[game_preservation] Project Discussion: Digital Game Canon

[Henry Lowood]

Stuart,

Yes, in the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, the NDIIPP work sponsored 
by the US Library of Congress.  We are pretty far along with DOOM, and 
have made some progress with Star Raiders, SimCity, and Spacewar!  On 
deck are Super Mario Bros 3 and perhaps Tetris.  About Tetris, I have 
spoken with our own Frank Cifaldi about doing that as a community effort 
if he can help with that, and we are hoping to take him up on that as 
soon as DOOM is completed as a kind of template for the work to be done.

The work done so far has taken place at the University of Illinois and 
Stanford.  For the Stanford part, you can eavesdrop at the How They Got 
Game project site:
http://howtheygotgame.stanford.edu
Go to the wiki, then Preserving Virtual Worlds.  Representative cases 
shows you some of the work.  For now, pretty much DOOM, the rest is not 
on-line yet.

Henry



Stuart Feldhamer wrote:

>

> 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

>

>  

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

>

>

>   

>  

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org <mailto:game_preservation at igda.org>

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>   

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

>

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>   


-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
     Film & Media Collections
HRG, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall, Stanford University Libraries
Stanford CA 94305-6004 USA
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
lowood at stanford.edu; 650-723-4602

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20090208/d0c6c6a4/attachment.html>