From andrew at aarmstrong.org Wed Feb 8 20:46:37 2012 From: andrew at aarmstrong.org (Andrew Armstrong) Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:46:37 +0000 Subject: [game_preservation] Preserving TTY paper tape In-Reply-To: <4F19AA44.1050403@aarmstrong.org> References: <4F19AA44.1050403@aarmstrong.org> Message-ID: <4F33257D.1000205@aarmstrong.org> Oh, BTW, I did check up on this; we do have digital copies of all the important information where needed, although a lot of random data and tapes with non-essential programs are not done; just simple volume there (and said programs and data being really boring I guess!). It's done through simply reading it in on a tape reader for it onto a digital format via. I presume serial/COM, since it is usually 6 hole punch I think just standard ASCII storage is enough, since the various systems usually build in checks and balances into the stream more or less. Newer systems which do tape/magnetic tape etc. might even have terminal input/output to do read/writes of data directly (we do this on a newer PDP-8 machine). Generally if it can be read in a terminal it can be digitally captured reasonably easily (although just a tape reader is enough). For emulation take this for example; Peter Onion works on our Elliott 803 which uses paper tape, he's written an emulator (and more besides) and has digital files to run on it so might be a good example. http://www.peteronion.org.uk/Elliott/ - see the 803B Tape Reader :) We have the facilities to do more if anyone needs some doing in the UK. Less so on site, since some good facilities are simply in volunteers own homes. :) Andrew On 20/01/2012 17:54, Andrew Armstrong wrote: > Any tape programs made at TNMOC are just recorded in simple text files > I think, although there is no concentrated effort to get everything > recorded just yet - some tapes are so old we will need to do them by > hand. > > We put the data back on tapes pretty easily. All serial stuff > connected to the punchers I think, but I can get more information > tomorrow on how it is done from the experts :) > > Andrew > > On 20/01/2012 15:08, Devin Monnens wrote: >> What is the best way of preserving TTY paper tape? I think since it's >> visual if the image is scanned with a black background, you would then >> have a white image with black holes, but I don't know how you'd >> translate any of that into machine-readable data (i.e. to replicate >> the code for an emulator) or to make a copy of the tape for use in a >> restored computer. >> > _______________________________________________ > game_preservation mailing list > game_preservation at igda.org > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation From gamerep at hotmail.com Thu Feb 23 19:54:15 2012 From: gamerep at hotmail.com (John Andersen) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:54:15 +0900 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East Message-ID: Hi everyone, my follow-up to "Where Games Go To Sleep" was published this morning on Gamasutra. "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" provides more insight into what developers and publishers are doing to preserve their games. This time around the developers that participated and answered questions (or provided a statement) include: D3 Publisher Disney Interactive (Warren Spector of Junction Point, a Disney game studio subsidiary) Firefly Studios Kemco Monkeypaw Games Natsume Richard Garriott Square Enix Team Ninja of Tecmo Koei Treasure An update on video game museums is also featured, with a very promising possibility that a video game museum in Denmark, Spilmuseet, could be designated as an official cultural institution (and may be able to acquire government backing). Indie developers will be featured in part two coming next month! Link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6745/selecting_save_on_the_games_we_.php I'm also happy to announce I'll be hosting a panel at PAX East to discuss these two articles and talk with Gary Vincent of the American Classic Arcade Museum (aka FunSpot) about his preservation efforts. The panel will have the same title as this article, and is tentatively scheduled for Friday, April 6th at 11:30 am in the Naga Theater. PAX East single day badges are still available, so I hope to see you there! I'll be hanging around after the panel so please feel free to come up and introduce yourself if you're there. Enjoy! - John Andersen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew at aarmstrong.org Fri Feb 24 13:32:04 2012 From: andrew at aarmstrong.org (Andrew Armstrong) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:32:04 +0000 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org> Awesome stuff John, I'm happy that any companies are responding at all! :D Wish I could make any of the PAX events sometime, sometimes it's sad being just in the UK and missing all this stuff :) Andrew On 24/02/2012 00:54, John Andersen wrote: > Hi everyone, > > my follow-up to "Where Games Go To Sleep" was published this morning > on Gamasutra. "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" provides more > insight into what developers and publishers are doing to preserve > their games. > This time around the developers that participated and answered > questions (or provided a statement) include: > > D3 Publisher > Disney Interactive (Warren Spector of Junction Point, a Disney game > studio subsidiary) > Firefly Studios > Kemco > Monkeypaw Games > Natsume > Richard Garriott > Square Enix > Team Ninja of Tecmo Koei > Treasure > > An update on video game museums is also featured, with a very > promising possibility that a video game museum in Denmark, Spilmuseet, > could be designated as an official cultural institution (and may be > able to acquire government backing). Indie developers will be > featured in part two coming next month! > > Link: > http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6745/selecting_save_on_the_games_we_.php > > I'm also happy to announce I'll be hosting a panel at PAX East to > discuss these two articles and talk with Gary Vincent of the American > Classic Arcade Museum (aka FunSpot) about his preservation efforts. > The panel will have the same title as this article, and is tentatively > scheduled for Friday, April 6th at 11:30 am in the Naga Theater. PAX > East single day badges are still available, so I hope to see you > there! I'll be hanging around after the panel so please feel free to > come up and introduce yourself if you're there. > > Enjoy! > > - John Andersen > > > _______________________________________________ > game_preservation mailing list > game_preservation at igda.org > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gamerep at hotmail.com Fri Feb 24 23:57:52 2012 From: gamerep at hotmail.com (John Andersen) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:57:52 +0900 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org> References: , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org> Message-ID: Thanks for the kind words Andrew, I really appreciate it. I was very lucky to be able to work with some awesome PR reps (or "PR Ninjas" as I like to call them) that got my questions through to the right people. My editor Christian Nutt was also cool enough to take time out of his busy schedule and help me contact another developer featured in the piece. The spotlight on indie developers brought forth some great participants with some very honest answers (and solutions) to how they manage everything that makes up their games. I'm sorry to hear you can't make it out to PAX, I wish I could make it out to GameCity, sounds like a great time over there :) - John A. Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:32:04 +0000 From: andrew at aarmstrong.org To: game_preservation at igda.org Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East Awesome stuff John, I'm happy that any companies are responding at all! :D Wish I could make any of the PAX events sometime, sometimes it's sad being just in the UK and missing all this stuff :) Andrew On 24/02/2012 00:54, John Andersen wrote: Hi everyone, my follow-up to "Where Games Go To Sleep" was published this morning on Gamasutra. "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" provides more insight into what developers and publishers are doing to preserve their games. This time around the developers that participated and answered questions (or provided a statement) include: D3 Publisher Disney Interactive (Warren Spector of Junction Point, a Disney game studio subsidiary) Firefly Studios Kemco Monkeypaw Games Natsume Richard Garriott Square Enix Team Ninja of Tecmo Koei Treasure An update on video game museums is also featured, with a very promising possibility that a video game museum in Denmark, Spilmuseet, could be designated as an official cultural institution (and may be able to acquire government backing). Indie developers will be featured in part two coming next month! Link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6745/selecting_save_on_the_games_we_.php I'm also happy to announce I'll be hosting a panel at PAX East to discuss these two articles and talk with Gary Vincent of the American Classic Arcade Museum (aka FunSpot) about his preservation efforts. The panel will have the same title as this article, and is tentatively scheduled for Friday, April 6th at 11:30 am in the Naga Theater. PAX East single day badges are still available, so I hope to see you there! I'll be hanging around after the panel so please feel free to come up and introduce yourself if you're there. Enjoy! - John Andersen _______________________________________________ game_preservation mailing list 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dmonnens at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 19:13:30 2012 From: dmonnens at gmail.com (Devin Monnens) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:13:30 -0700 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: References: <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org> Message-ID: Just read through the article. Great work, John! It's great to hear so many positive comments from the developers (I especially liked Yosuke Hayashi's insightful statements). Some of these comments are obviously colored by PR though. I've spoken to some people who worked at Square or knew about Square, and so I have heard second-hand that Square did not do a good job of preserving their development materials. Square-Enix's response is therefore not exactly a false statement, but it is vague enough that it perhaps does not show the true picture. I just wanted to throw that out there because some companies are obviously more concerned with it than others. -Devin Monnens -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gamerep at hotmail.com Mon Feb 27 01:06:36 2012 From: gamerep at hotmail.com (John Andersen) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:06:36 +0900 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: