[game_preservation] Welcome to the list - more info on efforts.

[Simon Carless]

Hey all,

So I'm seeing lots more people sign up to the list, and a couple of 
people have already made introductions, so as the SIG founder, I thought 
I'd step up and introduce myself, plus explain what this mailing-list is 
all about.

My name's Simon Carless, and I'm Managing Editor at games industry site 
Gamasutra.com, which is part of the  currently IGDA-affiliated CMP Game 
Group. Before that, I was an editor at tech site Slashdot, specifically 
the Slashdot Games section (games.slashdot.org), and I also do work for 
the non-profit Internet Archive, both as a volunteer and as a 
contractor. Before _that_, I was a game designer at companies like Kuju 
Entertainment and Infogrames/Atari.

Anyhow, game preservation is an often-discussed subject. I chaired the 
roundtables at this year's Game Developers Conference, and what came out 
was a cacophony of worries about old games, old game-related material 
not being saved, alongside a little backlash regarding the argument that 
the Internet is taking good enough care of saving old games already. 
There's a _lot_ of things that can be discussed.

But, a starting point - if you haven't, check out the links on the SIG page:

http://www.igda.org/preservation/

The particular project that I've been working on (as part of work, but 
now in my spare time) is the Internet Archive's Game Videos archive:

http://www.archive.org/movies/gamevideos.php

The Archive (which also created the noted 'Wayback Machine' web archive) 
is all about making material available to the public. So, while we have 
been exploring 'dark archives' for preserving software that's still 
copyrighted, using data from great efforts like the CAPS Project, we 
ended up concentrating on this freely distributable videos archive, 
which features game-related videos that the copyright holders are fine 
with having distributed (in the same way that they don't mind, say, 
movies of them appearing on GameSpot.)

Anyhow, the Game Videos archive includes.. a whole bunch of stuff. I 
wrote a fairly informative entry about it on my weblog, so I'll link to 
that:

http://www.mono211.com/ffwd/archives/000352.html

So, here's the deal, as I see it. There are lots of people doing great 
work out there (MobyGames on the credits/game info side of things, CAPS 
Project on the 'dark archive' software preservation side of things, 
arguably the Internet Archive when it comes to game-related 
footage/movies), so we need to support this as much as possible and work 
out ways to extend it. But unfortunately, time and resources to mount 
serious preservation efforts are a little lacking.

So, how about a starting gambit. What are you _really_ worried about 
disappearing, when it comes to game-related material. Is it the games 
themselves? Is it the recollections of people who _worked_ on the games? 
Is it the promo video that came with the game? Are there particular 
areas which are very problematic?

Thanks, all,
Simon.