[game_preservation] GDC 2009 Report, Roundtable Notes

[Rachel "Sheepy" Donahue]

Thanks for the notes!

A few comments:

Scanning is not a valid preservation method!!! Ahhhh! ;)
Just saying so because it sounded like you were saying you "didn't need"  
the physical items if they were scanned.. but paper is much more  
straightforward and cheaper to preserve!

You say:

" Fair use is very unexplored territory around this. No test cases for any  
of this stuff. Only way to test things is in court. Fair use for literary  
material is cannot copy more then part of the work..."

Mind, my response is entirely from a US IP law perspective.
I was at an archives conference a few months back and had the good fortune  
of going to a session with a pretty knowledgable (to this peon) IP lawyer.  
I asked her what shrink wrap license meant for the fair use exemptions  
that exist in copyright law, and she said that as there is precedent for  
people making personal agreements to circumvent that sort of law,  
"agreeing" to the license means forfeiting those rights completely.

There's also a fair amount of case law (in the US) -- especially from  
before the DMCA was enacted -- regarding shrink wrap licenses, but it is  
really painful to wade through if you're not a lawyer. There were some  
consumer protection laws that were suggested, but ultimately didn't get  
passed, if I recall. I haven't looked at much of the legal literature  
surrounding DMCA, though (yet).

"An IGDA position to have an official archivist at every company"

I obviously support this ;)

"Maybe having the SIG being a coordinator like the IEEE History Centre. We  
can also go to the other SIG's and get the history of their area of  
history covered."

This might be a little crazy, but when I first thought of the survey I  
thought it would be really cool if something like the American Institute  
of Physics did for physics could be done for the game industry. Basically  
they went around to the major physics industry names and took a look at  
record keeping/generating practices of the company as a whole and  
invididual scientists. The report is really cool and loaded with useful  
information, and will prove to be an important tool in preserving the  
history of physics (which is what AIP strives to do). I think it's a good  
model for any organization looking to preserve industry history; not just  
the sciences.

http://www.aip.org/history/pubs/hopi.html

Obviously a HUGE undertaking, and would probably face a lot of difficulty  
getting to the people in the know since game development is a bit more of  
a closed industry, and I don't think developers view the IGDA (I could be  
wrong!) with the same sort of respect AIP gets. So getting in the door is  
harder.

"A final point on how much it costs to preserve one game - the cost can be  
 from zero to who knows. Say $50,000 if just being asked to preserve  
something ? a big number to do it, just because people like numbers!"

The cost is difficult to calculate because it isn't a one-time, fixed  
cost. Sure, the initial "archiving" of the game may be relatively  
inexpensive.. but what does sustaining it cost? There will be money  
involved in maintaining the servers, migrating emulator code (or the game  
itself), refreshing media, etc, and that's trickier to project.

Ok, I'm done.
Rach