[game_preservation] New Year's Greeting and Preservation SIG news

[Simon Carless]

Hurray!

Nice to see you starting things up again, Henry. I think you may have 
the chops to get things going properly! Also, I strongly feel that 
university faculty, professors, and researchers should be the core of 
this preservation group for one simple reason - they are the ones likely 
to actually HAVE TIME to work on this problem, esp. if funding can be 
finagled. (I'm not saying you lay around with a mojito, but things like 
the Machinima archive and the Cabrinety Collection are more directly 
related to your day job, and if you get funding for the digital 
preservation, all the better!)

One thing I wanted to mention before I forgot - my version of the 
Preservation SIG page, which got wiped over (make preservation joke 
here!) has a few useful links on it that someone might want to include 
on the sidebar of the blog or similar:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050309001205/www.igda.org/preservation/

I would like to see the NDIIPP proposal and Expression Of Interest 
posted, yep - also, who else is involved with it, and are they also on 
this mailing list?

Something else I want to mention is that the Internet Archive managed 
again to get the DMCA exemption passed about archiving old software with 
access protection:

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

'Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have 
become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a 
condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose 
of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a 
library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine 
or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format 
is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the 
commercial marketplace.'

This is useful for obvious reasons, but the Archive has not had much 
traction on working in this area since my first experiments, and since I 
no longer have time to work there, they've mainly been leveraging the 
Softpres.org work as examples, I think. The Softpres.org guys seem 
pretty busy with real-life work, too. So I really _do_ think that grant 
funding is the only way to get going on a lot of this time-intensive 
stuff nowadays. I believe that Brewster @ the Archive would be open to 
helping fund some software preservation efforts, probably in-house at 
the Archive, but his interest is in both software _and_ games - and 
probably more software. The exemption again runs out in 3 years and has 
to be proved again.

The Speed Runs guys are still doing sterling work in terms of how to 
play through new _and_ old games swiftly in video format - 
http://www.archive.org/details/speed_runs - I think in a few years, this 
is going to be a totally great resource, incidentally, because it 
included footage of old games and lots of info on tactics that people 
will quickly forget.

Also, I know that the Computer History Museum is still cracking on with 
work, but I don't know that any of it is in the game field. Also their 
software curator changed recently.

Is the maintainer of the Game On exhibition on this list? He probably 
should be if not, I've chatted to him before, nice guy! It's at the 
Science Museum in London right now: 
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/gameon/

There's my braindump for the morning! I'll post about the SIG on our 
editor blog, GameSetWatch.com - hopefully that'll get some more people 
interested.

Regards,
Simon.
[Editorial Director, Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com;
Chairman, Independent Games Festival.]
http://www.mono211.com/ffwd

Henry Lowood wrote:


> Dear Preservation SIG members (and a few others I have included):

>

> First, this is not spam. It's a real message to the list.  Sorry, it's 

> a long one!

>

> Second, Happy New Year!

>

> Now that I have all that out of the way, let me start off the new year 

> with three blocks of news about the IGDA Preservation SIG. Here's a 

> table of contents, so to speak:

>

> 1. Plans for moving the SIG forward in 2007.

> 2. SIG events at GDC.

> 3. Some preservation news.

>

> 1. Plans for moving the SIG forward.   Beginning with this new year, 

> I've agreed to chair the Preservation SIG.   Many thanks to Simon 

> Carless and Kieron Wilkinson for starting and leading the group since 

> its inception, I believe, at the 2004 GDC.

>

> Following up on the roundtable meetings at 2006 GDC, we are going to 

> try to start up some ambitious activities this year in game 

> preservation and history, and the first order of business is to 

> solicit some help from you.  We need volunteers for several SIG projects:

>

> * Blog author(s).  See http://www.igda.org/preservation/ for a sample

> * Wiki editors and contributors. See 

> http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Game_Preservation_SIG for some 

> stubs and 

> http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Game_Preservation_SIG/Projects/ for 

> a start on an important page.

> * Mailing list moderator. 

> * Forum moderator. See start here: 

> http://www.igda.org/Forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=202

>

> The first two roles in the SIG team are especially important, as the 

> blog and wiki can play important roles in fulfilling the SIG's mission 

> as far as being a meta-resource and clearing house for information.  

