.

Marcin: So three reasons. Hardware, software, and DRM.

Marcin: And the fact that they were physical only. So, GOG was created to basically

Marcin: starting to digitalize all of those games and making them available through

Marcin: offline installers that you can basically download and store however you want.

Marcin: So, that's the huge ownership part of the value that GOG created.

Marcin: And this is still a very huge,

Marcin: part of what we do at GOG. We, of course, expanded. We have a lot of day one titles, a lot of indies.

Marcin: Right now, it's close to 11,000 titles on GOG that we have.

Marcin: But the game preservation has always been and always will be a huge part of what we do.

Marcin: And we actually doubled down on that in the recent months

Marcin: i want to say uh because of preservation program

Marcin: that is something that we started just last november and

Marcin: two months ago we started a dream list in people where

Marcin: people can vote and basically help us in in a meaningful way uh to bring those

Marcin: games back um through just voting leaving testimonials and you know creating

Marcin: that engagement that we can then

Marcin: like convert into a pitch or even in some cases the right or rights owners them

Marcin: themselves are looking at it and and you know they are reaching us to us saying

Marcin: that they were inspired by a certain comment that hey i didn't know that those

Marcin: games were so popular uh that there is such a huge

Marcin: to be perfectly honest it wasn't even a huge surprise for us some of the games

Marcin: that appeared at the very very top of the wish list my favorite example here

Marcin: is always Digimon the game I had no idea existed I

Dan: Saw that last night I was looking at the dream list and I saw Digimon World

Dan: and I'm like what? oh my god.

Marcin: That was exactly my reaction so but this is only this is actually one of the

Marcin: examples to show that this is working, right?

Marcin: Well, we do not have Digimon on GOG yet, but certainly this has put the game

Marcin: on our radar way higher than what it would normally be.

Marcin: And, yeah, it's in the discussion. We are trying to get it as much as any other

Marcin: game from the top 20, top 50 games on the wish list.

Marcin: Because, you know, we need to focus on something and the dream list is something

Marcin: that is really helping us to navigate and, you know,

Marcin: make sure that our focus is spent on the titles that will have the biggest impact,

Marcin: the impact of the biggest number of people.

Piotr: And I think we can actually say that we are the biggest entity in the market

Piotr: that is maintaining this huge bet catalog.

Piotr: I think it's 200 games in game preservation program, around 2,000 classical games.

Piotr: So I think there isn't any other entity in the game industry that maintains,

Piotr: actively maintains the catalog of games of that size.

Piotr: Because I can argue that if you buy the game on GOG in God's presentation program,

Piotr: it's the best value for money.

Piotr: Because once you buy it, we vouch that it will always work, no matter what.

Piotr: So you won't have to rebuy it. It will just continuously work because of Adim and his theme.

Piotr: It's a little bit steep to make this happen.

Adam: What we are doing is unique. is that when we bring the game to GOG,

Adam: we also ask GOG to make sure that those are working.

Adam: We are not only relying on the developers to make sure everything is maintained,

Adam: because usually there are opportunities where they couldn't help us,

Adam: so we just take this burden off them and

Marcin: Maintain the game ourselves.

Marcin: And while we think of game preservation, I just want to share one scary number. It's 87%.

Piotr: So recently, not recently, but several months ago, Video Games History Foundation

Piotr: did this study when they tried to check how many games disappeared released before 2010.

Piotr: And the number they came up with was 87%. And myself and Martin on our talk

Piotr: on Digital Dragons checked it.

Piotr: Like, we took, like, the magazine from exactly 30 years ago, from May 1985.

Piotr: And we see there was 34 reviewed games or highlighted games and out of them,

Piotr: I think 70% was not available.

Piotr: And the 80% of those available were done by GOG.

Piotr: So it's maybe a lower number in this magazine, but still, it's a scary number.

Piotr: And as we all know, games are not dominant cultural things.

Piotr: Like we learn stuff through games, we want games, we play games.

Piotr: We are the biggest entertainment industry.

Piotr: So within this weight of cultural importance, it's kind of weird that we don't

Piotr: care about our digital heritage.

Dan: Oh, for sure. That's a thing that has always mattered to me.

Dan: And I've struggled with that before too.

Dan: When there's a game that I either bought originally that you can't get now or it's unplayable now,

Dan: or the other side of that coin is games that get released,

Dan: but then for some reason get taken away from a digital storefront or a license

Dan: expires and then you can't buy those games anymore they just disappear they

Dan: don't exist anymore and there's games that I learn about and I'm like I didn't

Dan: play that game when it came out can I play it?

Dan: No it's gone like oh alright so yeah it's incredibly.

Piotr: Important so Martin's daily job is bringing this game back and figuring why

Piotr: they are not available and what happened to them and he has some crazy stories about it Shh.

Dan: Heh.

Marcin: We can go to that topic now if you want I was going to say

Dan: He gave you the segue so feel free I'm sorry.

Marcin: I will write that

Marcin: yeah so the first I mentioned the dreamlets right so this is one of the like

Marcin: the information source or one of the things that we take into

Marcin: consideration while we are

Marcin: Deciding what the games we should be focusing on.

Marcin: And when we take a game, one of those titles, the first thing that is happening is actually research.

Marcin: So figuring out, okay, this game is not available. So why it is not available?

Marcin: So who was the original developer? Who was the original publisher?

Marcin: What happened to that developer? What happened to that publisher?

Marcin: On which platforms the game was released. So we are doing all of that research

Marcin: and we're trying to figure out who actually has those rights now or who might

Marcin: help us to locate those rights.

Marcin: So sometimes we are even reaching out to the original developers

Marcin: because 99% of the time they're super helpful trying to help us to understand

Marcin: what is happening currently.

Marcin: So they usually say that, hey, there was this company, it went bankrupt,

Marcin: so this company bought it and so on and so forth, and there's like a chain that

Marcin: we are climbing, so to speak, and at the end, we have the rights owner.

Marcin: And if it's a singular entity, meaning it's a singular person or a company,

Marcin: that's easy then well easy ish but sometimes rights

Dan: Get like split that later.

Marcin: Unfortunately the longer uh the older the games are that's why it's it's important to uh

Marcin: to it's important for us to speed up the process because the people who own

Marcin: the rights if they for example, pass away, the rights get split between,

Marcin: you know, the usual inheritance.

Marcin: And that is a nightmare to solve a lot of times.

Marcin: We had a case like that a couple of years ago with a game where,

Marcin: well, that was an easy, so to speak, case in which there was only one person

Marcin: that inherited it, but that person didn't know about it because they inherited

Marcin: the whole estate or whatever.

Dan: Yeah, they had no idea that that was within.

Marcin: Yeah, so they had no idea that within there was this one thing that they also owned.

