Preserving Worlds (series)
2 Seasons
Preserving Worlds is a documentary travelogue through aging and beloved virtual worlds. Join us as we explore dated chat environments, appreciate player-created art, and meet people working against obsolescence to keep the communities they care about alive and accessible. Virtual worlds are delicate things, and they can vanish with hardly a trace. Under capitalism, preservation is often the last priority. But even if you manage to archive the offline software, a dead world can only tell you so much. It’s just as important to document how people spent their time within it.
With this series, filmmakers Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil offer an entertaining glimpse into these worlds and create historical records of them that may someday be of use.
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14:08Episode 1Preserving Worlds S1 Ep1: WorldsChat
Episode 1
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 14 minutes
WorldsChat is a social virtual world that was launched in 1994, and is still online today. Users can equip avatars and hang out in 3D spaces, conversing with each other over text-based chat. WorldsChat allowed users to...
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28:10Episode 2Preserving Worlds S1 Ep2: ZZT
Episode 2
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 28 minutes
In 1991, 21-year-old game developer Tim Sweeney launched a simplistic, already-outdated MS-DOS game that would become, entirely by accident, the most popular hobbyist game development tool of the 90’s.
ZZT's free, r... -
27:49Episode 3Preserving Worlds S1 Ep3: Myst Online
Episode 3
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 28 minutes
In the mid-2000’s, Cyan Worlds, creators of the massively popular adventure game Myst, released an ambitious online sequel that never caught on the way they'd hoped. Myst Online: Uru Live sought to translate the single...
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25:16Episode 4Preserving Worlds S1 Ep4: Doom
Episode 4
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 25 minutes
The first person shooter Doom launched in 1993 and quickly secured its place in popular culture. The game’s creators were unusually mod-friendly, and they set the game up so it was easy and legal for fans to create the...
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24:50Episode 5Preserving Worlds S1 Ep5: NeoHabitat
Episode 5
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 28 minutes
Habitat, the first ever graphical massively multiplayer online game, emerged on the Commodore 64 home micro computer in 1986. Because the game was the first of its kind, its developers tried a number of odd experiments...
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30:28Episode 6Preserving Worlds S1 Ep6: Second Life
Episode 6
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 30 minutes
Arguably the most well known social virtual world, Second Life started in 2003 and it’s still online today. The software is extremely flexible, and users are able to customize almost every aspect of the experience. The...