Actually, while we're on the topic, I assume we've got a detailed report on Videogame Nation in Manchester? The exhibit is closing on the 14th of September. I just read an article on it in Retro Gamer, and was surprised to see that many objects in the exhibit had been donated by developers (including original artwork from Broken Sword donated by Charles Cecil of Revolution Studios). This was exactly the kind of thing we were talking about in the White Paper, and I wanted to know if anyone had done a case study on this to see how the developers were contacted for donations and what level of value these objects had to the developers themselves and the reasons why they decided to donate. This could be coupled with analysis of the Get Lamp project as well as the Wing Commander documentaiton project.<div>
<br></div><div>Along the lines of what to preserve, maybe there's two parts - one being defining what all aspects of a game could be preserved or documented, and the other being which area does the archive want to focus on. You can't preserve everything because eventually you have to find a place to focus on. You can either do a poor job at trying to save lots of things or you can do a good job specializing in one area. That's my idea at least. Who knows with digital, but I can certainly see it from the research and analysis side of things (not all archives are going to have a detailed collection of curated text adventure game materials).<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Andrew Armstrong <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:andrew@aarmstrong.org">andrew@aarmstrong.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
I mean to post up a report on the IGDA Preservation SIG wiki on our
presentation at DiGRA actually. For those interested, I made lots of
notes on the sessions I attended: <a href="http://aarmstrong.org/notes/digra-2009" target="_blank">http://aarmstrong.org/notes/digra-2009</a><br>
<br>
One of the things we discussed between ourselves was, to a point,
exactly this: a multitude of "questions we dare not ask". I am sure all
history and preservation people deal with this too (in fact I should
try and get in contact with some of them to gather consensus from what
they work on! Perhaps Tom Wooley knows more about this since he works
in a multimedia museum). Dan Pinchbeck suggested a meeting between
everyone for a day at one location so things like this could be
discussed - he might try and get some money to cover people's travel,
and it'd be awesome to lay out things like this with some discussion.<br>
<br>
As for the question "what to preserve" specifically? It's difficult,
everyone thinks one thing is more important then another. There isn't
unlimited space (although many places are on a "we'll accept anything
of given quality we don't have some copies of already" but think in 10
years or so if that'll be true still). I personally don't know the
answer, although sometimes you can have a historical record of
something without the actual item - the record of things with
photographs, scans and metadata might prove useful for space saving.
Volunteer time is another big one too - even with the items, it is a
choice between what to restore, present, research and archive depends
on the time you have. Some guidelines would be good - beyond the simple
"if it is rare/one off, it is usually worth preserving", since I'd hope
this is mainly obvious (depending on the item).<br>
<br>
Tetris might be a nice one to do actually for the "multiplicity of
objects" mainly because DiGRA had a presentation by a (I think
non-games researcher) on basically "What is Tetris?":<br>
<br>
<a href="http://aarmstrong.org/notes/digra-2009/evolution-of-the-tetromino-stacking-game-an-historical-design-study-of-tertris" target="_blank">http://aarmstrong.org/notes/digra-2009/evolution-of-the-tetromino-stacking-game-an-historical-design-study-of-tertris</a><br>
<br>
It's interesting because it was an early game, it had direct and
indirect influences, it has a strange story on the "IP" angle and other
things too. I got permission to put his paper online so I'll get it on
the IGDA site at least. Doom is a good choice too, certainly in some
ways more "limited" - it influenced other things, but no real direct
copycats and since it wasn't released as long ago there is,
statistically, less there. The ET example in Ian's keynote again is
another one - certainly "easier" to determine "what" it is, except that
"what" changes constantly even for such a one off game.<br>
<br>
Also, Ian's keynote went basically *woosh* for most of it, being very
hard to follow for me personally (them start and middle mainly was the
problem - the last bit makes sense). It being down on a page is a lot
easier to follow :)<br>
<br>
I'm also infused with energy to get the bibliography work to a point I
can get a prototype up and running, since the researchers themselves
admitted they find it hard to find research material - usually, it
appears by most accounts, it is "find a similar paper, and look at the
references, then look at those references", and so forth. Not that the
project is just for research papers of course, but as a mass of content
in themselves, they're mainly top of the pile.<br>
<br>
Andrew<br>
<br>
Devin Monnens wrote:
<blockquote type="cite"><div><div></div><div class="h5">Ian Bogost recently gave a keynote in DiGRA on videogames
and ontology. In it, he argues that videogames may be defined as a
multitude of things, from code to plastics to experiences to cultural
phenomena.
<div><br>
<div><a href="http://www.bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess.shtml</a><br clear="all">
<br>
</div>
<div>I believe this brings up an interesting question that we've
encountered a few times in our discussions: what is it that we are
preserving?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Is this question made any easier to answer once we consider
videogames as a multiplicity of objects? Obviously, not all of these
elements are preservable. Maybe we don't want to preserve some of these
elements anyway. Or maybe this gives us many things we would like to
preserve but are unable to preserve them all.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Can we apply this to a case study, such as the preservation of
Doom, by breaking Doom into a multiplicity of objects? </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-- <br>
Devin Monnens<br>
<a href="http://www.deserthat.com" target="_blank">www.deserthat.com</a><br>
<br>
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.<br>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Devin Monnens<br><a href="http://www.deserthat.com">www.deserthat.com</a><br><br>The sleep of Reason produces monsters.<br>
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