[game_preservation] PVW final report has been issued
Andrew Armstrong
andrew at aarmstrong.org
Wed Sep 22 07:33:14 EDT 2010
Not sure why you can't play Neverwinter Nights now, I've not played it
recently but all the mods and content works with the game, which with
the latest kind of patch doesn't even need a CD check I recall. It was
never an MMO as such; best you got was persistent servers run by the
community. You could still boot them up and connect to them. Communities
always move around, so unless you get the information now, you'd never
be able to "play it like it was 5 years ago" in most games.
A bigger thing might be something like APB; one of the shortest run
MMO's we've had so far. You can actually still buy the boxed game in
some places (and others offer refunds, but some don't like Steam) - but
it has nothing to connect to, and is practically worthless except for a
doorstop!
Replacing worlds and changing content is hard as you've both said. Any
persistent multiplayer game can be like this - Team Fortress 2 has been
patched and altered in little ways so much you'd never be able to play
it as it was at launch since it auto-updates even if you have the
original install disks.
A hard thing to get a handle on for the historical context, for
instance; why the Star Wars Galaxies game failed so badly when it did a
massive patch change - you can play it still now (although it looks like
it is going to be dead sooner or later), but can't play the pre-patch
game which it was at release. Reading a few developer introspections on
this development and on post-release game changes, it'd have been
interesting to try the pre-patch changes!
Andrew
On 22/09/2010 01:09, Rowan Kaiser wrote:
> Andrew - performances aren't quite media, I'd say, and I think there's
> an expectation that it's ephemeral. You don't go to the store and buy
> a "play" or "concert" which you expect to be able to use continuously.
>
> Henry - The change in the game world is one thing, but there's also
> the increased leveling scale. Every expansion that raises the cap
> renders previous content easier and less relevant. I haven't played
> Wrath of the Lich King and I'm not likely to at this point, so I'm
> almost certainly never going to have that game experience.
>
> This also came up for me when I was writing about the original
> Neverwinter Nights. I never played it, and now I can't. So unlike
> every single other game I've talked about in my book, I have to rely
> on interviews instead of direct experience.
>
>
> Rowan
>
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu
> <mailto:lowood at stanford.edu>> wrote:
>
> Rowan,
>
> I think games and virtual worlds are the tip of the iceberg for
> digital media. As all our media (text, music, movies) most to
> server-based platforms with intermediate players and subscription
> services, we may start seeing similar problems across-the-board.
> But I agree that games and virtual worlds are at the edge, which
> is why it is so interesting to work on how to preserve them.
>
> WoW is going to be an especially interesting case soon, when the
> world is "replaced," so to speak, as part of Cataclysm. Not a
> shutdown, as in many other cases, but not continuous either. It
> will be interesting to see video captures from the same areas (but
> different times) that will no longer show the same surroundings.
> Plus there are still likely to be private servers based on the old
> code and assets.
>
> Henry
>
>
> On 9/21/2010 3:46 PM, Andrew Armstrong wrote:
>> Rowan, plays and other performance arts might have something
>> similar if they're not ever recorded - and if the script is lost,
>> then who knows... They're not quite as interactive though!
>>
>> Also, good to hear there might be further news Henry :)
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> On 21/09/2010 20:48, Rowan Kaiser wrote:
>>> Thanks for this - I was actually just thinking and writing about
>>> it slightly lesser version of this for a piece on World of
>>> Warcraft, and how every time an expansion is released for an
>>> online game, everything else becomes obsolete - and it's far
>>> worse when the game simply shuts down. I really can't think of
>>> any other form of media where this is the case.
>>>
>>> Rowan
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Henry Lowood
>>> <lowood at stanford.edu <mailto:lowood at stanford.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> We just completed the final project report for Preserving
>>> Virtual Worlds I. You can find the report here:
>>>
>>> https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097
>>>
>>> A number of you have asked about our findings; many thanks
>>> for your patience while we went through the drill of
>>> completing the report.
>>>
>>> Henry
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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
>>> 650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu
>>> <mailto:lowood at stanford.edu>;
>>> http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
>>> <http://www.stanford.edu/%7Elowood>
>>>
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>>
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>
> --
> 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
> 650-723-4602;lowood at stanford.edu <mailto:lowood at stanford.edu>;http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood <http://www.stanford.edu/%7Elowood>
>
>
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