[game_preservation] What Happens To Code From Failed Projects?

[Henry Lowood]

Frank Cifaldi would be a guy to address this; he collects games that 
were never completed, as I understand it.  

Henry

Andrew Armstrong wrote:

> Slashdot has a vaguely preservation related topic; 

> http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/06/1431227

>

> This was an interesting response:

>

> "When EA shut down Earth & Beyond, there were the typical calls for 

> the server software to be released. Amazingly enough, they actually 

> did get a response: that the code for the backend of an MMO represents 

> a huge investment by a company, and that they (EA) would not release 

> the code for two basic reasons. One, access to the code (source, 

> libraries, decompilable libraries, whatever) for a fully functional 

> MMO would be a huge leg-up for competitors attempting to enter the 

> field. Two, the code represents a base that can be used for other 

> projects, and releasing a version of that base could be a liability to 

> those future projects. For those two reasons, the chances of EA in any 

> way supporting community-run servers would be nil.

>

> Not stellar news (nor surprising), but the one pseudo-official 

> response I have ever actually seen. And it does make sense, to me at 

> least."

>

> I don't know of the game myself, so is news to me (but what I'd expect 

> none-the-less). Some of the other comments also have videogame related 

> responses (the original question was prompted by Tabula Rasa shutting 

> down). There is no one answer, which makes it all the better 

> discussion to read through, although there are not many "great" 

> comments - it is Slashdot after all :)

>

> One option should always be to release the code to a dark archive, 

> certainly something to look at in the future to advocate once some 

> institutions are setup well for it and can give them some PR for doing 

> it :)

>

> Andrew

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation


-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
     Film & Media Collections
HRG, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall, Stanford University Libraries
Stanford CA 94305-6004 USA
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
lowood at stanford.edu; 650-723-4602

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20081206/8a222017/attachment.htm>