Conclusion

Raiford Guins, a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, published a paper titled Concrete and Clay: The Life and Afterlife of E. T. The Extraterrestrial for the Atari 2600 in 2009, five years before the unearthing of the cartridges in New Mexico. He documents the development of the game and analyzes the mythology and reverence that the rumored burial of the game created. He argues that "locating the objects matters less than the preservation of their tale as public memorial to the past where the naivety of a (then) young industry and early digital technological artifacts become dried forget-me-nots pressed tightly and carefully placed in an arid hope chest beneath our feet." Although I agree that preserving the story of the development of the game is crucial, I disagree that preserving the story is more important than preserving copies of the cartridges themselves. It is a blessing that emulators of the game exist online, but the physical cartridges themselves are crucial for historians now and in the future. Displaying and preserving such cartridges allows for a physical representation of the decline of the video game industry and can help demonstrate the technological advancements that the video game industry has made over the past 50 years. In addition, Atari's attempted destruction of the cartridges is a textbook example of corporate coverup. Atari's burial of the cartridges was performed in order to hide and erase Atari's mistakes in the development and the release of the game. Such a coverup seems novel, but it helps demonstrate how willing companies are to hide mistakes from the public, and it serves as a reminder that individuals need to pursue the truth from corporations and dig deeper beyond what is told to them.