Archive the work
We help preserve the technical, creative, and community history of historical abandonware games, including the systems, documentation, tools, and knowledge required to understand how they were built.
Digital preservation for playable history
Keeping important online worlds accessible, documented, and alive.
An Old Man In The Village is a nonprofit corporation formed for charitable and educational work around historical abandonware video games. We support archival and restoration efforts that help communities experience, study, and learn from games that might otherwise disappear.
Focus
Historical online games
Approach
Archival, restoration, education
Programs
Free community access
Our mission
Preservation is most meaningful when people can learn from it.
Restore the experience
Restoration turns preserved material into something people can inspect, discuss, and experience. Our projects emphasize careful stewardship, transparency, and respect for the communities connected to these games.
Teach through access
The organization exists for charitable and educational purposes. We cultivate free programs where volunteers, researchers, and players can engage with historical online games as living cultural artifacts.
Flagship project
Star Wars Galaxies Restoration
Star Wars Galaxies Restoration is our flagship restoration effort: a fan-made, community-driven project that preserves access to a historically significant online world first released in 2003 and discontinued in 2011.
SWGR combines a multi-profession character system, open-world play, player cities, crafting, a player-driven economy, space flight, and content from the game's major eras into a maintained public program. That work reflects the broader mission of An Old Man In The Village: preserving complex multiplayer games as software, social spaces, and creative history.
SWG Restoration is a fan-made, nonprofit, community-driven project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Daybreak Games, Lucasfilm Entertainment, Electronic Arts, or The Walt Disney Company.
Stewardship
Plain governance for a public-benefit mission.
An Old Man In The Village, Inc. is organized as a Delaware nonprofit corporation and is operated for charitable and educational purposes. Its board-led structure is intended to support careful decision-making, responsible financial administration, and policies that protect the organization and the communities it serves.
As the organization grows, this site will host public annual filings and other transparency materials. The same preservation values that guide our projects also guide our operations: documentation, continuity, and access.