[game_preservation] Project Discussion: Digital Game Canon

[Stuart Feldhamer]

Nothing to add to the below that hasn't already been said, other than to say
that I would be happy to participate in this project if needed.

 

Actually, I do have a question. Other than the actual selection, is anything
special currently being done to preserve the 10 titles that have been added
to the Canon so far?

 

Stuart

 

From: game_preservation-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Armstrong
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 2:22 PM
To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] Project Discussion: Digital Game Canon

 

This is a bump of the below discussion. The Digital Game Canon project needs
input, and I was glad Stuart brought it up before.

Thoughts on the need for this, if anyone is interested in helping, or just
ideas about what a good future system would help.

As Henry said, similar projects in film include the AFI (
http://www.afi.com/ ) and also the National Film Preservation Board (
http://www.loc.gov/film/ ) who run the National Film Registry (
http://www.loc.gov/film/filmnfr.html ), as part of the Library of Congress
A/V Conversation ( http://www.loc.gov/avconservation/ )

There is no comparable project from the games industry or related
organisations. Most organisations barely keep their own history preserved,
to be honest. Even finding academic projects related to researching which
games are important to preserve has come up, basically, entirely empty
(there is some material on game preservation in general, but not much of
that really). General preservation is great, but are those top games well
preserved yet? I bet no one on this list knows the answer. :)

I'd love for this to be the basis of some American (or hopefully worldwide!)
project which actually could fund the preservation of certain games (and
related media) as the National Film Preservation Board does. This is
certainly also one of the main projects which has some good stuff to read
for everyone - gamers, developers, academics, and even non-gamers to a
degree (just like someone who watched few films would look at the Film
Registry). It'd require some real lawmaking, funding, or other stuff though,
but I'd be happy if it started as a collaboration of interested archives who
can store the games independently! :) I hope they would be interested in
acquiring titles specifically if listed, and would be forerunners involved
in the project I presume.

As for how it could be run now, I'm happy with experts. It'd be good to get
another GDC session, or have something put online (audio, or filmed) related
to the explanations behind the games. In the future, to have more input, we
could have an active committee who runs the project with input from the
public (lists of games they think need preserving - similar to the NFPB -
http://www.loc.gov/film/vote.html ) as well as internal SIG suggestions. A
set of guidelines (necessary age, the selection of a single title or a
"range" allowed, and significance guidelines)  would be a good idea, made
public so it has more credit.

Suggestions from Devin include publishing the list in Computer Game Studies,
or Gamastura (or both) as well as our site, which sound like a good idea if
we can provide context and reasoning behind the decision (rather then just
"a list" which is actually incredibly boring, see: most blog content ;) ).
It'd be nice to advertise it further afield, but for starters - it really
just needs to be got going again! The wiki needs finishing for the previous
entries, or a new small website built to hold the information (I have the
domains, and might be able to cook up something for this). Getting
researched articles and lists of resources related to each chosen game is
also important - when Wikipedia is the *best* description of a given
historical game's content, you know something is wrong.

These are only my ideas - the project is currently run by Henry, who's a lot
more knowledgeable about game history in general, and why he decided to do
this in the first place :)

Please put forward ideas, it'd be good to get this going again in some way.

Andrew

Andrew Armstrong wrote: 

This is coming on from our previous discussion over spring cleaning the SIG.

Digital Game Canon
http://www.igda.org/wiki/Game_Preservation_SIG/Digital_Game_Canon
Status: On Hold
Currently lead by: Henry Lowood. 
Short description: Started for a GDC 2007 session. This project recognizes
the importance of digital game culture. The Canon provides a starting-point
for the difficult task of preserving its history. This project will need to
be restarted in some capacity in the future.

Concerns raised previously:
- Basis for choosing 10 games a year.
- How to get it restarted without a GDC session
- Who are the people choosing the games, and the criteria they choose them


>From Henry, running the project: "Well, the criteria were discussed within

the group, but not openly because there was no open forum.  Recall that it
was a GDC event, then it became a website after that.  If we continue the
project with a mode of presentation more focused on dissemination over the
web and documentation, that would give us an opportunity to explain the
criteria

That said, the heart and soul of the enterprise is to create a list a la
what the American Film Institute has done for U.S. cinema.   The AFI's work
has been a basis for preservation activities, as well."


You can look back to some of the older emails on some of the points raised,
but I'd prefer if they were raised again by those who are concerned so we
can get discussing them again a bit more on topic. I do have in mind a new
website to build in my spare time (which might take a while) to host
information and metadata on the different games we add, which is doable
since we'll have a small list, and soon will have more collections for
different videogame material on the IA.

Bring whatever you can to the discussion, although Henry leads the project
so it's in his ballpark where it goes from here.

Andrew



 



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