The Video Game History Foundation is back at this year’s GDC! While we aren’t doing a pop-up museum in the expo hall this year, we’ll be around the festival all week (March 9–13, 2026), including…
What’s New in Game History: 2026
On Monday, March 9th at 4:30pm, our library director Phil Salvador will be on the panel What’s New in Game History: 2026! This panel is covering all the latest news in the field of game history, from academic books to emulator development.
Phil will be talking about the last year of “Institutions,” groups like museums, libraries, and archives. 2025 was a challenging year for funding and stability in this field, and Phil will share thoughts and updates about what long-term stability means for our field.
Opening Night at the Ballpark
We’ll be tabling at the Monday night opening party at Oracle Park! We’ll have a hands-on demo of our digital archive, plus volunteers on hand to talk about our work preserving and celebrating video game history.
Expanding the 13%
We’ve been assisting with the University of Washington iSchool on a study about video game preservation and accessibility in education. The lead researcher from University of Washington, Lane D. Koughan, will be presenting about their research so far on Thursday, March 12th at 2:40pm!
We’re not involved in this presentation, but we’ll certainly be in attendance and looking forward to hearing how the researchers at UWash are building on our landmark game availability study.
More history at GDC 2026
We’ll be around most of the week to talk about VGHF if you catch us at the Moscone Center, but there’s more history happening at GDC this year! We’re not involved with these events, but we might see you in the audience:
- Establishing the Standards and Practices of Game Preservation Roundtable (Monday 3/9, 1:50pm)
- Preservation Community Meetup (Tuesday 3/10, 10:30am)
- Preservation is Profit: How Retro Games Unlock Long-Term Revenue (Wednesday 3/11, 3:10pm, featuring Nightdive Studios, GOG, and PlayStation)