[game_preservation] National Game Registry Blog

[Devin Monnens]

Thank you for the information Marty.

There's actually two projects I'm working on now.

1) A survey of game preservation archives, projects, and initiatives around
the world (this article came up when I was doing a search).

2) An article on the development of computer games from the period of
1961-1972 and especially why there is so little documentation over a ten
year period outside of Spacewar (which was extremely popular) and Brown Box
(when the following 10 year period is chock full of new innovations).

The second paper is directly tied with the research problems you mention, as
well as the problem I've run into of tracking down the information I need,
which is essentially lists of computer software that was created or run on
mainframe computers during this time period (as well as hopefully what it is
and who made it). The solution seems to be finding these documents. What you
have said about interviews makes me less keen on tracking down key players.
However, your mention of game software on the TX-0 interests me quite a bit.
I was going to talk about chess AI (which are, after all, computer games),
but I haven't heard of much other information. I would be very interested in
seeing what you located and if you know a paper trail I can continue
following.

With Steve Kent's book, I find it more interesting regarding not so much
what the people are saying but what they are *not* saying. It is very easy
in that regard to tell what the person is like and how his character shaped
the industry, even when you can't take what he says as completely true.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 1:06 PM, Martin Goldberg <wgungfu at gmail.com> wrote:


> Devin - unfortunately I find it commonplace and it's a challenge when

> trying to document the past.  There's usually a number of issues to

> weed through -

>

> a) You're dealing with people's memories of events that happened 25-30

> or more years ago.  They're bound to be faulty in some regards.

>

> b) Something incorrect has been told for so long, it's become the

> widespread fact (as the similar saying goes).

>

> c) Some have a vested interest in overstating their contributions or

> involvement, to the point of playing loose with the facts and

> frequently engaging in PR.

>

> As someone currently engaged in writing three books (a two volume set

> on Atari Inc. and Atari Corp.'s contributions to the industry, and

> another book on the coin industry from it's transition from mech to

> video up through their first crash - which btw is in a different cycle

> from the home console industry), I can honestly say that's why my

> partner and I tend to go by verifiable facts whenever possible.

> Engineering logs, corporate documents, etc., and in the case of oral

> history we try and cross reference as much as possible.

>

> Look at the case of Ted Dabney, a mystery to many and to most a

> complete unknown - all because of Nolan's PR, which tends to rewrite

> history in his favor.  Besides tracking Ted down for direct

> interviews, we were able to track down other early Atari Inc.

> employees to corroborate, and in some cases provide documents from the

> time period.

>

> Or our current focus on the home industry crash period (late '82

> through late '84), weeding through court documents to correct the

> missinformation by RJ Mical regarding the Atari Inc/Amiga/Atari Corp

> debacle, or internal projects and research Atari Inc. had been working

> on, etc.

>

> The link you just gave is another interesting quandary, as its an

> example of "incorrect info being told as truth long enough" just

> waiting to happen.  Their statement "50 years since the development of

> the first computer game" (which I'm assuming they're referring to

> Tennis for Two), repeated often in the article, is of course

> incorrect.  You have Claude Shannon's chess program in 1950, Nimrod in

> 1951, Naughts and Crosses in 1952 (developed right in the authors' own

> country at Cambridge), a host of games at MIT on the TX-0 through the

> mid to late 50's, etc.  The issue is, people will see the paper and

> use it as a reference.  Then someone else will see that paper, and so

> on.

>

> Steve Kent's book, Ultimate History of Video Games, is notorious for

> that.  It's so often referred to by people doing research, but so full

> of incorrect information and inaccuracies, that they get repeated as

> fact now.   I do appreciate the work Steve put in to it traveling all

> over and conducting interviews and such.  But it seems like very

> little fact checking was done.

>

>

> Marty

>

>

> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:

> > You know, I know this project exists. But I can't find it on the web. You

> > would think the LOC would be googleable?

> > I did find another survey paper published 2009. They are all researchers

> > from the UK:

> >

> http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/DiGRA09/Thursday%203%20September/State%20of%20Play%20a.pdf

> >

> > On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:12 PM, Martin Goldberg <wgungfu at gmail.com>

> wrote:

> >>

> >> Interesting.  Without getting in to their definition of "video game",

> >> took a look over some of the info and it's erroneous, which I'm

> >> surprised at for the Library of Congress.  Unless the errors were done

> >> by the blogger?  For example, the key personnel in both Computer

> >> Space, Pong and Breakout.

> >>

> >> Computer Space was done by Ted Dabney *and* Nolan Bushnell.  Ted did

> >> all the major circuitry design (spot generator, etc.), Nolan worked on

> >> the finished product after selling it to Nutting.

> >>

> >> Pong - Ralph didn't create the tennis game it was taken from, that was

> >> one of the two people on his game system project, Bill Rusch.

> >> Likewise, Al Alcorn was not the "programmer".  The game has no CPU, it

> >> was designed in pure TTL logic.  Al would be the "engineer".

> >>

> >> Breakout - The concept was by Nolan and Steve Bristow.  Likewise,

> >> Wozniak only did an early version of Breakout.  Once again, this is a

> >> pure logic TTL based game, no coding.  The actual version of Breakout

> >> released was engineered at Atari's Cyan labs by Gary Waters.

> >>

> >>

> >> Marty

> >>

> >>

> >> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com>

> wrote:

> >> > Found this while, as usual, digging for something else. It's a blog

> >> > listing

> >> > all the games that had as of February been inducted into the LOC

> >> > National

> >> > Game Registry. Includes a description of each.

> >> >

> >> >

> http://thenoisingmachine.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/national-game-registry/

> >> >

> >> > --

> >> > Devin Monnens

> >> > www.deserthat.com

> >> >

> >> > The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

> >> >

> >> > _______________________________________________

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> >> > game_preservation at igda.org

> >> > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

> >> >

> >> >

> >> _______________________________________________

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> >

> >

> >

> > --

> > Devin Monnens

> > www.deserthat.com

> >

> > The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

> >

> > _______________________________________________

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> > game_preservation at igda.org

> > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

> >

> >

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-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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