[game_preservation] Project Discussion: Collectors Information

[Andrew Armstrong]

As was the case with Earthbound Frank! :)

Looks like an interesting survey. Rachael, can I get permission to do 
the second (non-developer-orientated) survey at Back Bytes? I might add 
a few of my own questions as appropriate, and you're free to have the 
answers (I might take my laptop so they can type it, or just print a few 
sheets).

Suggestions for the industry version:

Question 4, perhaps you need to additionally ask "Is there a person 
formally trained as an archivist?" since if you are able to get the 
opinion of only one person from a company, is worthwhile knowing.
Question 7, you might need to think of being more specific (or be 
prepared for a lot of "More then 20" answers). I'd mark it down as full 
time staff, and add a few more variables (maybe 20-50, 50-100, 100+). If 
a "team" might be up to 50 people, you can gauge what kind of ratio of 
"standard game production" they do. You also need to have the second 
point be renamed to "2-10".
Question 16, you might want to add an option to say "Not available to 
the public at large, but maybe to small interested parties or for 
display" or something. It sounds as if they'd instantly have to give 
copies of their source code or design documents to everyone on the 
internet, hehe.

Related to my point about question 7, you might want to ask how long the 
games they produce take to make normally - if 3-5 years, then larger 
(asset heavy, long production) games, which are drastically different to 
preserve then < 1 year projects (which might be mobile games, indie 
ones, web ones, who knows. but definitely different).

There is also the possibility you've left out a question based on who 
might be responsible for assets not being worked on - who manages 
actually storing the material? (The individual creators, the a specific 
person on the team, a specific person in the company, a group of people, 
no one in particular...), not sure if you'd need this though, but it 
would be interesting to know.

Finally, you might need to add (for sake of getting a response!) many 
more options which basically state "I don't know". I doubt many 
non-management people or non-IT staff will know some of the later 
questions for instance. This however might be a bit of a cop out, I 
don't know the methodology of the survey (so if questions can go 
unanswered). Question 18 for instance, can't let you answer "neither" or 
"I don't know" :)

Also, I presume this is rather anonymous - you don't ask anything about 
the companies name or location I see :)

For the community one, in addition to 1Up for options, you might want to 
add Eurogamer (for us European people, who don't go by USA release dates 
;) ) GameTrailers and GameSpy (which is, for some reason, still separate 
from IGN, sigh), and possibly, (sigh) Kokatu. There's also a few others, 
magazine tied a lot of them. You might also want to promote the fact you 
can choose more then one as you do with question 10 for previous questions.

Somewhere near the beginning you might want to ask if they specifically 
collect old videogames - interest is one thing, a collector might well 
read different sites (or whatever) to just someone who likes older 
videogames.

There is also a contrast to the first survey - nothing about if they 
would like to help in some way, or provide further feedback - I guess 
this is intentional?

Thanks for putting this up!

Andrew

Frank Cifaldi wrote:

> Consider adding an amateur translation option for question #8. I know 

> translating a game isn't preservation in the strictest sense, but it 

> does give the game a larger potential audience and keep it "alive" 

> more than its already diminished shelf life.

>

> On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Rachel Sheepy Donahue 

> <donahrm at gmail.com <mailto:donahrm at gmail.com>> wrote:

>

>     Ha! Thanks for catching that, artifact of a previous version. Good

>     proof of how useful editors are :)

>

>     Cheers,

>     Rach

>

>

>     On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:26:41 -0500, Devin Monnens

>     <evilcowclone at gmail.com <mailto:evilcowclone at gmail.com>> wrote:

>

>         Rachael,

>

>         You've got a good list here for these. Can't think of too much

>         to add,

>         though the community survey could use some fixes:

>

>         Question 5 refers to itself.

>         6 and 7 could use 1up, as that's a very popular site.

>         8 could use an 'other' category

>

>         -Devin

>

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