(AI-translation from the Swedish original.) In this global market, Swedish companies have proven remarkably successful. Between 2006 and 2013, Swedish game developers' growth averaged 39 percent, and in 2013 the figure reached a staggering 76 percent. The industry is young; over half of the 170 registered Swedish companies have emerged since 2010.

Games – and gaming – have in a short time become culture, and thereby also cultural heritage. Right now, memory institutions are struggling with the question of if, and if so how, this digital heritage should be preserved for the future.

One path that has so far proven difficult is legislation. In January 2015, the new e-deposit law came into force as a complement to the law on mandatory delivery of printed material (with proud origins from 1661). With the new law, all material from Swedish websites must be delivered for archiving to the Royal Library. However, the law has been criticized for being outdated even at the time it was formulated. "The new e-deposit law is a tame attempt to handle this new abundance of information based on outdated definitions," write Otfried Czaika, Jonas Nordin and Pelle Snickars in the introduction to the new and very readable book Information som problem. The law is focused on digital material that constitutes "a defined unit of electronic material with text, sound or images that has predetermined content intended to be presented each time it is used." Therefore, online games, game apps, downloadable games, and all interactive material related to the games are excluded. This means that the majority of today's game publishing is not affected at all. Ultimately, the problem lies on a principled level: the notion of an absolute, complete, and controllable amount of information on which the mandatory delivery system has been based for three hundred and fifty years fits poorly with the digital age.

Secure the gaming world for the future through legal enforcement seems problematic, in other words. Additionally, it is hardly sufficient to preserve only the games. In Arkiv 2013:4, Olle Sköld, archivist and doctoral student at Uppsala University, talks about game cultures and game preservation he studies based on online games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. For him, it is the social and cultural aspects of gaming, rather than the games themselves, that are most interesting. Similarly, the Technical Museum in its project The Worlds of Video Games has largely chosen to focus on players, gaming, and gaming cultures. Forms of social interaction and social networks, cultural references, and individual memories concerning video games are the focus of the investigation as much as the games themselves. Without context, games become both incomprehensible and uninteresting.

Just as important as the user perspective is the manufacturer perspective. Game developers and companies operate in a future-oriented industry where memory is short and only the latest product is valued. New constellations arise and old ones cease. Competition is intense and the expansive situation leaves little time for reflection. Companies' own archiving in most cases is limited to the bare necessities, and the internal history is rarely documented. In cooperation with other memory institutions and researchers, the Center for Business History therefore wants to contribute with an interview and documentation project about the Swedish game industry.

What characterizes the Swedish video game industry in an international comparison? How did it arise and what has been decisive for its successes? How has it reached an international market? We know the game industry is male-dominated, but also that the proportion of women is increasing. How have these proportions affected the business, and to what extent have they influenced the design and content of the products, the games? Most game developers, 100 out of 170 companies, currently have four or fewer employees, while about ten companies have 50 to approximately 500 employees. The gap between small and truly large players is therefore large. What does that imply?

The video game industry's development deserves to be illuminated from many different perspectives. Its history is short. The founding phase is still within reach and the people with experience from the first years are available. Their memories deserve to be documented, and the same goes for the expansion the industry is undergoing today. In other words, we face a unique opportunity.

The text has previously been published in the magazine Arkiv.