Museums of Failure (III): Ouya Saviors
As soon as the Ouya was “killed”, it was a matter of time until someone began organizing a project to preserve it. The same way there is no cult without rejection, the “museums of failure” we study in this project cannot properly start without the artifact being pronounced dead. On May 22 this year, Razer, the current owners of the system, announced they were closing down the console’s servers (the system had already been discontinued in 2015), effectively putting an end to its rocky run.
On June 6, Twitter user @sCZther (bio: “Founder of @hernihistorie, videogame archivist & historian. I (heart) obscure things, currently: early mobile games”) published this tweet:
But why run to preserve it? What was the motivation?
In a Vice feature by Nicole Carpenter entitled “Preservationists Are Racing to Save Ouya’s Games Before They Disappear”, sCZther (real name: Vojtěch Straka) explained:
“It’s a perfect example — a cautionary tale — about the modern gaming landscape and how ephemeral it is,” Straka said. “The Ouya is not even a decade old and already we are talking about it’s ultimate demise, leaving most of its library unplayable even for people who paid for it.”
There’s a lot to unpack in this case. Ouya is “ kind of a joke among the gaming community […] at best, a historical footnote, and, at worst, laugh-fodder”, but also essential to understand how crowdfunding has affected videogame culture, its promises and its trapping. Nostalgia (“fond memories”) is once again a relevant factor, as is the need to preserve everything first and curate later (“ Who am I to judge what’s important. I am saving any game history I can get my hands on!”). Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, Ouya is seen as a “cautionary tale” about the ephemeral nature of digital distribution (something we should pay more attention to — I’ve compared it elsewhere to writing in the sand; a nightmare for preservation).
I can’t help but find many parallels between these “Ouya saviours” and the Flash-preservation project Flashpoint, although with a major difference: whereas Flash is seen in the first as “the largest treasure trove of unpreserved gaming history today”, the Ouya is indubitably described as a failure, and that’s precisely why it needs to be preserved. It failed as a system (“a new kind of video game console”), as a Kickstarter project, as an attempt to bridge mobile and TV gaming, as an independent industry space… but, at the same time, its very failure is part of modern gaming’s history.
Yesterday, Straka tweeted about the project’s progress:
The Ouya Saviors Discord group has 923 members at the moment and the community is self-organizing around the site ouya.world:
Meanwhile, a quick search for Ouya in the official Razer site shows exactly “0 result(s)”.
The Ouya is no more. This is what has finally got it some attention.
