[game_preservation] Game preservation videos?

[Andrew Armstrong]

Henry,

A new category sounds appropriate if there is content to go there, 
certainly we're talking about video but I don't see why audio, replays, 
and other media wouldn't be appropriate historical data. I am not sure 
of the Internet Archives aims in these areas though - replays as noted, 
would be more attachments to videos as you said.

It'd be excellent to do documentary-style footage of all fields of 
gaming, from "competitive" to "casual" to "serious", in different 
genre's and with games from different ages (why some games are still 
popular for starters!). If this occurred, I don't think there is a 
section, so a new one for this would be best, likely with proper 
metadata categorisation of course.

Another area I missed was fan-made shows too, which show gamer culture 
in various ways. Like TV and film, these occur can be  "documentary 
like", like their personal reviews, or can be entirely fictional like, 
Pure Pwnage. I said fan films for ones made available for free online, 
but there are also non-free non-fan films (from the bad to the worse...) 
and TV shows documenting games not readily available or at least 
information made available about their creation.

One replays; RTS replays I agree are definitely better then video. A 
video only captures a specific place and time even if in a lossless 
video format - trying to watch a real time game is near impossible when 
there are more then 2 players, making repeated viewings via. a replay 
needed to gather the strategy of one player at a time. Its fascinating 
watching replays (you can see how Koreans love Starcraft so much). A 
video works for a casual viewer who needs to be directed to the action, 
but allows no interaction - the medium is interactive, and replays 
provides that so well. I just wish other games did capturing inputs and 
replays!

I agree a massive amount of metadata (Dates, Internal (if possible) 
version numbers and external patch numbers, at the most basic level), is 
needed for all of this, no game patch has not broken, or nearly broken, 
RTS replay playback due to the nature of the beast. FPS replays are more 
stable however.

Emulation ones would be even more stable to a degree, but the copyright 
problem exists for these.

Andrew

Henry Lowood wrote:

> Andrew,

>

> I think the reason there is no explicit bucket for recordings of this 

> sort at the Internet Archive is that there were no collections of 

> videos quite like that.  The collection titles match up with the 

> formats we are currently receiving.  I think we could either add a 

> category or revise the description of an existing category -- for 

> example, the "previews" category could be extended.  There is an 

> explicit preservation bucket, known as CLASP, but that is aimed at 

> software per se, and it is in the software category of the Archive 

> here: http://www.archive.org/details/clasp.  I don't think, however, 

> that movies should go there.

>

> RTS and FPS replays can be included; back when we set this up under 

> the leadership of Simon Carless, the thinking was that since the 

> Archive could not play replay files, it would be best to have a video 

> to play.  The replay file is only auxiliary in the sense that it is an 

> additional file; but it is entirely possible to save replay and demo 

> files and associated metadata, nonetheless.  As Simon will remember, 

> that was something I have always wanted to do.  I have thousands of 

> replays that I have collected or made myself, and I know of other 

> collections (e.g., for DOOM). I think probably I'll test out the 

> issues with uploading replay files as part of our project (probably 

> starting with DOOM or Quake and Warcraft III).  Oh, last point, until 

> around 2000 most machinima were issued as demo files, as well.

>

> The idea of a viewer is meant to deal with the probability that fewer 

> and fewer people will own copies of the games for the replays.  Or, 

> they have the game, but don't feel like patching down to see an 

> earlier replay.  The problem would be solved if game developers would 

> allow all obsolete versions of a game to be made available, of course 

> -- wouldn't need a viewer.   It's so easy to "break" old replays due 

> to even slight incompatibilities in game versions that we would also 

> need to take a careful look at metadata wrappers that enable matching 

> replays and emulated game versions, which is a good problem for us to 

> work on.

>

> BTW, I'm a competitive or online player myself -- mostly RTS -- and 

> this is a particularly important topic for my own research and writing 

> on game-based performance and competitive play.  I use replays an 

> awful lot and have written about demos, replays, game movies, so 

> anything we can do about this problem is fair game, as far as I am 

> concerned.

>

> Henry

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