References: , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org>, , Message-ID: Hi Devin, Glad you liked the article, I also really liked Yosuke Hayashi's comments, that level of detail was what I was looking for in answers and statements. You'll really like the answers from the indie developers coming up in the last part. You're right about the various statements that were written by PR reps. In the case of Square Enix, two separate PR reps did their very best to circulate the questions around the Tokyo office of Square-Enix, I was fortunate enough to get any kind of response, but nothing as insightful as Hayashi's detailed answers unfortunately. I've also heard the stories about Square not holding on to various material as well. I wonder how the Enix side of the business did in preserving its development material? What I hoped to have also accomplished with these articles is to at least get high-level executives and management at developers and publishers to look into their archive/preservation situation. If just one developer or publisher begins to look into the status of their own archives, and take steps to do something with any material from the past or present, then I feel like I've accomplished something. This actually happened with indie developer I was in contact with for the article. He emailed me after he sent along his answers to say that my questions for the article prompted the company to go out and purchase a couple of back-up drives. I was really floored by that admission, but I also felt like "Mission Accomplished". To get companies thinking about preserving, archiving and even searching for older material is what i hope will happen "behind the scenes" as well. - John Andersen Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:13:30 -0700 From: dmonnens at gmail.com To: game_preservation at igda.org Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East Just read through the article. Great work, John! It's great to hear so many positive comments from the developers (I especially liked Yosuke Hayashi's insightful statements). Some of these comments are obviously colored by PR though. I've spoken to some people who worked at Square or knew about Square, and so I have heard second-hand that Square did not do a good job of preserving their development materials. Square-Enix's response is therefore not exactly a false statement, but it is vague enough that it perhaps does not show the true picture. I just wanted to throw that out there because some companies are obviously more concerned with it than others. -Devin Monnens _______________________________________________ game_preservation mailing list game_preservation at igda.org http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wiweeyum at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 12:15:49 2012 From: wiweeyum at gmail.com (Scott Sheppard) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:15:49 -0800 Subject: [game_preservation] game_preservation Digest, Vol 76, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I wonder if some sort of service (for at least Indie devs) that automatically backs up projects into the cloud on a weekly/monthly basis would be desired. Something akin to mozy. On Feb 27, 2012 9:00 AM, wrote: > Send game_preservation mailing list submissions to > game_preservation at igda.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > game_preservation-request at igda.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > game_preservation-owner at igda.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of game_preservation digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at > PAX East (Devin Monnens) > 2. Re: "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at > PAX East (John Andersen) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:13:30 -0700 > From: Devin Monnens > Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" > on Gamasutra & at PAX East > To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG > Message-ID: > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Just read through the article. Great work, John! It's great to hear so many > positive comments from the developers (I especially liked Yosuke Hayashi's > insightful statements). > > Some of these comments are obviously colored by PR though. I've spoken to > some people who worked at Square or knew about Square, and so I have heard > second-hand that Square did not do a good job of preserving their > development materials. Square-Enix's response is therefore not exactly a > false statement, but it is vague enough that it perhaps does not show the > true picture. I just wanted to throw that out there because some companies > are obviously more concerned with it than others. > > -Devin Monnens > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20120226/b52586e5/attachment.htm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:06:36 +0900 > From: John Andersen > Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" > on Gamasutra & at PAX East > To: > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-2022-jp" > > > Hi Devin, > > Glad you liked the article, I also really liked Yosuke Hayashi's comments, > that level of detail was what I was looking for in answers and statements. > You'll really like the answers from the indie developers coming up in the > last part. > > You're right about the various statements that were written by PR reps. In > the case of Square Enix, two separate PR reps did their very best to > circulate