[game_preservation] Project Discussion: Collectors Information

[Frank Cifaldi]

Actually, Earthbound for the NES was not an amateur translation. The ROM
file on the internet was an official unreleased work of Nintendo of America,
and was taken from an internal cartridge. See here (god, I can't believe
it's been nearly five years since I put this up):

http://lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound.shtml

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>wrote:


>  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>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>

>> 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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