[game_preservation] launch of NZ game history work

[Melanie Swalwell]

Greetings all,

This is to let you know about a new multimedia work I've recently completed, in collaboration with Erik Loyer.   

It will be launched in New Zealand later this week, as per the press release pasted below.

I hope you will stop by soon and have a play, and contribute to the ongoing research by adding your reflections on the content to the project database.  Please forward this to others who might be interested.

Regards,

Melanie

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MEDIA RELEASE

21 June 2006
_________________________________________________________________

Preserving New Zealand's video game history

Computer games have commonly been thought of as entirely disposable objects, but a Victoria University researcher says that they are in fact an important part of New Zealand's visual cultural history.

Dr Melanie Swalwell, a Lecturer in the School of English, Film, Theatre, & Media Studies, has published her research findings in a unique form in the online journal Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular. 

Part game and part exploration, the piece, entitled Cast-Offs from the Golden Age, invites players to re-enact Dr Swalwell's research by clicking on figures and following the "avenues of inquiry" those figures lead them down. They can then hear excerpts from interviews, see photographs taken during the course of her research, and access historic advertising, news stories and photographs from the "Golden Age" of New Zealand videogaming.

Her research project, which includes the production of games in New Zealand, will be launched this week. Locally, the work will be launched by Associate Professor David Crabbe and Mario Wynands, President of the New Zealand Game Developers' Association, but the event will also feature the designer and programmer of the work Erik Loyer and journal editor Steve Anderson speaking via video link from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, where Vectors is based.

"The history of digital games reveals an enormous amount about people's reception of, and attitudes towards, computing technology. Tracing the history of early videogames gives us a history of New Zealand's entry into the digital age, because it was through playing games that many people became familiar with digital technology," says Dr Swalwell.

During her research, she discovered that New Zealand produced a surprising quantity of arcade, console, and computer games. 

"Due in part to strict import licensing restrictions which made it difficult to import videogames in the early years, people designed and built their own systems, locally. Consoles like the Sportronic, the Fountain Programmable Video System, and the entirely New Zealand-made arcade game "Malzak", are unique internationally. These were home-grown creations, New Zealand's answer to Atari, if you like.  

"These items deserve to be recognised as historically significant artefacts, but very little has been kept. If nothing is done to preserve these scarce items, this part of New Zealand's history is at risk of being lost."

Together with Victoria colleagues from the Schools of Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science and Accounting & Commercial Law, Dr Swalwell plans to pursue the legal, technical and historical issues surrounding computer games produced in New Zealand further, focusing on how these artefacts can be preserved for future generations.

Dr Swalwell's research project will be launched on Friday 23 June. The event will be held at 3.30pm in the Videoconferencing suite, Room 106 of the Rankine Brown Building at Kelburn Campus.

Cast-Offs from the Golden Age can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/hp4nl

For further information, please contact Dr Swalwell on (04) 463 7446 or email Melanie.Swalwell at vuw.ac.nz 


>From http://www.vuw.ac.nz/home/about_victoria/news_article.asp?ArticleID=1042150505