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Tldr: I want to archive the 1,800 games featured on Oujevipo.fr and I need your help. Skip to the paragraph « How to help » for practical information.

On 01/10/10, I opened a blog.
I had realized the internet was full of weird, fun, creative, experimental games and I wanted to share them with the world.
And that’s what I did, for (almost) ten years, reviewing nearly 1,800 games.

Today is Oujevipo’s tenth anniversary. I’m happy and proud , but I cannot help but feel a certain sadness when looking back: tens (hundreds?) of games reviewed during these years have already vanished from the internet.

Non-renewed domain name, expired subscription to a storage service, plugin not supported anymore, desire to hide a shameful work of youth… There are many reasons for a game to disappear, and there is no good one. I am convinced that the history of video games cannot be written without these little jam games, these prototypes, these testimonies, these silly jokes…

Some opened up paths that have became mainstream.
Others opened up paths that no one dared to follow.
Others did not open anything at all, and were no less enjoyable.
All of them helped drawing a lively, diverse, weird, sensitive, committed, intelligent video game landscape… and it would be a shame to see this picture disappear.

So I decided to act. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Oujevipo, I will find and archive all the games that have been reviewed on it.

You can follow my progress here.

This video game archive will NOT be available online but kept on the servers of various organizations focused on video game preservation, and probably available on site on request. I have already contacted the National Library of France (BnF), Mo5, InternetArchive and The Video Game History Foundation. If you know other organizations that might be interested, please contact me.

On my own (and with the help from devs I e-mailed), I already managed to archive 65% of these games, but I’m getting stuck, and that’s why I need to of your help.
I am well aware that we will never reach 100%, but 90%, 80% or even 70% would be awesome.

How to help ?

You make games

Did I review one of your games on Oujevipo? Look for you name/nickname in the list to find out -(Ctrl + F / Cmd + F). If your game appear with a “x” or “~” in the Status column, it means I could not find/download it. If you still have them, please send me your builds or source files at pcorbinais@protonmail.com.

Also feel free to reach me or leave a comment on the document if there is an error in the title, credits or release year.

You play games

If you’ve been reading Oujevipo for a while, you may have downloaded some of the games reviewed there. Maybe these games are still on your hard drive? Perhaps they are precisely those I can’t find today? Take a look at the games marked as « missing » in the « problem » column and see if they ring a bell. If you have a build or even a clue, please reach me at pcorbinais@protonmail.com

You archive games

If you represent an organization that might be interested in archiving these games, please reach me at pcorbinais@protonmail.com and we could discuss how to proceed by email. If you know of such organization, do not hesitate to tell them about the project.

You are savvy

Some games are still « available » on the internet, but I can’t get them to work, even with the source files. This is especially true for games built on / for:

-Processing (example)

-Unity Web Player (example)

If you have a magic solution (eg a « frozen » browser with the correct plugins) please reach me at pcorbinais@protonmail.com.You have many friends

The more you talk about this project and share it on social networks, the more likely it’ll be seen by the right persons with the right files.

You have too much money

If you want to support this project, you can always make a donation via paypal. These donations would be used to:
-purchase a 1TB external hard drive so that I’ll have a « physical » Oujevipo Archive and could bring it to game festivals and stuff like that.
-finance the time spent working on this project, which I could rather use to work on paid projects.

You are thankful

When I started talking about this project around me, several people sent me heart-warming words about this website. This is always a joy for me to see that I have not done this for nothing and that I’ve been helpful in some ways. If you too have memories or anecdotes around Oujevipo.fr, please share them at pcorbinais@protonmail.com. Maybe I’ll put them all together in a guestbook, maybe I’ll keep them for myself.

 

I’ll probably post updates about this project here on oujevipo.fr, so come back from time to time if you’re interested. Also twitter.

Thank you for your time and support (and thanks to Dziff for the cover picture)!