I might add that you and I, Bill, may play a larger role in this "golden age" business than we might realize, simply because we wrote (and will write/direct) some of the first comprehensive books/films on the topic. Assuming that these works aren't forgotten utterly, it's conceivable that scholars or game buffs in the future might come to rely very heavily on them; in effect they might help define what is considered to be a "classic game" in the year 2050. I might be suffering from delusions of grandeur, but it's very gratifying to me to think that we might very well have helped shape the future of gaming's past. :P

By way of example, why do we think so much of Shakespeare today? It's because so many scholars and fans of literature talk about him so much, and it gets passed on. On the negative side, there might well have been plays written back then that were just as good if not much better, but for whatever reason didn't attract the pen of the historian or critic; they just didn't "stick."