[game_preservation] an article of mine -- game preservation pilot

[Melanie Swalwell]

The last post reminded me that I've been meaning to let the list know 
about an article I published last year on a pilot game preservation project.

Here's the abstract:

New Zealand's digital game history includes a significant quantity of 
locally written
software titles from the 1980s. Currently, few people are aware of this, 
no institutional collections
exist, and institutional preservation efforts are directed elsewhere. 
This context prompted the
assembly of a multidisciplinary team of researchers to bring legal, 
technical, and media-historical
expertise to bear on these titles' preservation. This article briefly 
introduces the game preservation
landscape, before outlining the case for the preservation of local game 
software. It reports on the
challenges faced in a pilot study to preserve locally written game 
software for the Sega SC3000
computer. The initial plan -- to secure licence agreements that would, 
in turn, enable technical
preservation -- gave way as a more complex intertwining of the legal and 
technical emerged. Navigating
these challenges required a change of strategy: from emulation to 
translation. Translation
-- from BASIC to Java -- is an elegant solution, in the circumstances. 
As well as recounting the
project's practical realization, this article considers the fidelity of 
the conserved digital game to its
'original'.

Melanie Swalwell (2009) "Towards the Preservation of Local Computer Game 
Software: Challenges, strategies, reflections", /Convergence: The 
Journal of Research into New Media Technologies/, (special issue on 
cultural memory and digital preservation, ed. Will Straw and Jessica 
Santone), August, pp. 263-279.

Full text is accessible from http://con.sagepub.com/content/vol15/issue3 
or email me for a copy.

Melanie

-- 
Dr Melanie Swalwell
Senior Lecturer, Screen and Media,
& Course Coordinator, B. Media
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100
Adelaide SA 5001

278 Humanities Bldg

Ph: +61 8 8201 2619
Fax: +61 8 8201 3635

melanie.swalwell at flinders.edu.au

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