(Image credit: Bethesda)
As the importance of game preservation continues to grow, notable figures in the gaming world, like Tim Cain—the mind behind Fallout—are increasingly pushing for a more serious effort to safeguard video game heritage. Cain’s firsthand experience with these challenges underscores the difficulty, as he was instructed to obliterate his personal Fallout archives upon his departure from Interplay.
In a recent YouTube vlog, Cain expresses frustration: “There’s a multitude of groups claiming the role of archive keeper, yet their preservation efforts fall short,” says Cain. “I’ve witnessed the loss of crucial assets on several occasions during my career. Upon leaving Fallout, the directive was clear—’destroy everything,’ leading to the erasure of my entire repository: early design documents, different code versions, prototypes, even the GURPS code—vanished.”
Interplay had plans to maintain an internal archive, but those plans faltered. “They eventually admitted to losing it,” Cain recounts, remembering the contact years after he left. Suspecting a trap to prompt legal action if he still had copies, he instead found they genuinely lost it. Although the code for the retail release of Fallout was salvaged, many original elements from the RPG’s creation weren’t. The initial art, the game version using the GURPS system, and the physical clay models of Fallout’s talking heads—all irretrievably gone.
True game preservation transcends the re-release of classic games on modern platforms. Organizations like the Video Game History Foundation advocate preserving the rich history and detailed context of game development processes—exactly the kind of material Cain refers to.
Today, while some companies like PlayStation build extensive archives, it wasn’t always this way. “There are still forces actively opposing preservation,” Cain laments. “The loss of early Fallout development documentation is distressing. I had it all digitally, yet was ordered to obliterate it.”
Despite the challenges in preserving Fallout, Cain believes its legacy is secure. “Bethesda expanding the IP’s popularity is a key reason it will be remembered, potentially even a century from now,” Cain remarks.
Reflecting on the broader landscape, he adds, “Countless games from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s have lost their original codes and art assets. Extracting final products from databases misses the essence—original source material. This issue likely persists through subsequent decades, seeping into present times. History is slipping away.”
Never underestimate the efforts that brought the most acclaimed RPGs to life.