> Oh, we have a mission statement here: 

> http://www.igda.org/preservation/about.html.

>

> There are a number of projects about to get underway in game 

> preservation, game library collections, etc.  I know of several of 

> these, but I'm sure that the group collectively has a wealth of 

> knowledge to share.  Let's use the blog and wiki to establish a 

> presence both in the industry and in academic and cultural resource 

> circles.

>

> Ok, so part 1 ends with this appeal: Please help out by volunteering 

> for one of these posts, and we can get started!

>

> Also, please spread the word about the SIG to anyone you think may be 

> interested in either game preservation or history.

>

> 2. SIG events at GDC.

>

> There will be three important events for us in the IGDA tracks at 

> GDC.  This is a heads-up to let you know about them.

>

> The first is a panel called "10 Games You need to Play," with Warren 

> Spector, Christopher Grant, Steve Meretzky, Matteo Bittanti and 

> myself.  (The math works: 2 games each ...) Matteo has dubbed this the 

> "canon fodder" session.  Here is the description:

> https://www.cmpevents.com/GD07/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=3885 

> <https://www.cmpevents.com/GD07/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=3885>

>

> This will be mentioned at the panel, but it's closely linked to the 

> U.S. Library of Congress' interest in funding a major project towards 

> game preservation as part of this program:

> http://www.digitalpreservation.gov, specifically this call for 

> proposals: 

> http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/partners/creative_rfei.pdf.  I can 

> tell you that a consortium consisting of Stanford, U. Maryland and U. 

> Illlinois has put together an expression of interest for a major 

> preservation project, though we do not know yet if it will be funded.  

> However, we hope that it will be, and that the panel will play a role 

> in defining an initial project focus around a canon of important 

> titles in game history.  Anyway, this is just to let you know about 

> this context; the event will surely be fun and interesting on a number 

> of levels.

>

> The other two events are roundtable meetings under the title, 

> "Preserving Games: Saving the Past and Setting Safeguards for Today."  

> As has become traditional at GDC, we will have two meetings of this 

> roundtable, I believe. Perhaps one will focus on "saving the past" and 

> the other on "setting safeguards" but we'll see how that works out.  

> The roundtable is described here:

> https://www.cmpevents.com/GD07/a.asp?option=G&V=3&id=99189 

> <https://www.cmpevents.com/GD07/a.asp?option=G&V=3&id=99189>

>

> Please plan on attending these events at GDC, if you can.

>

> 3. Some preservation news.

>

> Well, I already spilled the beans about the NDIIPP proposal, which was 

> my major piece of news.  If anyone is interested in more news about 

> this, please let me know and perhaps I'll add a wiki page for it to 

> the SIG.  Any interest in seeing the Expression of Interest?  If so, 

> I'll ask my colleagues for permission to circulate that.

>

> Another piece of news is that Machinima Archive - 

> http://www.archive.org/details/machinima - has archived nearly 500 

> movies and will probably hit that number before GDC.  So that project 

> has proven itself.

>

> Last, I am hearing from a number of libraries that are starting up 

> game collections.  It's amazing for me to compare this to the 

> situation in the late 1990s when Stanford acquired the Cabrinety 

> Collection.  At the time, I feared (not really) that acquiring such 

> materials was as likely a professional death wish as a bold, visionary 

> move.  Not even a decade later, libraries are moving quickly into this 

> area.  If any of you individual collectors, metadata creators (hello 

> Mobygames!) or those with experience in museums, libraries or 

> companies would be willing to post about your experiences with such 

> collections, that would be a great use of the blog or esp. the wiki.  

> It would be wonderful to be able to refer institutions or individuals 

> to this information; maybe we could try to assemble three sets of 

> resources for individual collectors, institutional repositories, and 

> metadata/folksonomy projects.

>

> That's all for now.  Please volunteer for one of the areas I have 

> mentioned or just feel free to dive into the wiki and start working on 

> it.  Also, please direct anyone interested in our topics to IGDA and 

> encourage them to join the SIG. And do feel free to forward this e-mail.

>

> See you at GDC,

>

> Henry

>

> Henry Lowood

> Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;

>    Germanic Collections; Film & Media Collections

> HRG, Green Library, Stanford University Libraries

> Stanford CA 94305-6004

> lowood at stanford, edu; 650-723-4602

>

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