[game_preservation] Open Sourcing MMO's that have "died"

[Andrew Armstrong]

Yes, the medium of video and audio probably better preserves the /state/ 
of MMO's, but there is a lot of information that can be gleaned from the 
actual assets. If World of Warcraft were to close tomorrow, I doubt any 
wiki or database is 100% complete and accurate, so you could go into it 
and get the same feeling or see the same things as a player would.

If the games were even just dark archived or whatever, it'd allow 
historians at least to see what exactly the game constituted of, even if 
it lacks the players. This goes for any multiplayer game - look, we 
preserve /pong/ for the same reasons - without a second play it is 
nothing but it still matters! :-)

The problem also is since MMO's are obviously tied to a server model 
that does not allow a historian to actually even play the game without 
connecting to a server, once these go down, they disappear forever and 
are made completely unplayable. While some multiplayer games do this too 
(EA Sport ones come to mind, although they might include LAN and IP 
variants of multiplayer) most allow LAN or other play which requires no 
connection to a "master" server, allowing it to be viewed years further on.

In any case, even if there is no one to play it, the model they employ 
makes it the worst kind to archive, which is obviously why the virtual 
world project is so important of course :-)

Andrew

Captain Commando wrote:

> Technically, an archived online world would only be what it was like 

> in the last stage of its existence (though you could technically load 

> an original build if you had the code). You would need many people to 

> play the game in order for it to be close to what it was originally. 

> Preserving an online would would then be the equivalent of preserving 

> 1888 France minus the people.

>

> I think the most interesting thing about preserving MMO's is 

> preserving a record of what happened during its life, a record of what 

> the game was about and how it was played, and the things that were in 

> the game. If you have the code, that's great, but that's basically 

> just like saving the last two minutes of an hour-long performance art 

> piece.

>

> On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 12:29 PM, Andrew Armstrong 

> <andrew at aarmstrong.org <mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org>> wrote:

>

>     Relatively interesting look at the reasons for and against open

>     sourcing "dead" MMO games, via. slashdot

>     <http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/23/165237>, here:

>

>     http://stroppsworld.com/2008/07/22/open-sourcing-the-mmo-game/

>

>     Fair points most of us know, and it's a patent fact that most

>     companies won't even want to dark archive their code or assets

>     when a MMO or any other game dies, but nice to see a discussion on it.

>

>     Andrew

>

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>

>

> -- 

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

> "Until next time..."

> Captain Commando

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