[game_preservation] IGDA Preservation Roundtables at GDC 2008 -- meeting notes

[Henry Lowood]

Hi everybody,

Here are my notes from the Preservation SIG 
roundtables at GDC.  I waited a few days to post 
this, so attendees who were not already members 
of the SIG could sign up for this mailing list.

First, these were the best-attended meetings in 
the four (five?) years’ worth of roundtables that 
I have attended.   I counted 44 people between 
the two sessions, 41 of whom signed up on the 
circulated sheets.   That’s about twice as many 
as attended last year.  And that’s with a 9am session on Wednesday.

Second, before I get to detailed notes, here 
right off the bat are the “takeaways” that I 
noted as forming a todo list for the SIG over the 
next year.   If I have left anything out, please 
remind me.  I am happy to revise the notes before 
posting to the wiki.  I will wait a week or so to 
give people time to revise, add, etc.

Takeaways

1. An oral history program.
2. Profiles of collectors and/or collector 
contact information or information for/about 
collectors made available via the SIG wiki.
3. Facilitate coordination among repositories, 
e.g., Texas, Stanford, Worcester Polytechnic 
Institute, Strong National Museum of Play (these 
repositories were represented by attendees at the roundtables).
4. White paper on issues/needs/value of game 
preservation and history.  (Follow up in 2009 
with a white paper documenting best practices.) 
This would begin to address issues of outreach, 
developer awareness, contact with developers & 
designers regarding archival materials, 
etc.  (volunteers for this effort: Henry Lowood, 
Warren Spector, Chris Grant, Steve Meretzky, 
Frank Cifaldi, Liz Lawley, Jean-Paul Dyson, Don Hopkins  -- did I miss anyone?)
5. Volunteer to act as liaison to IGDA Education SIG.

So, the task for the SIG now is to organize these projects and get to work.

Details and discussion topics:

  As chair, I opened with a 5-minute introduction, covering two main areas:
1. the SIG’s activities over the last 
year.  These includes the Digital Game Canon 
event at GDC 2007 and the formation of a group of 
volunteers who have taken over responsibility for 
the mailing list and wiki.  The wiki has grown 
quite a bit under the leadership of Andrew 
Armstrong.  Two areas esp. worth mentioning are 
the pages devoted to documentation of the ten 
games put forward as the Digital Game Canon 
(organized by Andrew and Simon Carless) and the 
new program of memorial pages (organized by Devin Monnens and Andrew).
The Digital Game Canon will continue as an annual 
affair, but it was not accepted in 2008 as a GDC 
program. So we are looking for a new venue (which 
could be on-line or a RL meeting).  Now that GDC 
has passed, it is time to investigate seriously 
how we will continue this program.   (After the 
meeting, Chris Grant opened up an interesting 
possibility of working with Joystiq on this program.)
2. The “Preserving Virtual Worlds” project funded 
by the U.S. Library of Congress, through NDIIPP’s 
Preserving Creative America program. Cf. 
<http://www.ndiipp.uiuc.edu/pca/>http://www.ndiipp.uiuc.edu/pca/. 
Handouts about the project were passed 
around.  See the project site for more details.
The first roundtable meeting opened with 
around-the-table introductions, punctuated by a 
wide-ranging discussion about what it means for a 
game to be “preserved.”   Topics included 
emulation, migration, museum exhibitions and the 
different ways of experiencing a game.

Another topic brought up was the tendency of game 
developers to use networked technology in ways 
that make game preservation more difficult, an 
example being online activation of games (e.g., 
Bioshock). This topic introduced the theme of how 
to increase awareness among developers about 
long-term preservation of digital games and how 
current practices might interfere with that goal.

The NDIIPP project brings up the issue of how to 
connect knowledgeable, quick-moving, energetic 
private collectors/players/fans/designers/hackers 
who have done so much about game preservation to 
the large cultural institutions that are 
beginning to take notice of the need for the 
long-term “industrial strength” solutions they 
can provide.  How do we put together the 
strengths of the pt-boats and the 
battleships?  The NDIIPP project offers one 
avenue for participation; another suggestion was 
to try to create a network of collectors through 
the SIG.  A wiki page devoted to collectors and 
possibly to contact information about collectors 
seems like a good place to start.

In the first roundtable, several people suggested 
that there is need for more work not just on 
software preservation, but also on matters such 
as archival collecting, oral histories, and video 
documentation of gameplay.  There will be a new 
Virtual World videos collection on the Internet 
Archive as part of the NDIIPP effort.   In the 
second roundtable on Thursday, more meat was put 
on the bones of a possible oral history project 
or set of projects that the SIG could facilitate.  Some of the ideas proposed:
1. Coordinate or survey current oral history or 
interview efforts and survey existing collections 
(probably something for the wiki).
2. Share information about interviewing 
techniques and perhaps develop a list of common questions.  (wiki?)
3. Coordinate a program of oral histories under 
the umbrella of the SIG  -- get names of 
volunteers who would carry out interviews?  Find 
repositories for the raw interviews (Stanford, 
Texas, and WPI have all done some work in this 
area – maybe put copies in all three 
repositories) and a host for streamed content and 
transcripts (cf. Stanford’s Silicon Genesis site 
for a model – 
<http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu/>http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu). 
Make sure the three dominant ways of accessing 
oral histories are addressed: (1) watching an 
entire interview; (2) reading a transcript; (3) 
searching for interviews relevant for a particular topic, person, company, etc.
4. Should we put together a small project group to get this going?
5. Modest funding might be needed to help with 
costs associated with interviews, hosting, 
creation of metadata.  (Henry can provide 
estimates based on Silicon Genesis.)  Hal Barwood 
suggested contacting Bob Bates at IGDA Central about this project.

Besides fleshing out the oral history discussion 
and repeating some of the conversation topics 
from the first roundtable, the second roundtable 
added the following topics to the mix:

1. Should the SIG establish a liaison to the 
Education SIG?  This would connect the 
educational use of game collections to the 
educators likely to use these materials.   We need a volunteer for this role?
2. Coordination of archival collecting efforts by 
cultural repositories (libraries, museums, etc.) 
would be a good idea.  How can the SIG facilitate 
this?  Would a regional approach work?  It would 
be good to convene a group of curators and others 
who would like to develop this idea.
3. Several participants commented on the 
different kinds of collections that are needed: 
game software and hardware, contextual material 
(e.g., archives and oral histories) and material 
about player behavior (videos, data, etc.).
4. How do we get developers to contribute 
materials to collections (in all of the above 
categories)?  This question led to the takeaway 
of preparing a white paper in 2008 that addresses 
the needs and value of game preservation – to the 
industry, in particular, but also to academics, 
players, and others.  A group of about 8 people 
volunteered to participate in organizing and 
writing this white paper.  We would then consider 
putting together a second white paper in 2009 to 
document best practices – this would tie in 
nicely with the scheduled completion of the NDIIPP project at the end of 2009.

A good time was had by all.  My sense is that by 
the end of the second roundtable, we had a good 
sense of shared community and some projects we 
can work on over the next year.  See you at the 2009 roundtable!

Please feel free to add your own notes.   I’ll 
compile the additions and then add this page to the wiki.

Henry



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