[game_preservation] FW: Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas (Please respond!)

[Andrew Armstrong]

Hmm, fair enough. I think possibly 2008 was a "bit dead" in certain 
ways, but there was promise, and some gems (No More Heroes and Sins of a 
Solar Empire both are outstanding fun, for instance. There were also a 
few Indie games I'd put weight behind for Canon for inventiveness, like 
Braid). The thing is, history doesn't work in "Years". There were some 
points where gamers basically had a half-dozen "Must play" games in a 
Christmas period. Such a Christmas-centric industry (for some bizarre 
reasoning) makes it either a "Good" or "Bad" year, instead of those 
successes being spread out more.

However, if you can remember off the top of your head even 5 games from 
1998 that should be "canon" without checking release date lists, you'd 
be better then me since I can't (it was a major year for sequels though, 
since I know Opposing Force came out then for Half-Life) :)

Andrew

Stuart Feldhamer wrote:

>

> Whoops, somehow I sent this just to Andrew.

>

>  

>

> Stuart

>

>  

>

> *From:* Stuart Feldhamer [mailto:stuart.feldhamer at gmail.com]

> *Sent:* Monday, January 19, 2009 10:52 AM

> *To:* 'Andrew Armstrong'

> *Subject:* RE: [game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas 

> (Please respond!)

>

>  

>

> OK, point taken on my comment about 10 games per year. That was more 

> of a whining complaint about how most games today are derivative of 

> earlier works. And yes, I know that all media is derivative, I just 

> mean that game released today are less likely to be worthy of 

> canonization than games released 30 years ago, at least in my opinion.

>

>  

>

> Stuart

>

>  

>

> *From:* Andrew Armstrong [mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org]

> *Sent:* Monday, January 19, 2009 10:40 AM

> *To:* stuart at feldhamer.com; IGDA Game Preservation SIG

> *Subject:* Re: [game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas 

> (Please respond!)

>

>  

>

> I'll just respond to one point of this; no awards. The sheer fact the 

> game is historical significant should be enough. "Winning" something 

> that you can get voted in every year until the earth explodes also 

> isn't much of an accolade (or even, if one year you go up against 

> "stuff competition" you'd be unable to ever win it again).

>

> Also, your point "I'm not sure that there are 10 culturally 

> significant games produced every year anymore" is...odd. As a 

> historian you should know that until you're 10 years (or more!) down 

> the line you don't know what a historically significant game will be, 

> especially since they don't have to be "culturally" significant, 

> whatever that means ;) - they also don't have to be from the same 

> year. While film has been going for longer, their registry has been 

> going for MUCH longer. I think we'd be hard pressed not just having 

> "classics" for the future 10, maybe 20 or 30 years of these, which is 

> only 100-300 games or series'. For material, I don't think there is 

> any lack of it for a canon.

>

> We'll see if anyone else has thoughts on this, and Henry also knows 

> much more about how he organised it too.

>

> Andrew

>

> Stuart Feldhamer wrote:

>

> What I propose would be something like this:

>

>  

>

> First of all, I think 10 games per year is too many. (As an aside, I'm 

> not sure that there are 10 culturally significant games produced every 

> year anymore.) 10 games was good for the initial selection, but for 

> each year, it probably should be no more than 5, to increase the value 

> of a game getting in.

>

>  

>

> A nominating committee is established to pick initial nominations 

> (maybe 10). The nominating committee members should be members of the 

> SIG. It would be nice if we can get Meretzky or Spector or the like to 

> be on the nominating committee, but again, they should be members of 

> the SIG if this is a SIG project. I would try to establish a process 

> whereby members of the committee are willing to step down if someone 

> more "worthy" for lack of a better word becomes willing to serve.

>

>  

>

> Once initial nominations are made as a group by the committee to the 

> SIG, they are debated by the SIG members on this email list or the 

> subsequent forums. The committee reviews the feedback and may choose 

> to modify their nomination selections as a result.

>

>  

>

> Once the slate is final, it is put forward to the general membership 

> of the IGDA for voting. Say for example they can vote for 5 of the 10 

> nominations to make it into the canon. This should go out to the 

> membership similar to the emails that go out for voting for the IGDA 

> board, with some time period for responding.

