Saving "virtual worlds" from extinction on Ars Technica talks with the folks behind a project where librarians at the University of Illinois are saving 15 computer games for posterity, including DOOM and Sim City. The Ars conversation focuses on saving virtual worlds from possible future extinction, as for some reason a full 20% of these are portions of Second Life. They discuss the reasons behind the project, the difficulty preserving DOS games like DOOM, since emulators can be flaky (they are looking for hardware independence, but don't explain why they are not simply preserving DOS, as well), and the even more complex issues in preserving online games. These include Second Life copyright concerns, which mean that in spite of all their efforts, users will probably never be able to play these games through this archive.