[game_preservation] Kickstarting the IGDA Preservation SIG

[Kieron Wilkinson]

Simon Carless wrote:

> The key resources I see right now as it being important to unite:


Yeah, we are going to have to talk about this. I know you guys had some 
ideas on this. We'll have to see where we can go with this...


> - The Computer History Museum (Sellam Ismail is a full-time software 

> curator there now!)


By coincidence, I have recently been in contact with Sellam recently to 
help recover a long lost game from some 8" disks held by the developer. 
(more on that when I know more, it hasn't happened yet AFAIK) Nice guy!

Nice kickstart they got this week! For those that have not heard:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4350972.stm


> - CAPS Project


Now SPS (Software Preservation Society - www.softpres.org).

Actually, it is probably worth pointing out where I hail from. I help 
run SPS (formally CAPS) which is a technical effort for collecting and 
preserving games that use magnetic storage media (floppy disks, for the 
moment anyway), along with a few other people, most notably István 
Fábián. Feel free to look at the site for more details. We have 
currently preserved 2500 games from the Commodore Amiga computer which 
are digitally encapsulated in a form away from physical media and 
associated longevity problems. These disk images are from error-free and 
unaltered copied of games (since we have the technology to check both of 
these things thanks to István), and are hence suitable for preservation 
and archiving. We are currently working on other systems, most notably 
systems with hardware based floppy controllers (controlled all by a 
chip, rather than mainly in software like the Amiga), which is used in 
most other computer systems. The Amiga was the most technically 
challenging to do this sort of thing, and so made a suitable starting 
point (and other reasons).

Given this background, I'm coming very much from the digital 
preservation side of things. These are almost certainly going to be the 
only working copies that will be left in the frighteningly 
not-too-distant future - certainly by the time the copyright expires. 
You can't do one without the other though, collecting physical copies of 
the media is just as important - as my house stuffed with thousands of 
games testifies. (If you wondered, no, I'm not very popular for it with 
certain others - especially since I never get time to actually *play* 
the things!)

-- 
Kieron Wilkinson
Preservation SIG
International Game Developers Association