against the will of game databases

I have a game recorded in a database that I don’t want there, what do I do? Since I’m the person who put it there I can go and delete the record.

Why don’t I want it there? It records a name that I no longer use, the game is no longer publicly available, it was once hosted on itch.io, it is not a piece of history that I wish to be stored.

What will be the effect of erasing it? I will feel better knowing it is no longer data about me that exists online.

What if someone else recorded that game, the name I’d used, and kept a copy of the game for people to play? I would be unhappy I guess, I don’t see that game as being important, and in fact it’s more important to me that it is not there.

But isn’t that history, aren’t you depriving the record of the truth, the true account of the past, all that has happened? So what.

Aren’t you depriving the history of queer video games of an important early document in your career as a niche artist? So what.

But the records have not been kind to queer games, to the games of many creators from backgrounds intersecting in oppression…

If the records have not been kind, what suggests that they are now kind, what indicates that they are not a tool of oppression in themselves?

Game databases for instance. IGDB is owned by Twitch (Amazon), Mobygames is owned by Atari. Are these the companies that I seek kindness from, that I seek my history from, or are we playing their game and feeding their machine?

The will to archive in the ways that most are taught to archive is not an innocent one, it is one of accumulation and the continuation of imperialist and capitalist thought. It is a history of racism and deprivation and destruction and the perfection of history into an art dominated by a handful of countries.

In the case of publicly owned archives, libraries and museums, work has been being done to examine this damage for several decades and the toll of it will likely still never come to be fully acknowledged.

There will be no such work done for the games on IGDB or Mobygames, for the people whose work has been kept and yet they had no will for it to be that way.

All efforts to integrate history with capitalism will leave a big hole right where the essence of the thing you are trying to protect once was, but is no longer. The thing may become hidden from view, and yet you keep its corpse moving, shadowplay, marks on the wall, light through a dirty glass.

I’ve deleted the game mentioned at the top now. I’ve been meaning to do that for years.