Sam Dyer preserves video game history in hardback
gamesindustry.bizBitmap Books is a video game book publisher with a design-first mindset. This means that Bitmap's founder, creative director, and sole employee Sam Dyer, is all about creating tangible art, as fit for the coffee table and collector's shelf as it is for being read cover-to-cover.
Maintaining this balance of aesthetic strike and informational acuity has defined Bitmap's journey since Dyer started his company in 2014. In the ten years since Bitmap's inception, the discourse surrounding game preservation and physical media has grown. But preserving games wasn't necessarily Dyer's initial goal, he tells us.
"I wouldn't say the company was started with any kind of core mission or end-game in mind," Dyer says. "It was really born out of my passion for craft design and my passion for games. The vision has always been to produce beautiful gaming books that gamers can enjoy – and that can evoke lots of nostalgia."
As he explains Bitmap's evolution, Dyer says he wants to be careful with how his business treats nostalgia. Retro gaming books are all about bringing people back to their happy memories of times past, yet Dyer says there's a fine line between celebration and predation when it comes to taking peoples' money for products that interact with this feeling.
"There's an interesting conversation to be had surrounding the word 'nostalgia.' It's starting to become a bit overused, and it's actually got a few negative connotations, where there are a lot of companies that prey on peoples' nostalgia. Big companies include gaming in their adverts to use as a hook to engage with a certain audience, for example. So, I'm sort of always a bit wary about that phrase. Bitmap began with me just wanting to produce things that I would want to buy. Things that reminded me of childhood."
It turns out that what most reminded Dyer of childhood was the wonder he felt after his parents bought him his first computer: a Commodore 64. Though no one in his family knew about games, he learned how to load,
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