>

>  

>

> The "winners" are presented at a GDC panel (without being revealed in 

> advance), with some kind of award given to the lead 

> developer/designer/producer/creative team/whatever. Since IGDA members 

> will have voted, there will be much more buzz around this and a desire 

> to see who wins, and I would be very surprised if this wasn't 

> something that GDC would be interested in hosting.

>

>  

>

> As an aside, we need to do a much better job of "canonizing" those 

> titles that do make it into the canon.

>

>  

>

> Stuart

>

>  

>

>  

>

>  

>

> *From:* game_preservation-bounces at igda.org 

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

> [mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew 

> Armstrong

> *Sent:* Monday, January 19, 2009 9:39 AM

> *To:* IGDA Game Preservation SIG

> *Subject:* Re: [game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas 

> (Please respond!)

>

>  

>

> Yeah, I checked that out before responding myself. They take up to 50 

> votes per person, films must be 10 years old, and the votes are taken 

> into account. It's interesting as a system (I might also have to email 

> them about it, see how it is setup, how it runs in the background, etc.)

>

> The problem? we're so unknown that even Videogame 

> museums/archives/collections don't know who we are. There simply isn't 

> a critical mass of experts in this SIG, and certainly any votes like 

> that for 50 games would be, well, a dozen or so maybe? It'd be a bit 

> silly, to be honest. It'd also have to be international, too, and for 

> all the good game fans there are some who love to ballot stuff. I'll 

> have to do some kind of online system I think if we did the public 

> vote thing :)

>

> We'd need to setup a proper site. Devin; to respond to Gamastura or 

> whatever, I have no idea about that, maybe that is a route. I still 

> need to build a site to host some information about the canon games 

> (like the NFR website to a degree, certainly better then a Wiki 

> however, since it needs forms for ballots etc.).

>

> I think the reason Matteo Bittanti helped was he's part of the 

> Stanford stuff - 

> http://www.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=blog/15 (and 

> here: http://mbf.blogs.com/about.html ), so academically inclined like 

> Henry, and Christopher Grant was a journalist (and still, at Joystiq, 

> who did express some interest in hosting a monthly "Game of Canon" or 

> something), so had that perspective - it's important of course not to 

> just see what the developers and historians think is important, but 

> what the press and players think is important too. I also think they 

> were not just "oh, I have 2 picks, my faves can go in", they got 

> discussed.

>

> It was only a start, as far as I know Henry never intended it to be 

> like that forever or anything, but I doubt you could get a set of 

> games decided on using a complex system of voting (which needs to be 

> done a full year in advance) then having a larger set of experts 

> deciding - in 2007, there were much less members here then there were 

> now too :)

>

> For last years I am sure Henry did some work on that and got 10 more 

> too, but I can't recall who he mentioned helping, I think Simon 

> Carless was involved too though.

>

> I'll look into this though as a serious project if you have some more 

> ideas. Can you put forward what you think would be a "Perfect" system 

> for releasing up to 10 games per year into the Canon of games? How to 

> publicise it, maybe how to get public votes in, and how the panel can 

> decide on them and when in the year? (possibly do a years voting 

> starting January 1st, and decide the years entries in the month of 

> January onwards for the previous year - so 2009 would have games 

> released in 1998 or earlier added, etc....maybe do it monthly)

>

> I'll jot down these ideas once people have had time to comment on the 

> entire list - I'll note down all of this, all of your concerns and 

> also "What is happening about the missing years" - we might just do a 

> catchup of them, who knows?

>

> Andrew

>

> Stuart Feldhamer wrote:

>

> OK, so I can understand Steve Meretzky and Warren Spector, and even 

> Henry Lowood, but who are the other 2 people on the panel? I mean, why 

> were they chosen?

>

>  

>

> Funny you should mention the National Film Registry:

>

>  

>

> http://www.loc.gov/film/vote.html

>

>  

>

> I am still digesting your comments about collectors and oral histories...

>

>  

>

> Stuart

>

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