Marcin: And even worse, that person was

Marcin: kind of like a living of greed so it practically

Marcin: no digital presence uh so we

Marcin: actually hired a person and it it happened in

Marcin: you in uk uh hired a

Marcin: person in uk that found that guy uh he

Marcin: was living like in the scottish mountains or something like amazing like that

Marcin: um and And we had a call with him and when he found out that this is the case

Marcin: and that we want to bring this game back, you know,

Marcin: to keep his father's heritage, he was like super helpful and we did that.

Marcin: I cannot say which game it is. I wish I could but there is a small caveat to

Marcin: that story that I'm not telling that might actually hurt and not help so but

Marcin: there is a story like that but it's

Dan: Just good to know that there is a game now that wouldn't have been otherwise because of this yeah.

Marcin: It's amazing that it's that usually when you are that's my experience anyway

Marcin: that when we are talking finding the right owners we are if we are talking to them,

Marcin: usually they are very helpful,

Marcin: right?

Marcin: Because you kind of feel that you are talking with, especially from the earlier era,

Marcin: that you are not talking with a company, but you are talking with someone who

Marcin: did all of that because of the passion that he had for those games,

Marcin: for those projects, for those topics, right?

Marcin: There was another case like that with a couple of simulation games that one

Marcin: guy created in the early 90s.

Marcin: And um they were there then

Marcin: they were kind of forgotten and but they were pretty hard high on our wishes

Marcin: so we wanted to bring them back so we we tracked down the guy and he turned

Marcin: out to be uh right now like a multi-million dollar guy in texas actually uh that owned an oil field

Marcin: and you know so he had like a huge big company like i'm like mind-blowing network

Marcin: so and here Here we are, you know, asking him about those few games that will be sold for $5.99.

Marcin: But I sent him an email. I expected absolutely nothing.

Marcin: And he was so helpful. Like, he spent so much time, you know,

Marcin: bringing all of the materials, like making sure that we have everything.

Marcin: You know, she was super, super happy that we are going to maintain the heritage

Marcin: that he created back in those days.

Marcin: So amazing things like that happen when you are working with passionate people

Marcin: that still have a lot of feelings to the projects that they create.

Marcin: So that's the the the upside of what we are doing here uh like a kind of like

Marcin: a reward when you feel really feel that you are helping yeah

Dan: You get this person who's genuinely just thrilled that you want to keep something

Dan: that they made alive and or at least resurrect it maybe even from the dead and

Dan: that's it's heartwarming to hear that that there are folks like that who are

Dan: just like oh my god i'm so happy like yes thank you absolutely want to do this.

Marcin: Yeah that that is i i have

Marcin: to say that this is even true for those big companies out

Marcin: there uh so like the let's call

Marcin: them the big five right uh the big publishers but

Marcin: with them the story is much more complicated meaning

Marcin: that even when you are we are working with people

Marcin: that still have passion for those games or did

Marcin: not really participate in creating them but there

Marcin: are a lot of gamers there that understand how awesome

Marcin: it would be to bring certain titles back but within

Marcin: the big corporations they are bound by corporations rules so

Marcin: in order to bring those titles back there needs to be

Marcin: a business case a justification so this

Marcin: is mainly what i am usually spending my time on so constantly trying to find

Marcin: creative ways in which we can build a case for

Marcin: them to process to that that would be like big enough or or for them to process internally

Marcin: and through that have a release on on GOG and that is actually one of the things

Marcin: that that happened with with Resident Evil and Capcom because Capcom is one

Marcin: of those companies that we try to convince that we are the right partner for the job there's

Dan: Literally was gonna be my follow-up question was I wanted to learn more about

Dan: that process and learning.

Piotr: She's good at Segwit, you know.

Dan: Yeah. Because obviously the reasons, like the main thing that drew me here,

Dan: obviously I've been following GOG for a number of years, but it was like when

Dan: the release of Resident Evil came out, I was like, oh my God,

Dan: like how did this happen, you know?

Dan: And then Dino Crisis, what, six months later, give or take? Was it something like that? Three?

Marcin: Yeah, something like that.

Dan: Yeah, so I was like, oh my God, like two big, like mainstay survival horror

Dan: games from Capcom from the PS1 era that you guys all of a sudden popped out out of nowhere.

Dan: And I'm like, I want to know how that happened. I wanted to know how that process went down.

Dan: Like you said, a big company like Capcom, you know, obviously they have the

Dan: means, they have the resources to, they could have done their own re-releases

Dan: of Resident Evil, I would imagine, but they haven't.

Dan: But tell me about how that went down then.

Marcin: Okay, so I will start with the legal and with the business side,

Marcin: and then Adam will follow up on the technical side that was equally,

Marcin: if not more interesting, in my opinion.

Marcin: So with...

Marcin: With Capcom, and this is actually true for a lot of games that we have or still

Marcin: do not have on GOG, it's never like a one-time thing, meaning that it's not like, hey,

Marcin: we are working on those games once, and, you know, if we won't fake it,

Marcin: the topic is closed, right?

Marcin: No, the process works, it looks in a way that we are asking about a certain

Marcin: title, we are trying to build a case, we do not succeed.

Marcin: Okay, year passes or two years, we are trying again. two

Marcin: years to over a year we are trying again and again

Marcin: and again and yeah for diablo it took us

Marcin: like 10 years of trying uh and

Marcin: waiting for the planets to align and when

Marcin: that happens there is a good pitch that you know strikes

Marcin: the right tone with the company at the right time and

Marcin: the door open uh so that allow us to

Marcin: to release um the blizzard titles um

Marcin: uh on gog and it with capcom

Marcin: it was all of that but on top

Marcin: of that uh japanese companies in general

Marcin: were very usually very against drm like for them everything that is drm free

Marcin: was something that equaled pi that kind of like they had like an equal signed

Marcin: drm equals piracy right this is something that

Marcin: they had in their mind and also because they kind of view DRM3 as a

Marcin: That if you are not protecting your work, it's kind of disrespectful to that

Marcin: work and people who worked on it, if that makes sense.

Marcin: So it's kind of, it's understandable, it comes from the culture.

Marcin: So for the longest time, they weren't like DRM-free. Okay, no, absolutely not.

Marcin: But this approach, this stance has been changing recently in Japan.

Marcin: And I like to think that GOG had something to do with it, because this is something

Marcin: that we wanted to change within those companies for many, many years.

Marcin: And, you know, we started with one publisher from Japan, another and another. We had SNK, Konami.

Marcin: Previously we had Korean X titles, but they were from Europe.

Marcin: Office, Sega.

Marcin: Like Yakuza games helped a lot into pitching that. And then after that, it was Capcom.

Marcin: So we managed to convince them that, first of all, DRM3 is not a problem.

Marcin: It's actually, you are actually making something that is very,

Marcin: very cool for the players, for your audience and for the people who love those games.

Marcin: And the second thing is that, hey, we are actually the right partner to do this.

Marcin: Like, if you wanted to do it right, it's with us.

