ars technica's Opposable Thumbs blog has an interesting report on http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/06/the-art-of-archiving-virtual-worlds.ars explaining digital preservation efforts like ours.
This is interesting indeed, but the article reveals little of value: how on earth, in the end, are those titles 'preserved'? What is it that they're doing differently than any of the myriad retro archive sites? The guy goes on and on talking about copyright (does not apply in preservation and library efforts anyway - are we kidding?) and system dependencies, but he doesn't answer anything!
The list is kind of weird, too:
1. Adventure, aka ADVENT and Colossal Cave
2. Mystery House
3. Mindwheel
4. Works of Deena Larsen
5. Second Life electronic books ("prim books")
6. Spacewar! (MIT, 1962)
7. Star Raiders (Atari, 1979)
8. Sim City (Maxis, 1989)
9. Civilization I/II (MicroProse, 1991-1996)
10. DOOM (id, 1993)
11. Warcraft I/II/III (Blizzard, 1994-2003)
12. PLATO
13. Life to the Second Power (Second Life)
14. The International Space Museum (Second Life)
15. Democracy Island (Second Life)
Starts off nicely, and ends with... three Second Life titles? Wtf???