[game_preservation] GDC 2009 Report, Roundtable Notes

[Andrew Armstrong]

I hardly commented in the meeting, all these are notes from other people 

:) Thanks for implying I said any of it, but I take zero credit. I did 

forget to note the next white paper though which I shouted at the end :) 
(goes and edits).

To reply to what I can: the scanning was to make sure the donators had a 
copy (although as I saw with the physical archives being destroyed in 
Germany recently, a digital copy is somewhat necessary nowadays anyway), 
then the physical items were donated. I guess it wasn't quite clear - 
Steve did that though.

The Physics example might be one to use, looks awesome. The IGDA sadly 
isn't an industry body but a developer body, so there is limited 
contacts with companies directly - and as you say it is more closed, but 
might well be worth a look at if we copy more good stuff from other 
organisations.

The cost - I forgot to note this, Henry said that answer, and as 
everyone knows it is variable. He might have more static figures or 
guesstimates from the virtual worlds project though, it was also 
relating to the previous "standards" discussion - a standard of how to 
preserve a game well enough for the future, at what cost, is sometimes 
important to know.

Andrew

Rachel "Sheepy" Donahue wrote:

> 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

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