Marcin: And on top of that we needed to convince them that uh well

Marcin: convince them i'm talking like capcom is like one

Marcin: person uh because we we had

Marcin: a huge ally or allies within the

Marcin: company that basically like uh with us

Marcin: build the case internally to like to push it and

Marcin: um yeah without without those amazing guys uh within capcom it would be way

Marcin: harder even impossible for us to uh to push those projects because they didn't

Marcin: really see why not everyone at Capcom saw the value in creating,

Marcin: in releasing the classics,

Marcin: meaning that, hey, we have all of those amazing remasters.

Marcin: Why would you care about classic right now? Right.

Marcin: So we are like, okay, guys, there is a value here.

Marcin: Like, look at the time it was just our wish list that was like a kind of like

Marcin: an old version, very old archived version of our Dreamlist that still had some votes.

Marcin: Look at this. Look at this. And we managed to build a case together with our

Marcin: allies, so to speak, within Capcom.

Marcin: And after a long time, the case was approved.

Marcin: And we were able to start working on those games and sign the agreement.

Marcin: And we came to Adam, we showed him the titles, and that's where his work started.

Adam: Yeah, thank you very much to the segue. Actually, me and the team started working on that.

Adam: So what happened when Marcin brought us the Resident Evil titles,

Adam: we first needed to figure out what we could actually do with those.

Adam: So basically what we started with was identifying on what kind of PC

Marcin: Ports were released

Adam: Because we are basing our releases on PC ports currently. So yeah,

Adam: so we needed to gather all of the language versions for the games and including the Japanese version.

Adam: And this was done with Capcom.

Adam: So they helped us to gather all the ESOs and stuff like that.

Adam: Then the next step is actually to make the games running just so that they are running.

Adam: So for that, we usually create something like an environment,

Adam: like simulating the machine from the epoch.

Dan: Like an emulation of some sort?

Adam: No, it's actually like building a machine that is true to the original.

Dan: Oh, okay, you actually built it.

Marcin: Yeah, we have it actually there. We should probably send you some pictures.

Marcin: If there is a piece in the magazine, that picture might be actually amazing.

Dan: I'm up for it.

Adam: Then the next step is making it run actually on a modern system,

Adam: like bare bones make the game running, and then we determine what we would like to change.

Adam: But it's always we always keep in mind that we don't want to change too much,

Adam: we want the games such games like Resident Evil Originals and Tino Crisis to

Adam: be as true to the originals as possible in terms of changing the gameplay,

Adam: we don't want to change the gameplay too much, we want to leave the tank controls

Adam: intact so everyone can experience

Adam: this design with everything that it brings with

Dan: It I'm a proponent of tank controls. I'm a purist, so I'm happy to keep them in there.

Marcin: Yeah, exactly.

Adam: Yeah, and then we build on that. On top of that, we identify legacy issues that

Adam: were legacy bugs that were always in the game.

Adam: And we see if we should be fixing those, or maybe they are a part of the flavor that the game brings.

Adam: And then we put our own stuff on it. So for that, it would be our direct lens

Adam: wrapper that allows us to render the games in high resolutions, modern resolutions.

Adam: That's especially beneficial for 3D games like Resident Evil and Dino Crisis.

Adam: Then we also have our input wrapper that allows us to make the games compatible

Adam: with all the modern controllers and stuff like that. So we can plug in now.

Adam: Right now, I think almost everything that people use this, including the Stadia

Adam: controller. So yeah, so that's actually pretty cool.

Adam: And yeah, and so that was the start of the process.

Adam: Then we had like, let's say, semi-final release candidate build that then

Marcin: Went to the QA process.

Adam: So the QA process started with our internal team doing the QA.

Adam: And once we confirmed that everything is working, everything is good as is for

Adam: us, we went to Capcom in that.

Adam: And then we discovered that Capcom actually wants to treat those releases as

Adam: a modern-day release that they would usually do by themselves.

Adam: So we got all of the requirements for the game that it should have that we needed

Adam: to meet. and then they would actually

Marcin: Wait the list that they send us had like 170 positions and questions

Adam: Yeah the game has this does the

Marcin: Icon look like this something something oh my god it was like

Adam: Yeah yeah it was a experience yeah something that we didn't like expect because

Adam: we expected that sometimes it's just like we do this stuff we send them for

Adam: their approval and they're okay looks good let's go

Adam: We trust you, but with Capcom, it was like, okay, we need to be a part of that.

Adam: So then they actually went and started the QA cycle.

Adam: And this QA cycle for Resident Evil 1, I think it was almost a month.

Adam: So we would be in constant back and forth with them sending us reports on stuff

Adam: that they would like for us to either elaborate on or change.

Adam: And there were stuff like hey, we cannot pick up this ammo piece that is on

Adam: one of the rooms and we were like, okay, but this was never pickable

Piotr: That's not a general version,

Adam: Yeah That's a negative issue, but okay, no problem, we can do that if you are

Adam: okay with that So there are also some room for more improvements there and it was a very beneficial

Adam: collaboration there So I think we, with Resident Evil, I think we stopped at like

Marcin: 40th iteration.

Adam: So, like, we did 40 builds that they would, like, constantly check. And then 40

Marcin: Builds after they were sent to Capcom and that is not including anything that

Marcin: was happening during the QA.

Marcin: And we were doing the full playthroughs as well on all of the language versions,

Marcin: except Japanese, I think. or even with Japanese?

Adam: No, we did Japanese, but yeah, we did Japanese because that was also a requirement.

Marcin: Oh yeah, and a lot of those games you also have, you know, scenarios A,

Marcin: B, B, A, so you need to be mindful of that.

Marcin: There are also this orange mode.

Marcin: So there is a lot of those different modes that you needed to check if this

Marcin: is actually working still,

Marcin: and Capcom wanted to check absolutely all of the variations and many of them

Marcin: were actually checked by us we created save files with specific states of the game so it was

Adam: At some point we've created cheat code so it's easier to like you know we're

Adam: deleting that will give you like rapid answer or whatever so you can just breeze

Adam: through the game uh but the other stuff with those games uh was that every language

Adam: version is actually a separate game.

Adam: So it's a separate build. Every

Adam: build would have different issues like happening in different places.

Adam: So for Resident Evil, I think it was four or six language versions.

Adam: So basically, but yeah, basically four or six games to be prepared.

Adam: And then when we were done with that, we moved to Resident Evil 2 and then to

Adam: Resident Evil 3 and the cycle would repeat itself.

Adam: So it was a very, very intense process, but yeah, very, very nice.

Dan: How many people worked on that project?

Adam: So, we usually have one dedicated reverse engineer that does the initial build.

Adam: Then there is QA team is about, depending on, for, well, for Capcom, it was like,

Marcin: Was it eight people Patrick?

Adam: It was more, right?

Marcin: And if we include everyone that's probably like eight people.

Adam: Yeah. Then there's me doing like talking and checking and making sure that Capcom

Adam: is on track with everything and that we are doing everything as they would like to do that.

Marcin: And you're kind of like a producer there.

Adam: Yeah, basically I'm just sending emails.

