[game_preservation] Digital Game Canon website (initial stages)

[Andrew Armstrong]

Hey Devin,

Great points (I've noted them all down) let me respond to the questions 
too...and I put some in reply :)

> I believe the preservation page will be very important to archives as 

> it contains information on how individual games are being preserved. 

> How well does each preservation method work for each game and why were 

> some methods chosen over others?

I guess you mean the /preservation page will be important? absolutely. 
The information, once sourced, will be good (perhaps the DGC site will 
become a nice base for a future "game preservation database").

> For material that isn't originally on Archive, is it possible to check 

> if the pages are on the Wayback Machine? That way, we can redundantly 

> forward them to the archived pages in case the original site goes 

> away. If there's any question about licensing, we could always use 

> Creative Commons for material original to DGC.

Original material, yes, CC seems a good idea. The thing is, if we 
managed to, say, get original scans of DOOM marketing material, for 
example, and were able to put up scans and videos - what would be the 
licence of that? For websites you can use wayback links (pretty easy, 
they all start with http://web.archive.org/web/*/ ) but wayback things 
work pretty poorly for most marketing sites (ie; flash).

> I vote that game names should be Wikipedia-style to be as specific as 

> possible. However, it might be of interest to list the commonly known 

> pseudonyms of a game (i.e. that SMB3 is the same as Super Mario Bros. 

> 3 or that DOOM might sometimes be written incorrectly as Doom).

Okay, I couldn't decide myself - what I might have is all the links use 
the proper structure, and have pages allow additional pseudonyms, so 
searching can be done more easily, and pages be accessed with short 
URLs, although they redirect to the actual page name. I'll make a note 
about this for the database.

> For some games like SMB3, we might also want to reference ports and 

> remakes. For instance, SMB3 was remade in Super Mario All-Stars and 

> Super Mario Advance 3 (and there are additional game levels available 

> through the e-cards of course). While neither of these are the same as 

> the original (SMA-S modifies the graphics, for instance) they are 

> certainly all under the same umbrella and it's important to 

> differentiate between them.

Man, so many remakes. For a worse example, look at Doom! GBA, Mobile 
phones (countless varieties...) iPods, unofficial ports, fan made mods 
which work on basically anything...

How do you suggest doing this? Perhaps a new page/section specifically 
for it? It can change later of course, but what would be a good subpage 
name? (maybe /ports ? or /releaseinfo ?)

> Let me also clarify that we would be also archiving machinima, 

> superplay, and speedrun videos involving these games, correct? Or if 

> not on the site directly then at least referencing them as part of the 

> large body of culture that the game is a part of.

We'd hopefully at least link to IA material, and perhaps have it 
mirrored specifically at high bandwidth sites (since the IGDA site won't 
have the bandwidth for the material I presume), which will come later. 
Do you suggest they should be on a new "/culture" page? or should it 
stick to /media ? (both of which can have subpages for specifics like 
/speedruns etc.)

> In regards to the reviews and critical analysis section, I am also 

> thinking some form of peer review might be in order.

Peer review of what? Do you mean we should organise the 5 people on the 
DGC for that entry to put forward critical analysis of the game? Or that 
it gets reviewed in some peer way by others? or that the actual reviews 
we link to be peer reviewed for importance?

Like Mobygames, I will be (sigh) likely having scores appear 
(aggregates, like Metacritic etc. do), and possibly in the future "user 
reviews", is this a good idea?

> Other than that, I think this is a fairly exhaustive set of 

> information to compile on each game. If we are doing serious 

> preservation of the DGC, then this can be used as a micro of just how 

> detailed game preservation might get.

Absolutely, which is why there needs to be this kind of great feedback 
as I work on it :-)

Archivists; take note, I haven't listed absolute information anywhere. 
For a database, I'll be spreadsheeting up a ton of fields later once the 
hierarchy is finalised more. If you can think of anything, please please 
reply! :-)

If there is a DB schema/layout sorted, at least in a base sense, then it 
can perhaps be used for other things later. It'd be good to have also to 
standardise a little, to allow the DB info to be downloaded in a 
non-HTML form. This is specifically something I want to allow, of 
course, be it separate pages on demand or a compressed archive which 
captures a snapshot of the DB.

Thanks a lot Devin,

Andrew
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