the questions around the Tokyo office of Square-Enix, I was > fortunate enough to get any kind of response, but nothing as insightful as > Hayashi's detailed answers unfortunately. I've also heard the stories > about Square not holding on to various material as well. I wonder how the > Enix side of the business did in preserving its development material? > > What I hoped to have also accomplished with these articles is to at least > get high-level executives and management at developers and publishers to > look into their archive/preservation situation. If just one developer or > publisher begins to look into the status of their own archives, and take > steps to do something with any material from the past or present, then I > feel like I've accomplished something. This actually happened with indie > developer I was in contact with for the article. He emailed me after he > sent along his answers to say that my questions for the article prompted > the company to go out and purchase a couple of back-up drives. I was > really floored by that admission, but I also felt like "Mission > Accomplished". To get companies thinking about preserving, archiving and > even searching for older material is what i hope will happen "behind the > scenes" as well. > > - John Andersen > > > > > Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:13:30 -0700 > From: dmonnens at gmail.com > To: game_preservation at igda.org > Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on > Gamasutra & at PAX East > > Just read through the article. Great work, John! It's great to hear so > many positive comments from the developers (I especially liked Yosuke > Hayashi's insightful statements). > > > Some of these comments are obviously colored by PR though. I've spoken to > some people who worked at Square or knew about Square, and so I have heard > second-hand that Square did not do a good job of preserving their > development materials. Square-Enix's response is therefore not exactly a > false statement, but it is vague enough that it perhaps does not show the > true picture. I just wanted to throw that out there because some companies > are obviously more concerned with it than others. > > > -Devin Monnens > _______________________________________________ game_preservation mailing > list game_preservation at igda.org > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20120227/6e961e89/attachment-0001.html > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > game_preservation mailing list > game_preservation at igda.org > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation > > > End of game_preservation Digest, Vol 76, Issue 4 > ************************************************ > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cb at softpres.org Mon Feb 27 16:32:07 2012 From: cb at softpres.org (Christian Bartsch) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:32:07 +0100 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: References: , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org>, , Message-ID: Hi John, great stuff. Unfortunately I can back what's been said below?I have seen companies come and go. In many cases assets were simply tossed, I even know of a case where the last Amiga machine that had the source code to many games was accidentally given to recycling before the company moved. I have done some (not very well known or high quality) games myself and I can back the fact that even I do care more about other people's work because it fascinated me. Because of this I can say that a dedicated person or company is required to fulfill such a task. Otherwise daytime business gets into the way and is more important. Sadly for some companies even spending some money for preservation is an issue. They would take help if it was free, but paying your expenses for proper storage or cataloging is out of the question. It's a bit? problematic. Thanks for making people aware of their own heritage. Should you ever run across someone needing help? we already have 4,500 titles fully preserved, can't hurt to save some more. ;) Best, Chris -- Christian Bartsch The Software Preservation Society http://www.softpres.org On 27 Feb 2012, at 07:06, John Andersen wrote: > Hi Devin, > > Glad you liked the article, I also really liked Yosuke Hayashi's comments, that level of detail was what I was looking for in answers and statements. You'll really like the answers from the indie developers coming up in the last part. > > You're right about the various statements that were written by PR reps. In the case of Square Enix, two separate PR reps did their very best to circulate the questions around the Tokyo office of Square-Enix, I was fortunate enough to get any kind of response, but nothing as insightful as Hayashi's detailed answers unfortunately. I've also heard the stories about Square not holding on to various material as well. I wonder how the Enix side of the business did in preserving its development material? > > What I hoped to have also accomplished with these articles is to at least get high-level executives and management at developers and publishers to look into their archive/preservation situation. If just one developer or publisher begins to look into the status of their own archives, and take steps to do something with any material from the past or present, then I feel like I've accomplished something. This actually happened with indie developer I was in contact with for the article. He emailed me after he sent along his answers