Videogame worlds are remarkable feats of creativity and technology – entire universes conjured from code. But these worlds – our worlds – do not last forever. Some are shut down by studios, others left unfinished, and many simply fade as players move on. The same financial, technological and creative forces that bring these worlds into being also make them fragile, vulnerable to abandonment and decay. A Video Game History Foundation report shows that 87% of classic games released before 2010 are considered lost media.
Beyond pixels and mechanics, videogame history lives in the voices of those who built it. gameObject Permanence features direct audio from Get Lamp (Jason Scott, 2010), preserving memories of early computer game companies, home computing and text adventures like Zork (Infocom, 1980). In the documentary, developers recall personal, commercial and corporate pressures – highlighting how worlds we imagine on screen are inseparable from the people who make them real. Their voices entwine throughout the textures, sounds and interfaces of the games featured in the work, letting us hear how past issues in the industry have continued to affect game development throughout time.
The four sections of gameObject Permanence move from digital fragility and commercial ambition to personal reflection and mourning, exploring how virtual worlds end. From glitched-out demo discs to cancelled development projects, it paints a complex portrait of game development, money and play. The work traces ambitious games that never made it to release, simulation titles left behind by shifting markets, and MMOs whose shutdowns became communal moments of grief and remembrance.
Endings in games are not always dramatic. Sometimes, they are just a simple notice: “No games found.” These lost worlds raise important questions. What happens when shared digital spaces die? Who preserves them? And what do they mean to those who once called them home?
Curator Notes
Demo Disc
The work opens with a 'Demo Disc” sequence: flickering boot logos, buggy start-up screens, and empty disc menus. These fragments conjure lost futures and games that never were. The visuals are accompanied by the original start-up sounds – the GameCube’s cheerful toll, the Dreamcast’s hum – creating an uncanny sense of presence for worlds that existed only for a short time in gaming history. The GameCube start-up chimes give way to a PlayStation 2 logo, and the Dreamcast sound heralds the Xbox logo. These sonic and visual juxtapositions highlight the effort and risk inherent in game development. Even massive studios, platforms and consoles face the same precarious balance as the games themselves.
The sequence then shifts into a mock DVD-style menu, offering ‘Abandoned’, ‘Lost’, ‘Cancelled’ and ‘Shutdown’, and finally a VHS-style crawl with the alarming red title, ‘Left Unfinished’. The worn, analogue aesthetic of the disc menu and scrolling VHS text situates the viewer in an obsolete, almost ghostly era of screen media, reinforcing the fragility of these lost worlds and technologies. It reminds viewers that as technology advances and corporations vie for dominance, some become leaders of the pack and some – even former industry leaders – are relegated in the timeline. Think Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation usurping the console market from Nintendo (GameCube) and Sega (Dreamcast), who had enjoyed home-gaming supremacy throughout the 1980s and 90s.
Unfinished Worlds
In gameObject Permanence, titles like Milo and Kate (2010), Virtua Hamster (1995), Eight Days (2008), Sunman (1992), Steven Seagal Is: The Final Option (1995), and the Robocop PS1 tech demo (1997) appear as remnants of what might have been. Each fragment carries impressions of play: the sprite’s jump, the blank map’s empty possibilities, the untested mechanics waiting for players who never arrived. These forgotten prototypes and cancelled titles reveal the tension between ambition and limitation, and raise questions about authorship, preservation, and how we document digital spaces that never fully materialised.
Development
Simulation games promise expansive control, but behind the scenes are stories of collapse. This section examines the realities of development – creative conflict, corporate interference, and fading communities – complicating the fantasy of linear progress in game design and technological innovation.
It’s in this section that gameObject Permanence incorporates voice-over from Get Lamp, featuring Amy Briggs and Lance Micklus. Amy Briggs joined Infocom (creator of the landmark text-adventure Zork) during its transition from its blockbuster text-adventures to business software Cornerstone, after the company’s heyday. Her voice, drawn directly from archival recordings, layers over SimTower (1994), so her memories of corporate tension and creative ambition become part of the game’s digital space itself. She reflects: “Management and marketing and I could not agree on what to do next… It was hard, it was hard to go through.” Her words convey both personal struggle and the larger collapse of a once-great studio, illustrating how commercial pressures shape what games reach players – and which remain unfinished. Her inclusion is particularly poignant as she had worked on the text adventure version of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, an unpublished sequel to the text-adventure adaptation of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one of Infocom’s biggest hits.
Lance Micklus, founder of Lance Micklus, Inc., speaks over SimAnt (1991), connecting early home computing to later simulation worlds. Over the simulation’s busy, buzzing world, his words create a counterpoint – a reminder of the unseen labour and financial reality of game development. He observes: “I’m not going to write you a game only to have it languish and die… fall into the rusted jaws of a dying company and never be seen again.” He also notes the financial realities: “The things that hurt me the most personally was that people thought I was a millionaire. I wasn’t even close… most of the people who bought the products I had were making more money than I was.” These reflections bridge the earliest days of the computer game industry with Maxis’ (of the ‘Sim’ series of games) later development struggles. SimCity (1989) creator Will Wright’s couldn’t get The Sims approved for production at Maxis, which shelved the idea until becoming part of Electronic Arts, which greenlit the game and made it an international phenomenon. By layering the voices over forgotten games from a highly successful series, Bateman demonstrates that even groundbreaking titles like The Sims emerge from complex corporate and economic contexts. The Get Lamp audio, remixed alongside simulation footage, gives a tangible sense of history, connecting studio concerns and those of the people who worked there, with worlds that players explored.
The Final Day
Multiplayer game shutdowns mark the end of shared worlds in gameObject Permanence. Here, the audio pivots to a steady beat, like a countdown timer for the final moments of these online spaces. The footage is presented like a hybrid of a news bulletin and an online game screen, with a ticker scrolling beneath the action that heightens the sense of anticipation and closure.
One of the final screens shows Club Penguin (2005-17) in its last moments. Player avatars linger, speech bubbles appearing above their heads with messages like “Waddle on!”, “Still alive”, “Goodbye”, and “these are our last seconds.” The timer counts down, reflecting both the literal countdown and the emotional investment of fans who had been engaged with the game for over a decade.
In the selection screen, Toontown Online (2003-13) appears, which ended permanently in 2013 due to declining subscriptions and a shift in Disney’s focus. Players were able to say their goodbyes during a final free membership period, and fan communities later revived the game through unofficial servers like Toontown Rewritten (2011-present), showing how players continue to keep these worlds alive.
Other games appear in the sequence as well, including The Matrix Online (2005-09) and TERA Online (2011-2020), with players leaving parting messages and marking the end of shared experiences. The countdown sequence ultimately culminates with Tabula Rasa (2007–2009), where the ticker runs out, with the final pop-up message: “You have been disconnected from the server.” All that’s left is a glitchy avatar, dancing at the end of the world.
Even as servers are shut down, traces linger – phantom data and farewell screenshots. Audio cues of empty servers, faint background chatter, digital notifications, and the countdown make the ending feel both present and absent, emphasising the ephemeral nature of shared digital spaces. Across this section, and the work as a whole, gameObject Permanence shows that while games can be fragile, their stories and social effects persist, shaping both developers and players. Through these sounds, images and interactions, we inhabit vanished worlds and hear the echoes of communities who once lived within them.
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