Adam: Instead yeah and then and then once we are done the whole process is taken over

Adam: by our marketing team and sales team to make sure that the game is like properly

Adam: um presented on the store and so yeah

Marcin: We also needed to like from other like a product things capcom renewed the age ratings for Oh, yeah,

Adam: That was actually

Marcin: What we didn't expect. Yeah, so that was something that we waited for like a

Marcin: month for as well because everything needed to be resubmitted after the builds are already done.

Marcin: So, yeah, it was a journey.

Marcin: But at the end, obviously, well worth it.

Marcin: I want to say that practically speaking, we had a perfect release. Yeah, and the

Adam: Day one of the release, so that was.

Marcin: Yeah, I think right now, even at the release, it has like 95% positive on GOG.

Marcin: So that is, yeah, super happy with that.

Marcin: And that kind of also created like a new standard for us.

Marcin: And we use that standard for games in our preservation program.

Marcin: Um, so that is actually one of the reasons we do not have two,

Marcin: 3000 games in the preservation program, even though those 3000 builds were created by us, uh,

Marcin: over the last 15 years, uh, we are making sure that basically before the game

Marcin: is added to the program, that it's, that it is in line with our current quality standards,

Marcin: uh, and usually that requires, uh, some additional work.

Marcin: But, yeah, a lot of times we are finding things that we can now fix that we

Marcin: were not able to do when we were first releasing those games.

Marcin: A cool example here is probably the Houtings from Silent Hill 4.

Marcin: Not sure if you're familiar with Silent Hill 4.

Marcin: But in general like in the PC version there are those hauntings that the main

Marcin: character had and they are random and there were seven of

Piotr: Them I think they are in every version but PC has no number they

Marcin: Are in every version but the problem of the PC version is that out of those

Marcin: seven hauntings only four appeared in the PC versions on console you have access to all seven

Adam: But PC4.

Marcin: And that was always their case. And when we were adding the game to the preservation

Marcin: program, we managed to fix it.

Marcin: And the fix was actually quite easy, because it turned out that when the game

Marcin: was developed, basically the developer put in Random 4 instead of Random 7.

Piotr: Yeah, so take the random number between 1 and 4 and 1 and 7.

Marcin: Yeah, and right now all of the huntings are available in the PC version of GOG. best edition ever

Dan: Yeah i had the uh ps4 with.

Adam: Modern controllers yes

Dan: Yeah i got the gog version of silent 4 and i

Dan: picked that up i think last year and i said like it's

Dan: one of the i played the game originally on the ps2 and it was one of those like

Dan: oh this doesn't feel like a typical son hill and i kind of like bounced off

Dan: really fast but then playing the pc build it's like oh this is much more intuitive

Dan: than i remember the game being before and that actually wants uh that wants

Dan: me to lead into and segue to my own question about Silent Hill.

Dan: Obviously, the biggest question on most of people's minds, I imagine the horror

Dan: community is Silent Hill 2, 3, 1, like, are those games?

Dan: Obviously, like, I actually wrote it down here. I know Silent Hill 2 and Silent

Dan: Hill 1 are two of the most voted games on the dream list right now with over,

Dan: like, 100. I'm sure you do.

Dan: What was it? I get to the count here. It was, like, 161,000 votes between Silent Hill 1 and 2.

Dan: And then three is not too far behind with 38,000 votes.

Dan: So I'm sure there's probably no answer you could tell me, but is there anything

Dan: in the works for those guys? Yeah, we're trying to.

Adam: Make the POG work again for the PC version of Silent Hill too,

Marcin: Because there's no reason. Yeah, Silent Hill is something that we are working on right now.

Marcin: Meaning that, okay, it's,

Marcin: We are working on practically speaking of most, if not all, of the top 20,

Marcin: top 30 games on our dream list.

Marcin: And so when I'm saying we are working on it, it doesn't mean that it's going

Marcin: to be released anytime soon.

Marcin: But what really helped is its position on the dream list.

Marcin: Meaning that this gave us another

Marcin: another fact to show obviously the right holders are Konami right that this

Marcin: actually that might have some value and that value might be enough to do the

Marcin: to justify the resources that are needed to bring this game back because

Marcin: usually when a game is not especially from Japan when a classic game is not

Marcin: available it's almost always rights issues and expiring licenses

Marcin: and those are not easy to bring back

Marcin: so it's a process that's what I'm trying to say I was hoping that with Silent Hill 2 the remake

Marcin: those issues will be solved you

Dan: Would think that would ease that a little bit.

Marcin: Yeah you would think and but unfortunately there is i cannot go into specifics

Marcin: but it's it's not like we would not want to meaning us and and and konami but

Marcin: it's uh it's a difficult case

Dan: It's more complicated than.

Marcin: That yeah it's it is complicated but uh yeah

Adam: We never give up

Marcin: Give up so so uh one of those names i'm really hoping that we will have a breakthrough

Marcin: um and like i said again the dream list and its position there

Adam: All of those votes all of those

Marcin: Testimonials really help. So, yeah, this is definitely one of the games that

Marcin: I'm spending the most of my time on currently.

Dan: Good yeah i know um that's in our

Dan: community in my like everyday peripheral vision

Dan: is always people screaming for sun hill or arguing about salmon

Dan: hill especially like sound hill 2 and then

Dan: there's like the hd collection which everybody seems to universally

Dan: hate because of technical issues and things uh

Dan: everyone's a purist for the original versions of the games

Dan: i still fortunately still have like my original

Dan: copies of the original games well yeah i see the values for those are insane

Dan: now like how expensive they are um but yeah like that's the thing too is a lot

Dan: of classic horror games are becoming heavily sought after you know your silent

Dan: hills your rule of roses your uh,

Dan: haunting grounds like these games are worth hundreds

Dan: if not thousands of dollars if you want to try to get a physical copy and it's

Dan: like that's just unreasonable and insane for a regular person to try to achieve

Dan: especially when it's like the game used to be sold in clearance bins for like

Dan: five dollars and now people are asking for hundreds of dollars for them um so it's yeah.

Marcin: Very subtle for collector collector second i didn't know about that to be perfectly

Marcin: honest uh that the that horror games from that era are like more sought after than like average so to

Dan: Speak yeah it's been a it's been a.

Adam: Trend yeah i think it's like the case of them being a little more limited in

Adam: like quantity when they are

Dan: Released yeah there wasn't a lot of releases.

Marcin: Like especially what might be the case

Dan: Like the more unknown games like kuwan the haunting grounds the clock tower

Dan: threes they didn't see as big of a physical launch so there's less copies of

Dan: the games out there and that makes them much more valuable especially in the eyes of the collectors.

Marcin: Better road so yeah one of those days uh i'm really hoping that we will see

Marcin: all of the silent Heal games on GOG.

Marcin: I hope you will be able to somehow address all of those issues that are currently there.

Marcin: Yeah, like I said, we never give up. So, yeah, and if

Marcin: it really helps to bring the Dreamlist votes to the publisher's attention.