to say that my questions for the article prompted the company to go out and purchase a couple of back-up drives. I was really floored by that admission, but I also felt like "Mission Accomplished". To get companies thinking about preserving, archiving and even searching for older material is what i hope will happen "behind the scenes" as well. > > - John Andersen > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gamerep at hotmail.com Tue Feb 28 00:06:10 2012 From: gamerep at hotmail.com (John Andersen) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:06:10 +0900 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: References: , , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org>, , , , , , Message-ID: Hi Chris, It's so true in regards to companies coming and going (or even relocating or shuffling office space) that things are lost or tossed. I know there is an archivist at Blizzard, but as for other companies, it's not very clear if there are full-time archivists employed. The IT departments of many (not all) developers are ultimately responsible for making sure things are backed up onsite and offsite. The IT guy at Gearbox was the one who responded to my questions the last article, and he went into a little detail about the challenges of retrieving code from older media. It's frustrating, because like everyone I've also heard so many different stories. It's just getting other people to be concerned and help out, that is the ultimate challenge. If I ever do come across a situation if a designer has code that needs rescused I'll deffinitly get in contact with you. Your services are seriously needed as time moves forward. Take care, John From: cb at softpres.org Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:32:07 +0100 To: game_preservation at igda.org Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East Hi John, great stuff. Unfortunately I can back what's been said below?I have seen companies come and go. In many cases assets were simply tossed, I even know of a case where the last Amiga machine that had the source code to many games was accidentally given to recycling before the company moved. I have done some (not very well known or high quality) games myself and I can back the fact that even I do care more about other people's work because it fascinated me. Because of this I can say that a dedicated person or company is required to fulfill such a task. Otherwise daytime business gets into the way and is more important. Sadly for some companies even spending some money for preservation is an issue. They would take help if it was free, but paying your expenses for proper storage or cataloging is out of the question. It's a bit? problematic. Thanks for making people aware of their own heritage. Should you ever run across someone needing help? we already have 4,500 titles fully preserved, can't hurt to save some more. ;) Best, Chris -- Christian Bartsch The Software Preservation Society http://www.softpres.org On 27 Feb 2012, at 07:06, John Andersen wrote: Hi Devin, Glad you liked the article, I also really liked Yosuke Hayashi's comments, that level of detail was what I was looking for in answers and statements. You'll really like the answers from the indie developers coming up in the last part. You're right about the various statements that were written by PR reps. In the case of Square Enix, two separate PR reps did their very best to circulate the questions around the Tokyo office of Square-Enix, I was fortunate enough to get any kind of response, but nothing as insightful as Hayashi's detailed answers unfortunately. I've also heard the stories about Square not holding on to various material as well. I wonder how the Enix side of the business did in preserving its development material? What I hoped to have also accomplished with these articles is to at least get high-level executives and management at developers and publishers to look into their archive/preservation situation. If just one developer or publisher begins to look into the status of their own archives, and take steps to do something with any material from the past or present, then I feel like I've accomplished something. This actually happened with indie developer I was in contact with for the article. He emailed me after he sent along his answers to say that my questions for the article prompted the company to go out and purchase a couple of back-up drives. I was really floored by that admission, but I also felt like "Mission Accomplished". To get companies thinking about preserving, archiving and even searching for older material is what i hope will happen "behind the scenes" as well. - John Andersen _______________________________________________ game_preservation mailing list game_preservation at igda.org http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mceniry at email.sc.edu Tue Feb 28 12:52:05 2012 From: mceniry at email.sc.edu (MCENIRY, MATTHEW) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:52:05 +0000 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: References: , , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org>, , , , , , , Message-ID: <87BE165526473F4E8C08726B26CBC785046BC1E4@SN2PRD0202MB155.namprd02.prod.outlook.com> Hi John, Really enjoyed your follow up article. I had a friend recommend me your first three part series and it was one of my inspirations to research further into the video game preservation field. Maybe I'm just a pessimist on the cloud but I surmise the more games that are