Happy World Digital Preservation Day! This blog is about the making of the game File Format Fling. The link to play the game can be found at the end of the blog.

If you’ve ever met a digital preservation practitioner, you’ve likely noticed their passion for their work. This enthusiasm often shows up in creative ways—floppy disk cookies and parody songs, for example, are fun, lighthearted ways to share the field with others. Games are another wonderful, engaging way to explore digital preservation.

In recent years, we’ve seen a variety of outstanding preservation-focused games, both analog and digital. Digital games, however, offer a unique opportunity to not only create a fun experience but also pick up valuable coding skills. In December 2023, Francesca Mackenzie, Susanne van den Eijkel, and I wrote about our study group, Bits and Bots, in an OPF blog. The group officially launched in February 2024 with a focus on developing digital skills, such as HTML, Python, JavaScript, and CSS. And how are these skills taught? Through game development! The study group has proven very successful—several digital preservation games have been created, and we even received a Digital Preservation Award for our efforts.

We also hosted a workshop during iPRES 2024, collaborating with colleagues from the DPC, who are currently running a Python Study Group Program. This workshop was designed to teach practitioners some basic programming skills while guiding them to build a game in just three hours! 

We organisers couldn’t resist joining in the fun and decided to create our own game during the workshop. This brainstorming session led us to File Format Fling: a dating quiz that helps players find their perfect file format match. After three hours, we got a nice start, but it was nowhere near done. So we decided to do more work on it so we could publish it on World Digital Preservation Day. We even got some extra help from two interns at the National Archives of the Netherlands. All so we could get it done on time.

File Format Fling

What is the game about?

The game begins with you, a tired and lonely digital preservation practitioner. After a busy day, you find yourself in a strange dream where you end up in a file format dating quiz! Will you find love with your perfect file format or will you end up succumbing to your workload? Every decision you make or question you answer brings you closer to the special file format. 

This is (probably) the first ever file format dating simulation game, and it has been tremendous fun to make it. Other than it being really entertaining, we also tried to make it educational (a bit).

Tip: why just explore one connection? Try playing the game multiple times to get different outcomes. Every ending has a different achievement tied to it as well. To quote a popular song from 1999: “Gotta catch ’em all!”

How was it created?

The game was made using the interactive storytelling tool Twine, the team also wrote code in JavaScript and CSS to create the design, finish and some of the game mechanics. The resulting output is an HTML file hosted on GitHub pages.

Where can I play it?

You can play the game here! If you want to see the code or give us questions/suggestions, please also find the GitHub repository.

This game was created by: Susanne van den Eijkel, Anton van Es, Elaine Murray, Lotte Wijsman, Francesca Mackenzie, Ellie O’Leary, and Sharon McMeekin.