Marcin: So, yeah, for anyone who is listening, if you wanted to help, just leave them.

Piotr: And they are reading the stories. They're reading them. They're reading this.

Marcin: Oh, yeah. That actually was surprising to me as well.

Marcin: Even to me. Because, you know, we launched the Dreamlist and I have a call with

Marcin: a very big publishers about a very big game. I cannot say which one.

Marcin: And we are talking about it. Basically, he

Marcin: said that he sold the dream

Marcin: list and he said that

Marcin: he was inspired by one of the testimonials there to actually get back to us

Marcin: and to see if this is the if there if we can do some something here together

Marcin: uh so so that really really helps

Marcin: um that's pretty powerful yeah it's like the

Dan: Thing that one person's words are shifting the needle so yeah.

Adam: That's that is exactly

Marcin: What happened and that was a huge surprise for me and i've seen a lot of things here so oh

Piotr: Dear listener it might be you

Piotr: Yeah,

Dan: I had a follow-up on that and now I'm blanking, but yeah, anyways, getting down the hill.

Dan: Oh yeah. So this might be completely unrelated to you, but it's popping in my

Dan: head now because it wasn't too long ago that PlayStation suddenly released the

Dan: Dino Crisis PS1 classic.

Dan: Does that have anything to do with what you guys were doing or is that just

Dan: a whole Sony unrelated thing?

Marcin: Uh that was unrelated to anything that we that we were doing

Dan: Okay just interesting timing then there yeah.

Marcin: It was yeah

Adam: Yeah caught us by surprise there as well yeah

Dan: I was surprised because i was really annoyed

Dan: with playstation originally because those ps1 classics i

Dan: had bought way back on the ps3 so i had all

Dan: the resident evils i had dino crisis but then

Dan: when they were like hey now you can play Resident Evil 1 on PlayStation

Dan: 5 it was locked behind the

Dan: PlayStation Plus account and I'm like I bought that game why

Dan: is it locked behind a Plus account and then they

Dan: released it and all of a sudden it's there I can play it again

Dan: because I already paid for it and then the same thing happened with Dino Crisis

Dan: so like hey we added Dino Crisis to the backwards compatibility catalog and

Dan: I already had it like I could just play it because I had bought it on the PS3

Dan: so I was like that's pretty cool like I'm really glad they did that instead

Dan: of like hey you need to buy this again if you want it like i already bought it.

Marcin: Yeah yeah and this is actually this is actually amazing because this is a trend

Marcin: that we are seeing uh uh well already and there are there is more to come of

Marcin: those big companies like putting uh much more attention on the topic of game preservation

Marcin: uh because they they started to see that there is some value

Dan: There um.

Marcin: Like just mentioned like how amazing it was to be able to, you know,

Marcin: to access those games again, even though you bought them on PlayStation 3, right?

Marcin: So it's great to know that those games seem to not be forgotten.

Marcin: And there's a growing trend within those big publishers that hopefully will

Marcin: bring many more of those amazing titles from the past.

Marcin: And we like to think that we played a small role in all of this and that we

Marcin: will continue that the fact that this trend is happening will help us to get...

Marcin: All of the top 10 wishlisted games on our dream on our dream list back

Dan: Yeah the.

Marcin: Future is definitely better than what it used to be even a couple of years ago

Dan: Yeah i i want to use that to mention that one

Dan: of the hardest things for me is whenever i write a piece or

Dan: i've done an article about an older game that you can't play

Dan: unless like i've written

Dan: pieces but like that's one of the things like i wrote the piece about resident evils

Dan: gog release and i'm like i'm so happy to see these games available

Dan: on gog it makes it available to everyone you don't

Dan: have to have you know a physical disc copy anymore for

Dan: the playstation one you don't have to have had the digital ps1

Dan: classic edition that was only playable on the

Dan: playstation 3 and it's always like a heartbreaking moment for me when i write

Dan: an article or a piece about a game and it's like this game's cool you should

Dan: definitely play it but you can only do so if you have this piece of equipment

Dan: you have the original physical game that might be selling for hundreds of dollars and so on and so forth.

Dan: So that's like the big thing too with the preservation aspect.

Dan: I know Marcin, you need to get going pretty soon, correct?

Marcin: Yeah.

Adam: Yeah.

Marcin: Apologies.

Dan: No problem. If you want to say some final words and then you can...

Marcin: My final words? Well, the call that I am running to right now is actually

Adam: About one of the

Marcin: Games we discussed. Nice. Perfect.

Piotr: So good luck.

Dan: Yes, very much so.

Marcin: Okay. Thank you very much, guys. It was a great talk. Thank you for having us. Thank you.

Adam: Bye, Marcin.

Dan: Bye, Marcin. Very cool. Awesome.

Dan: I was going to also use that to segue into another topic, but I wanted to give

Dan: Marcin a chance to say goodbye.

Dan: Thank you guys for hanging out. I was going to lead that into one of the topics

Dan: of discussion we had for the fight to save games, because like I was leading

Dan: up to this notion that there are games you just cannot play anymore and or you

Dan: have to have very specific hardware,

Dan: or you have to have the physical copy.

Dan: And like, it gets really difficult, especially when some of these games get really expensive.

Dan: It's a little heartbreaking. Like I posted a comment or we do these social posts

Dan: on our account for like, hey, here's a classic retro horror game.

Dan: You know, did you play this one?

Dan: And some people will respond to those like, oh, that game's going for $300.

Dan: I guess I'm not playing it anytime soon. Like, oh, sorry.

Dan: But I wanted to get to your guys' takes on that notion of like,

Dan: you know, the fight to saving old games, you had mentioned too,

Dan: like licensing hurdles, losing source code, tracking down the rights.

Dan: Please elaborate on those points.

Piotr: I think the most cases are unfortunately because from a technical point of view,

Piotr: it might be really hard, but it's nearly always doable.

Piotr: So, and in the most cases, in the time, sensitive licenses, like for a song,

Piotr: an actor, or even a codec within the game.

Piotr: So back in the days, in the 80s, 90s, and probably even early 2000s,

Piotr: video games were, let's say, not very big.

Piotr: So there was not much attention to the legal side of things because the game worked.

Piotr: And we all been used to having new games coming all along. so the longevity

Piotr: and the game preservation wasn't the subject.

Piotr: Up until now, like with Alpha Protocol case, when the game was taken down because

Piotr: of one song that took like three minutes in 60-plus hours game.

Piotr: So like a fraction of game, but because of it, the game is gone,

Piotr: so I need some work to revive it.

Piotr: There are other stuff, like Martin said, about split-trice, and also sometimes

Piotr: the lack of a source code, and without the source code, Adam and his team most

Piotr: really cannot improve the game,

Piotr: but I think we can make the game playable.

Adam: Yeah, well, like I mentioned, we have a solution that allows us to do some stuff

Adam: with the games that doesn't necessarily make us look into the GoToMash.