produced for only digital consumption the more volatile the formats will become. Who is going to bail out the companies that hold hundreds of terabytes of information on their clouds? Preserving paper documents seems to be easy when comparing them to a 16 gigabyte game which consists of numerous variables, code, art, music, etc. I'm not sure if this article has been linked in the past, but a lot of its points ring true concerning how unfortunate it is that in order to save older games/technology we'd have to resort to piracy. http://technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/ Matt McEniry ________________________________ From: game_preservation-bounces at igda.org [game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] on behalf of John Andersen [gamerep at hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:06 AM To: game_preservation at igda.org Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East Hi Chris, It's so true in regards to companies coming and going (or even relocating or shuffling office space) that things are lost or tossed. I know there is an archivist at Blizzard, but as for other companies, it's not very clear if there are full-time archivists employed. The IT departments of many (not all) developers are ultimately responsible for making sure things are backed up onsite and offsite. The IT guy at Gearbox was the one who responded to my questions the last article, and he went into a little detail about the challenges of retrieving code from older media. It's frustrating, because like everyone I've also heard so many different stories. It's just getting other people to be concerned and help out, that is the ultimate challenge. If I ever do come across a situation if a designer has code that needs rescused I'll deffinitly get in contact with you. Your services are seriously needed as time moves forward. Take care, John ________________________________ From: cb at softpres.org Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:32:07 +0100 To: game_preservation at igda.org Subject: Re: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East Hi John, great stuff. Unfortunately I can back what's been said below?I have seen companies come and go. In many cases assets were simply tossed, I even know of a case where the last Amiga machine that had the source code to many games was accidentally given to recycling before the company moved. I have done some (not very well known or high quality) games myself and I can back the fact that even I do care more about other people's work because it fascinated me. Because of this I can say that a dedicated person or company is required to fulfill such a task. Otherwise daytime business gets into the way and is more important. Sadly for some companies even spending some money for preservation is an issue. They would take help if it was free, but paying your expenses for proper storage or cataloging is out of the question. It's a bit? problematic. Thanks for making people aware of their own heritage. Should you ever run across someone needing help? we already have 4,500 titles fully preserved, can't hurt to save some more. ;) Best, Chris -- Christian Bartsch The Software Preservation Society http://www.softpres.org On 27 Feb 2012, at 07:06, John Andersen wrote: Hi Devin, Glad you liked the article, I also really liked Yosuke Hayashi's comments, that level of detail was what I was looking for in answers and statements. You'll really like the answers from the indie developers coming up in the last part. You're right about the various statements that were written by PR reps. In the case of Square Enix, two separate PR reps did their very best to circulate the questions around the Tokyo office of Square-Enix, I was fortunate enough to get any kind of response, but nothing as insightful as Hayashi's detailed answers unfortunately. I've also heard the stories about Square not holding on to various material as well. I wonder how the Enix side of the business did in preserving its development material? What I hop ed to have also accomplished with these articles is to at least get high-level executives and management at developers and publishers to look into their archive/preservation situation. If just one developer or publisher begins to look into the status of their own archives, and take steps to do something with any material from the past or present, then I feel like I've accomplished something. This actually happened with indie developer I was in contact with for the article. He emailed me after he sent along his answers to say that my questions for the article prompted the company to go out and purchase a couple of back-up drives. I was really floored by that admission, but I also felt like "Mission Accomplished". To get companies thinking about preserving, archiving and even searching for older material is what i hope will happen "behind the scenes" as well. - John Andersen _______________________________________________ game_preservation mailing list game_preservation at igda.org http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cb at softpres.org Tue Feb 28 17:26:28 2012 From: cb at softpres.org (Christian Bartsch | softpres.org) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:26:28 +0100 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: <87BE165526473F4E8C08726B26CBC785046BC1E4@SN2PRD0202MB155.namprd02.prod.outlook.com> References: , , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org>, , , , , , , <87BE165526473F4E8C08726B26CBC785046BC1E4@SN2PRD0202MB155.namprd02.prod.outlook.com> Message-ID: <4F4D5494.3030301@softpres.org> Hi Matt, yes, the new era of games, everything that's being downloaded or just offered through a service like Steam will be problematic. Especially with all this DRM coming in the way. I do disagree for old titles, at least I can't say that this rule applies unconditionally. It is correct that for some titles you might have no other choice than picking a pirated copy if no other source is available. The article also cites blog entry by Jason Scott who coins the phrase "it's too late". It isn't that bad.The world isn't black and white, but it helps grabbing people's attention. ;-) But I understand motivation and dedication to the subject. We're still around, and we're still ingesting disks and we do have tools, both hardware and software, to see which state the media is in. That's some retro science, but there's been no one else, so we developed the technology from scratch. It's correct it's not going better, but in many cases the very old titles are in fact better than new ones. That has to do with the better quality of earlier disks (compare to CD-R media), as well as the fact that low density media can be easier read these days as there are more particles forming the information. The last months were very intensive in regard to reading C64 media and we do have a good success rate although there are certain brands of disks (often from certain publishers) that will literally fall apart when reading. But to come back to the main article... pirated copies can be a last resort. But one should be aware of the risks these artifacts bring with them: bad cracks (copy won't work at all or break somewhere in the game or in the app), digital graffiti (game text altered by crackers to reflect their names or opinions) and missing initial states (e.g. the empty house of Little Computer People). We do have technology to store original mastering data, unaltered, verified. This might be an alternative people would want to look at. At least they would have the option to see the game as it was submitted by the author, they could see the LCP moving into the house for the first time and they would have to play against the highscores the programmers put there, not some weird numbers hacked into the game by a cracker. Best, Christian Bartsch The Software Preservation Society http://www.softpres.org Am 28.02.2012 18:52, schrieb MCENIRY, MATTHEW: > Hi John, > > Really enjoyed your follow up article. I had a friend recommend me > your first three part series and it was one of my inspirations to > research further into the video game preservation field. > > Maybe I'm just a pessimist on the cloud but I surmise the more games > that are produced for only digital consumption the more volatile the > formats will become. Who is going to bail out the companies that hold > hundreds of terabytes of information on their clouds? Preserving > paper documents seems to be easy when comparing them to a 16 gigabyte > game which consists of numerous variables, code, art, music, etc. > > I'm not sure if this article has been linked in the past, but a lot of > its points ring true concerning how unfortunate it is that in order to > save older games/technology we'd have to resort to piracy. > http://technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/ > > Matt McEniry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cb at softpres.org Tue Feb 28 17:41:10 2012 From: cb at softpres.org (Christian Bartsch | softpres.org) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:41:10 +0100 Subject: [game_preservation] "Selecting Save on the Games We Make" on Gamasutra & at PAX East In-Reply-To: <87BE165526473F4E8C08726B26CBC785046BC1E4@SN2PRD0202MB155.namprd02.prod.outlook.com> References: , , <4F47D7A4.7010007@aarmstrong.org>, , , , , , , <87BE165526473F4E8C08726B26CBC785046BC1E4@SN2PRD0202MB155.namprd02.prod.outlook.com> Message-ID: <4F4D5806.8080201@softpres.org> Sorry, forgot to say that this mainly addresses the physical part of the problem and it's actually very good to see someone pointing out the legal problems we and others have been debating over for years. I am glad someone noticed. Christian Bartsch The Software Preservation Society http://www.softpres.org Am 28.02.2012 18:52, schrieb MCENIRY, MATTHEW: > I'm not sure if this article has been linked in the past, but a lot of > its points ring true concerning how unfortunate it is that in order to > save older games/technology we'd have to resort to piracy. > http://technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/ > > Matt McEniry > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lowood at stanford.edu Wed Feb 29 16:32:13 2012 From: lowood at stanford.edu (Henry Lowood) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:32:13 -0800 Subject: [game_preservation] Today , February 29th, 2012 is the IGDA Membership Deadline, to be eligible to VOTE! http://t.co/cYtaIGCa In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F4E995D.9070909@stanford.edu> All, this just in from IGDA Central: Please let your local professional communities know that Today , February 29th, 2012 is the IGDA Membership Deadline, to be eligible to VOTE! http://t.co/cYtaIGCa www.igda.org/member-renewal -- me *Gordon Bellamy* | Executive Director, IGDA Contact | gordon at igda.org | +1 (818) 472-7283 | Skype: gordonbellamy | Twitter | Facebook -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: Attached Message Part Url: