[game_preservation] White Paper: Case Study Research!

[Stuart Feldhamer]

A few of the games on that list were released for other platforms. Good list
though.

 

It also reminds me of a few other games for PC that were reviewed but never
released. One example is “Hollywood Monsters” by Pendulo Studios
(http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/HollywoodMonsters/HollywoodMonsters.sh
tm). It was only ever released in Spanish, but an English copy exists.

 

Stuart

 

From: game_preservation-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Armstrong
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 9:09 AM
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] White Paper: Case Study Research!

 

Thanks for the information, should be useful - if not as a direct statement
in the case study section, in the "current problems" section we have.

Andrew

István Fábián wrote: 

Some of those have been recovered, but most are indeed MIA and known to
exist.

As for the number of Amiga titles over 5000 commercial releases, some with
very limited (few hundred units) prints.

 

Istvan

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Andrew Armstrong <mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org>  

To: IGDA <mailto:game_preservation at igda.org>  Game Preservation SIG 

Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 1:55 PM

Subject: Re: [game_preservation] White Paper: Case Study Research!

 

Wow, quite a list, although I'm not sure how many total Amiga games exist
that's a fair few which are MIA.

Andrew

István Fábián wrote: 

For the Amiga platform:

http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_rarity=5

 

Cheers,

Istvan

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Andrew Armstrong <mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org>  

To: IGDA <mailto:game_preservation at igda.org>  Game Preservation SIG 

Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 1:26 PM

Subject: Re: [game_preservation] White Paper: Case Study Research!

 

Neat thoughts, there's a lot of areas for this section to go actually and
one is the entire loss of games, especially unreleased ones. I bet a lot of
developers must take in their stride cancellations - there's a high percent
which are cancelled at various stages, the worst being close to going gold.
Anyone know any more examples of them?

Hmm, I'm thinking it might be better to make a fictional account up for the
case study. I'm not sure what'll work best myself, but lost games are
certainly one major thing.

Andrew

Stuart Feldhamer wrote: 

To me the greatest loss is when a game itself becomes lost. There have been
several cases in the past where a title was thought not to exist or not to
have been released despite the presence of ads for the title, until a copy
was eventually found. I believe the infamous Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash
fits into that category. Well what if the game had never been found and
verified? Only a few copies are known to exist. What if there are titles
that we think don’t exist but really do and have been lost?

Even if we are 99.9% sure that a game hasn’t been officially released, does
that mean it shouldn’t be preserved? There are some games that although they
were never released (to the best of our collective knowledge), may have been
complete or very close to complete and were just killed at the end for
financial reasons. One example that came up in discussion not that long ago
was Ultima 8: The Lost Vale expansion, for which a box prototype turned up.
The code may turn up at some point  - it may even be among the mass of
materials that the Wing Commander fans got from EA from the old Origin
collection. But EA didn’t really care too much about preserving that stuff,
and so for now, the code is lost.  Another game that was killed close to the
finish line and which I personally mourned was Star Trek: The Secret of
Vulcan Fury. DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) even recorded voice acting for that
one before he died and it presumably has been thrown in the garbage.

I’m not sure how this group feels about unreleased games, but I would think
that developers in particular would want to preserve them. I was reading
something on Gamasutra the other day where a developer was saying that he’s
been in the industry for 10 years (or something like that) and only had 2
released titles, because the other 3 were cancelled after the team had put
in a lot of work. Should that work be preserved, if it was at the point
where the game was playable and viable? Does the decision of a marketing
exec ultimately define whether or not we want to preserve a title? I realize
there are intellectual property laws in play here, but ultimately we have
these “guerilla preservationists” who will do what is needed despite the
law, such as finding an old Atari 2600 game prototype on cartridge and then
dumping it onto the net so it can be preserved.

Anyway, it’s late and I think I rambled a bit, but I hope I got some
coherent thought across. Happy Thanksgiving. : )

Stuart

From: game_preservation-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Armstrong
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 7:48 PM
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Subject: [game_preservation] White Paper: Case Study Research!

Hey all you people with knowledge about videogame history. There's one part
of the white paper we could do with major SIG work on as a whole - we've
decided the majority of the paper content, which you can check out here
(comment on it if you like):

http://www.igda.org/wiki/Game_Preservation_SIG/White_Paper/Before_It%27s_Too
_Late:_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper

The main part that we need information on is the Case Study: "What If We Do
Nothing?"

This requires either a savvy fictional account of the future where we don't
preserve much of anything, or some good examples of what we have already
lost (a nice twist, we reveal this has already happened...dun dun dun!).

There are a few examples brought
<http://www.igda.org/wiki/Game_Preservation_SIG/White_paper_brainstorm/Compe
lling_Examples#Examples_of_Historical_Works_lost_in_Videogames>  up before,
but nothing much detailed for a real-life example. This means we might have
to come up with a fictional account anyway, or a hybrid.

So: ideas welcome! What's the worst story you can think of, or the worst
actual thing that's been lost so far!

It's aimed at developers remember - not
historians/preservationists/archivists themselves (we already know how
important it all is) - so a relevant example for developers (crediting of
their works? people unable to play their games soon in the future? simply
them dropping off the face of the earth in historical terms?) would be
great.

Thanks if anyone can help on this!

Andrew

PS: we still want logo ideas from an earlier thread, surely someone must
have some good ideas for them too ;) there's enough of you listening to
these emails I hope!




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