Adam: After I mentioned our DirectX wrapper, because it actually translates all DirectX

Adam: calls into the new DirectX.

Adam: So it's not really like that, but you basically just slap it on the game and it works.

Adam: Let's say but yeah not really and yeah

Adam: there is also a reason why we for now are focusing on

Adam: bringing only the pc versions of the games because we

Adam: are aware that there is stuff like emulation and we are using emulation like

Adam: for all of the dos era games because those boxes is an amazing piece of tool

Adam: that is legal to use because with emulation there is also this concern about legality the

Piotr: Biases and stuff

Adam: Yeah biases for example Sony all the Sony consoles all the emulators for Sony

Adam: consoles need needs a piece of COVID the

Adam: playstation uh bias so you need to have it

Piotr: Yeah but i think this is rapidly changing because when

Piotr: you see how risky business game development and

Piotr: game publishing is somebody told me and i stick in my

Piotr: mind that if you have like a million dollars it's better to

Piotr: go to the casino and place a bet on the

Piotr: number on in the roulette because you have bigger chance of winning

Piotr: than with publishing a video game because this

Piotr: is i think like five percent and the success ratio right

Piotr: now for for the steam games is two percent or even lower

Piotr: so it's it's less risky to to do it to

Piotr: to to bet in the casino but uh uh

Piotr: but but since uh the games are getting older

Piotr: and older like in industry there are much and much titles

Piotr: that have this legacy and this is something new if you think about the disney

Piotr: does it for like 100 years so they revive and resell all of the old pictures

Piotr: which derisks another investment and give them space to invest in newer titles

Piotr: and it's also not new in the video games business.

Piotr: We've seen how crazy good Oblivion launch went.

Piotr: It was number one. And this is the game when you were born on the launch of this game.

Piotr: Right now, you're 19 and legally available to drink while playing the remake version, right?

Piotr: And it's not new. We have this talk about remake and remaster cycle I think

Piotr: from like five or more years.

Piotr: I think 2023 was named the year of the remake and remastered because it appeared

Piotr: that nine out of ten most top-grossing distributed games were remakes and remasters.

Piotr: And to be able to do that, you need to have this game preservation movement.

Piotr: You need to have the staff archive, and not only the source code,

Piotr: but also how you did things, why you did things, this clever workaround that you did 15 years ago.

Piotr: You might not think of it right now.

Piotr: And not even that, if you archive the meetings of the team, And if you film

Piotr: the launch party, this is when memory is connected to this game.

Piotr: So I think we'll see more and more of that because there are always new audiences

Piotr: coming to video games that never played these games.

Piotr: And also we, in nostalgia, want to go back.

Piotr: And the games age slower. If you see from our sister company,

Piotr: Big Brother, the project, Witcher 3, which is 10 years old, it still looks amazing.

Piotr: Cyberpunk 7, 6, 7 years old looks amazing, a new game, so the games will be

Piotr: aging and aging slower, hence you have a longer life cycle out of games,

Marcin: Hence the game

Piotr: Preservation must be built. So, yeah.

Marcin: Yeah i was thinking

Dan: About uh alien isolation not too long ago how well that game is aged only isolation

Dan: is over 10 years old now and it looks great still yeah like i don't know what

Dan: magic there is there but i think.

Piotr: We haven't seen this like revolutionary stuff in video games graphics like back

Piotr: in the days the jump from the one playstation to other was like whoa it's the

Piotr: future man and when i said okay it's cool but the hardware is not stuff quicker

Piotr: better internet connection, stuff like that.

Piotr: So the graphic is not the only thing that needs to be changed to be amazing for you to play the game.

Piotr: And of course, all the modding community, all the mods that people produce to

Piotr: make games live forever also helps.

Piotr: So yeah, I think we're in a good place. Hopefully,

Piotr: also our cultural institutions nationwide or international ones will have more

Piotr: power to support the fight for game preservation and will finally say that the

Piotr: games are a vital part of culture and we need to preserve them it's happening

Piotr: we have a lot of institutions like we are as

Piotr: you do are a part of f-gum so european federation but we also work with the

Piotr: strong museum of play video games of history foundation we even uh we even secured

Piotr: an archive the works of one of the leading and legendary polish game developers

Piotr: who made fire fight in the strong

Piotr: to help him do it, so his work will be immortalized, hopefully there.

Dan: Yeah, that's a whole other aspect there too, is the thing about video games as an art form,

Dan: and art needing to be preserved, and changing the minds of people to understand

Dan: that video games have evolved beyond just simple children's toys like they were

Dan: considered back in the 80s and 90s,

Dan: and they are works of art in multiple facets, and that...

Piotr: Not only that, they also spawn other art forms, like your magazine is an art

Piotr: form, right? You write about games that do graphics, graphic design around it.

Piotr: People do cosplays, people do shit. We have even hugely popular TV shows based on video games, right?

Marcin: Or fan fiction, or mods,

Piotr: Or so. Out of video games come a lot of other ways that culture arrives to us.

Dan: Absolutely.

Dan: All right, let's see.

Dan: I'm just reviewing the list here and say like we did touch on quite a bit so far um.

Piotr: I would ask Alim how the hell you make these games work, because you have pretty weird computers there.

Dan: Weird computers.

Adam: Yeah, like I mentioned, we are doing, we are trying to have machines from different, like, era.

Adam: Because we actually, okay, we don't have one for those books,

Adam: because those books, like, you know, does everything for us.

Adam: But basically, when we are bringing back games, we split it into four eras.

Adam: One year, I would be obviously, I'll just mention the DOS and DOSBox.

Adam: Then we have early 2000 games.

Adam: DOS are now one of the easiest for us to make as well because of the tools that we have.

Adam: Then there are the 2000, let's say 2005 until 2015.

Adam: DOS are a bit more tricky because this is when most of the shift happened in

Adam: the graphic renderers and stuff like that and codecs and everything like that

Adam: and this makes them strange to work with, let's say that.

Adam: So usually they need a very unique approach, each of them and then we have like

Adam: modern games and those are usually either handled by the developer or sometimes

Adam: we help them or we take over and handle the updates and stuff like that.

Adam: After they close the development period of the game and upkeep period of the

Adam: game, then we take over and we just put it in our cell on preserved games.

Dan: Yeah, because there's more and more newer, modern games that are also coming to the GOG storefront.

Dan: Is there a lot that you guys do on that aspect or is it more of a drag and drop kind of situation?

Adam: Um we more and more we

Adam: help because uh more and more we help like porting

Adam: games directly from steam to gog uh that is because we now need to also look

Adam: into parity like uh preserving achievements uh leaderboards all of the stuff

Adam: that's like um outside of the game itself and And this is usually something that developers,

Adam: I don't want to say struggle with,

Adam: but they might not be interested in going this extra step for us to do that

Adam: because this means that they actually need to revisit the game or have someone

Adam: revisit the game for them.

