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

[Dyson, Jon-Paul]

Thanks, Henry, for the comprehensive notes and for leading the very
useful sessions. I would be willing to participate in Takeaways 1-4. 

 

Best,

J.P. Dyson

 

 

Jon-Paul C. Dyson, Ph.D.
Vice President for Exhibit Research and Development and
Associate Curator for Electronic Games
Strong National Museum of Play
One Manhattan Square
Rochester, NY 14607
Direct line: 585-410-6341
Fax: 585-263-2493
Email: jpdyson at museumofplay.org
<mailto:jpdyson at museumofplay.orgWebsite> Website:
http://museumofplay.org <blocked::http://museumofplay.org/> 

 

 

 

From: game_preservation-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Henry Lowood
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 7:04 PM
To: game_preservation at igda.org
Subject: [game_preservation] IGDA Preservation Roundtables at GDC 2008
--meeting notes

 

 
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/.   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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