[game_preservation] iPhone Game Preservation

[Rachel Donahue]

Andrew writes:

"Films also have the future advantage of going all-digital, which will cut
the preservation costs there down significantly."

Unfortunately, this is an illusion many people have -- that once you
digitize something, you have no costs. That's just not true, leading many
funding agencies to require proof of sustainability for new digitization
projects. Maintaining digital film archives will, in the long run, be much
more expensive than preserving physical film. With physical film, you build
a cold vault, maybe exercise it once in a while, and you can pretty much
forget about it. Electronic records require constant maintenance, and staff
with the expertise to do it. The costs don't stop after the initial
overhead.

(I see after writing this that Henry and Jerome have spoken to it as well..
but I don't want Henry to feel like the only wet blanket in the room)


" Not many archievs, if any, will have the funding to get custom-made
replicas - certainly with the right electronic kit - to match such things. "

IMO, not many archives will be concerned about the controller. Unless you're
talking about the Wii, or something like Star Raiders or Golden tee where
the controller is an integral part of the experience.. it's just not high on
the priority list -- none of the hardware is. Leave that to the museums!

"I'd love to see a breakdown of it"
See the report I linked to a bit back, it does a pretty great job of laying
out the problems and expenses, though it's of course rapidly becoming
outdated.

"Some number crunching will be useful in the future, might revisit this
topic if the different people who do digital-based preservation (whatever it
actually is) can provide the info available with estimates for those others
who might want to do it in the future - best practices of digital
preservation too, which a big part is going to likely cost serious money to
do well :)"

I hate to say it, but.. no one -REALLY- does long term digital preservation
quite yet >.> so numbers will largely be based on the costs of backup,
storage, and amount of redundancy. Well, maybe that's not entirely fair, as
some projects (LOCKSS comes to mind) are chugging along and getting things
done.. but most is mid term. It will be a while before we can accurately
judge preservation costs, I think. Better to convince them of the costs of
NOT preserving things!

Best practices, on the other hand, are starting to mature.. hopefully we'll
soon be able to implement them in meaningful ways.

Devin says: "That sounds like a complete legal nightmare, but the only way
you can get the information is to actually go out and ask"

I'm working on it!! I have big dreams regarding rousing some enthusiasm from
game developers and publishing houses. Will any of it happen? Who knows. But
I do think that personal negotiation is the only way we're going to get any
type of legal accommodations, or even convince them to start saving more of
their own stuff.



On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>wrote:


> Some number crunching will be useful in the future, might revisit this

> topic if the different people who do digital-based preservation (whatever it

> actually is) can provide the info available with estimates for those others

> who might want to do it in the future - best practices of digital

> preservation too, which a big part is going to likely cost serious money to

> do well :)

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