GameTap and related services are like the archivist at the rare book room of a public library? So says Matt Matthews from The Curmudgeon Gamer in an interview over at GameSetWatch. The topic is game archivists and business models like GameTap, where you pay for a game but are dependent on the service to actually play and keep it, something he terms 'the virtual rare book room':

There is a gatekeeper who stands between you and things that you (think you) own (in the instance of, say, a public university where the people ostensibly own the library's holdings).

... Archivists can (and should) purchase originals of arcade games and console games and Windows/DOS games and others as often as they can. But the model that GameTap and Steam and XBLA and PSN and other services represent is one in which the company always stands between you and your game, ready to exact a toll if they can work out a way to do it.

He's got a point: those of us who use other sorts of material in our research can frequently get our hands on a copy and purchase it outright, with no one standing in our way to keep that material. Unlike a rare 17th century folio, there's no reason Sam & Max needs to be kept under lock and key.

Preservation, GameTap, and Curmudgeoning [GameSetWatch]

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