Adam: So we take it from them, this burden from them, and we prepare the builds even

Adam: for modern games right now. Right, because like

Dan: Silent Hill 2 Remake just hit the GOG storefront recently too.

Adam: Yeah, but this one actually was done by Gilbert themselves.

Adam: But we have some smaller examples.

Adam: In the future, this will make us easier to add them to the GPP program,

Adam: because the game preservation program,

Adam: one of the main points is that we as GOG are maintaining those games and making

Adam: sure that they are compatible with all of the modern systems,

Adam: whatever the system will be,

Adam: like the upcoming Windows 12 system that scares us a bit,

Dan: But we'll do this. Yeah, I'm always ready for another Windows.

Adam: Yeah, this one actually might change a lot, so this might be a while.

Dan: On that notion, because you're talking about like you're building basically

Dan: a stockpile of older classic PC builds so that you can use that hardware to,

Dan: you know, Frankenstein the new builds of the games.

Dan: Does that come into play at all when there's like a console game that didn't

Dan: get a PC launch or is it kind of like you're limited to games that had PC builds?

Adam: Um i'm sorry i am

Adam: you're good no i am losing you a bit but okay

Dan: I can do it again if we're cleaning up a bit.

Adam: Yeah can we can we repeat this

Dan: One yeah so um i'm asking if um,

Dan: you have all these pc builds to make the new versions of these games of from old pc,

Dan: like windows and operating softwares and the hardware when it comes to a game

Dan: that might have only gotten a console release is there a means of extrapolating

Dan: the console games or do you have to rely on a pc build of the game.

Adam: I mean, for now, like I mentioned, we are focusing on the PC builds, but for example,

Adam: for Alpha Protocol, we noticed that the Xbox version of Alpha Protocol has achievement

Adam: support that is not in the PC version.

Adam: So we went and took this part of the code and re-initiated it into our code.

Adam: But this was easier because we actually get a source code for alpha protocol.

Adam: And when we get it, it's actually a blessing. So that was a good part to work with.

Adam: But yeah, going back to the question of porting console, games from consoles directly,

Adam: This is something that we are also looking into by either doing this through

Adam: emulation or maybe by decompiling them to the CEDO source code and then porting them to exist.

Adam: But this is something that we are still in the field of research there to

Marcin: Make sure how

Adam: Much time it was actually... Because, I mean, if the legal tab is right there

Adam: for the emulation, It's like, we just go and we're done.

Adam: But this basically would lock us out of any changes that we might make,

Adam: that we made, for example, for Resident Evil, because then we are in a,

Adam: with emulation, the whole environment's rather closed.

Adam: We cannot do much about it, but with porting it to PC, opens up for doing some

Adam: backtracking and fixes and stuff like that.

Dan: So it's a little bit harder to add more modernizations and updating the game

Dan: if it's basically just a straight port of the original game.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah that's fair because i'm trying to think of like some of the the more obscure games

Dan: that people are looking at or wanting from uh days past especially if they didn't

Dan: necessarily get a pc release and you've got like obscure games from like the

Dan: dreamcast the ps2 era a lot of those games i have no idea if they ever even

Dan: got a pc release and it's like well how how do you get that if you have to like

Dan: pull a game off of the dreamcast or something.

Adam: I mean we'll get there eventually but it will take it will take some time i

Adam: i also have one game that that's a horror game from i think is from pc one that's called elka oh yeah

Dan: Yeah yeah yeah yeah that's.

Adam: That's yeah that's really nice obscure games that i'm i'm amazed with yes yeah that's probably

Dan: I went down a rabbit hole with codelka myself because

Dan: i learned about like shadow hearts and then how codelka

Dan: was like an original like version of that game and

Dan: then like the history there and now they're that same team that made those games

Dan: is working on a new game that i've backed on kickstarter it's called pennyblood

Dan: it's like a spiritual successor to those um but yeah like rpg horror which is

Dan: like i want more of those i want more horror movies well.

Adam: Definitely check this one out a bit yeah thank you for the same but i have the

Dan: Heck yeah i wrote about a parasite eve in

Dan: our first issue of the magazine too like that's one of my favorite like horror

Dan: rpgs and i want more of those i need

Dan: to try and give sweet home a

Dan: proper place too but it's one of those games that's like as much as

Dan: i want to play the old original sweet home it's on that line for me of like

Dan: it's a little too old for me if that makes sense like it's a little too archaic

Dan: it's a little too slow paced that it's like i get bored really fast i'm like

Dan: i love everything about this but i don't know if i can actually sit and play through it yeah.

Marcin: Yeah, I got you. All right. I would like to at least give you guys a chance

Marcin: to talk about the future of game preservation.

Marcin: I know we've kind of touched on it a little bit, so please...

Piotr: So, well, I think we are in the right place right now, and future is kind of bright.

Piotr: What we really like is more and more collaboration between game developers,

Piotr: game publishers, cultural institutions, and also, of course, modders and community.

Piotr: You wouldn't believe how influential and helpful the community could be when

Piotr: you are releasing the game.

Piotr: They have all the knowledge, sometimes even better knowledge than the original

Piotr: developers, and they have stuff that was happening around the game, secured and archived.

Piotr: So that's for sure, this is from my point of view, one of the crucial things.

Piotr: Second one is, as I told before, I think game preservation is now a vital business

Piotr: strategy that will help publishers and developers, the risk of their investments,

Piotr: hence they will have more resources to put into newer games if they will treat

Piotr: and preserve what they're doing right now.

Piotr: Also, AI and all the cloud services might help with game preservation and running

Piotr: the older games as they should,

Piotr: but also it's a wild guess because we obviously don't know how the AI will evolve

Piotr: and if it's going to be difficult, but we've seen that I think Microsoft was

Piotr: experimenting with that.

Piotr: Also, I want to point out that right now, I think nearly all major players like

Piotr: PlayStation, Xbox, Activision, Electronic Arts, all of them have game preservation

Piotr: units within the company.

Piotr: You could watch the awesome talk on GDC done by PlayStation teams,

Piotr: how much they're gathering stuff right now.

Piotr: And it's being actively used not only by the teams, but even when there was

Piotr: this show called, I think, Twisted Metal, They were searching for the original

Piotr: artworks to supply them to the creators of the TV show.

Marcin: As for the challenges,

Piotr: As usual, new OS Windows 12, we will see how it will go.

Piotr: New processors, new hardware, strict policies of console makers, law makers.

Piotr: But I think, like, if the publisher and developers know that this is important and they got...

Piotr: And we as an industry has more knowledge about legal stuff, right stuff,

Piotr: and we have become more and more professional.

Piotr: I think there's really sometimes unintentional small mistakes like in,

Piotr: I think, black and white contract, which excludes the game, but probably being

Piotr: released anytime soon, are not happening that often.

Piotr: And people see that this is a legitimate way to increase your revenue from the game created.

