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Maria B. GardaUniversity of Turku
Maria B. Garda is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, based at the University of Turku, Finland. She is an expert in media history, and her current work focuses on comparative history of game cultures. Her recent publications have dealt with cultural sustainability, digital heritage, and independent games. She was previously involved with several research projects, including “Creative Micro-Computing in Australia, 1976–1992” (Flinders University, 2017–2018) and “Alternative Usage of New Media Technology during the Decline of People’s Republic of Poland” (University of Lodz, 2013–2017).
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Niklas NylundFinnish Museum of Games
Niklas Nylund, PhD, is a museum researcher and curator working for the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere, Finland. In his doctoral dissertation, written at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies at the University of Tampere, he contemplated issues related to videogame heritage. His research interests include game preservation, game history, exhibition design, and questions of cultural heritage and inclusivity.
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Jaakko SuominenUniversity of Turku
Jaakko Suominen received his PhD in cultural history and is a professor of digital culture at the University of Turku, Finland. With a focus on cultural history of media and information technologies, he has studied computers and popular media, internet, social media, digital games, and theoretical and methodological aspects of the study of digital culture. He has led several multidisciplinary research projects and has over a hundred scholarly publications.
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Abstract
This article is a contextual historical study focused on the restoration process of a Finnish educational PC game, Promille (Tietotoimisto, 1990). In 2017, a floppy disk containing the previously unknown (to historians and hobbyists) game was found by chance in the city woods of Tampere, Finland. These unusual circumstances and the following repair efforts, undertaken as a collaboration between the local retrogaming circles and the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere, attracted national media attention. This paper aims at reconstructing and contextualizing these events while at the same time reflecting on the cultural practices of maintenance and repair at public and private memory institutions in Finland, and how the case of Promille has affected the local heritage community. The study contributes to the theoretical discussions around the heritagization of games and revisits Alois Riegl’s concept of unintentional monuments in relation to game cultures.