Piotr: So I think more and more attention we put to this. And also,

Piotr: I would like to think us as a GOG, as one of the leading forces in game preservation,

Piotr: is speaking about it more and more often, thanks to guys like you who help us

Piotr: spread the good message, so thank you for that.

Piotr: I think people understand right now that sometimes the game that they wouldn't

Piotr: think is classic, it's classic because time flies and it follows forth suddenly 10 years old.

Dan: Oh yeah. I have that realization all the time.

Adam: Yeah i mean queen to the pre is actually classic now so yeah 10

Piotr: Years in may it's exactly

Dan: Now well it's even like we have our retro review section in

Dan: the magazine that we do specific reviews of classic games

Dan: so uh the big standpoint there is talking

Dan: about an older horror game or you know just a game

Dan: in general and we want to talk about it

Dan: in a modern light and when we talk about what considers

Dan: a game retro i've made the decision of anything

Dan: that was from like the 2010s like xbox 360

Dan: ps3 you know we and games

Dan: that came out in that same time frame on the pc and older are

Dan: officially retro now at this point because they're almost

Dan: 20 years old you're getting 15 20 years old and

Dan: it's like yeah like i feel like i just played that game

Dan: yesterday it's like yeah it was 10 15 years ago yeah i have that now with new

Dan: games that i played two years ago i'm like has it really been two years since

Dan: that game like resident evil 4 i blitzed the resident evil four remake when

Dan: it came out and I'm like shocked that it's already been as long as it has since it released already.

Piotr: I remember when I was playing when it was launched on GameCube and it was the

Piotr: first game that had the QTE event during the cutscene and I was so surprised

Piotr: that the cutscene is interactive that I died several times until I realized

Piotr: I need to press something but so I still remember this like it was like I don't

Piotr: know a year ago maybe two.

Dan: Right yeah.

Dan: I was trying to give Adam a chance to, did you have anything on that?

Adam: Yeah, time flies. For me, I remember because my favorite game is Final Fantasy

Adam: VII, and I now realize that Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually five years old now.

Marcin: So yes, that's awesome.

Dan: I think when that goes out.

Adam: It will be 10 years old. So yeah.

Piotr: It was 97, the original one. Yeah. In two years, it will be 30, right?

Marcin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: It's crazy to even think about back in the day that they were teasing a Final

Dan: Fantasy VII Remake on the PlayStation 3 and they're like, that was 20 years ago.

Piotr: Like a Deimos. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, time flies. Again, preservation is important.

Dan: Going back to some of the stuff we were talking about earlier and this notion

Dan: that you'd be surprised or at least like some of the bigger companies might

Dan: not realize how important classic games are to the original players.

Dan: There's so many people that are hard purists of like the original experience

Dan: of the game and that's why it's important that you guys preserve the original

Dan: version of the game and that it plays and feels like it used to without tweaking

Dan: or adjusting or changing it too much.

Dan: Because like I said, I am a proponent of classic tank controls.

Dan: I prefer classic tank controls still to this day.

Dan: I love replaying through RE1, 2, and 3.

Dan: As much as I love the remakes of those games, I think of Resident Evil 1 remake

Dan: for the GameCube as one of my favorite horror games of all time.

Dan: I think it's one of the best survival horror games ever made.

Dan: But I still love playing the original. for everything that that game is and

Dan: what it does i love its kookiness i love the campiness and i love the playing

Dan: the game the way it's meant to feel which is funny.

Marcin: Because like i'm

Dan: Sitting here talking about like oh sweet home i couldn't play sweet home because

Dan: it it's too janky it's too clunky for me i couldn't handle that but it's a nostalgia

Dan: thing for me to play classic resident evil or silent hill and experience that

Dan: game the way it was meant to,

Dan: And I know that's not for everyone.

Adam: Yeah, but also it's usually a part of the design, right?

Adam: So this is why what I mentioned, that we always try to stay as close as possible

Adam: to the original experience when it comes to gameplay.

Adam: But now also with, for example, the recent release of Fire 4,

Adam: we had this thing where, because the game uses 3D environment and 2D sprites for the characters.

Adam: So in the PC version, the 2D sprites are anti-allies, so they are always Larry and Smoogee.

Adam: And we were like, oh man, maybe we should do something about that.

Adam: But then I was like, okay, it's in the PC version, so let's keep it as a PC version.

Adam: But when we released the game, we got instant comments about why is it so...

Adam: So over the weekend, actually, we went back to our DirectX wrapper and we implemented a new function.

Adam: That actually tears down all of the scaling or the thing that might affect the 2D textures.

Adam: So now you can just do the BQB and the game looks almost like a PS1 version, PS2, sorry.

Dan: It's funny how that works. So you're like, well, we're preserving it as it was.

Dan: And then people are like, this looks weird.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. Preserve it more. but yeah but we also

Adam: leave the uh option to like tweak it to whatever it is if you want the textures

Adam: to be super like high-res and stuff like that then you can do that if you want

Adam: to make it more like what it used to be

Dan: You can also i think that's important too is giving people the option having

Dan: options is like is definitely one of the best parts of it even in the like the

Dan: muddy world of emulation i love being able to play games with emulation because

Dan: I can play a game that I might not be able to play otherwise.

Dan: And I love being able to like go nuts with the settings with emulation.

Dan: Be able to like, let me make it like super sharp and crisp to the point where

Dan: it doesn't even look like it used to.

Dan: And then, or if you want, you can like scale everything down and make it look

Dan: like, oh, this is exactly what it would look like if I was playing on a shitty

Dan: CRT on a PlayStation 1 or something.

Dan: You know, having those options, I think, is an extra perk.

Dan: And including that in the preservation of the game. And let people play the

Dan: game the way they want to play it. You know?

Adam: Yeah, definitely. I think it's not analyzing but filtering, sorry. Right.

Marcin: Yeah.

Marcin: All right, guys. Did you have anything else that you wanted to hit on before I wrap us up?

Piotr: I think we're good. Yeah.

Dan: Cool. Yeah, I think that was a great conversation. I really appreciate all your time.

Dan: Yeah, I'm going to just close this out then. And I do need to do a quick little shout out here.

Dan: We do have our horrifically wholesome backers list that I wanted to make sure

Dan: that I am shouting out. Mr. Timothy Ingram.

Piotr: We completely understand you.

Dan: Sorry. but that's uh that's for our community this

Dan: is uh our podcast like we love getting to

Dan: know our developers normally i do this show with one-on-ones for

Dan: small indie game developers and that's one of

Dan: the things that we like to do and that we've been doing with the magazine so it's

Dan: like we have a small little indie game next to silent hill 2 remake you know

Dan: we're putting everybody together we're giving everyone equal spotlight that's

Dan: awesome um so thank you all very much i very much appreciate you guys taking

Dan: the time to talk with me uh we'll definitely be in touch because I'm sure you

Dan: guys are going to have more amazing stuff on the way.

Dan: It's good to know that Silent Hills and the Works and all the other good stuff.

Dan: But yeah, thank you, Adam. Thank you.