[game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas (Please respond!)

[Andrew Armstrong]

I'll just respond to one point of this; no awards. The sheer fact the 
game is historical significant should be enough. "Winning" something 
that you can get voted in every year until the earth explodes also isn't 
much of an accolade (or even, if one year you go up against "stuff 
competition" you'd be unable to ever win it again).

Also, your point "I'm not sure that there are 10 culturally significant 
games produced every year anymore" is...odd. As a historian you should 
know that until you're 10 years (or more!) down the line you don't know 
what a historically significant game will be, especially since they 
don't have to be "culturally" significant, whatever that means ;) - they 
also don't have to be from the same year. While film has been going for 
longer, their registry has been going for MUCH longer. I think we'd be 
hard pressed not just having "classics" for the future 10, maybe 20 or 
30 years of these, which is only 100-300 games or series'. For material, 
I don't think there is any lack of it for a canon.

We'll see if anyone else has thoughts on this, and Henry also knows much 
more about how he organised it too.

Andrew

Stuart Feldhamer wrote:

>

> What I propose would be something like this:

>

>  

>

> First of all, I think 10 games per year is too many. (As an aside, I'm 

> not sure that there are 10 culturally significant games produced every 

> year anymore.) 10 games was good for the initial selection, but for 

> each year, it probably should be no more than 5, to increase the value 

> of a game getting in.

>

>  

>

> A nominating committee is established to pick initial nominations 

> (maybe 10). The nominating committee members should be members of the 

> SIG. It would be nice if we can get Meretzky or Spector or the like to 

> be on the nominating committee, but again, they should be members of 

> the SIG if this is a SIG project. I would try to establish a process 

> whereby members of the committee are willing to step down if someone 

> more "worthy" for lack of a better word becomes willing to serve.

>

>  

>

> Once initial nominations are made as a group by the committee to the 

> SIG, they are debated by the SIG members on this email list or the 

> subsequent forums. The committee reviews the feedback and may choose 

> to modify their nomination selections as a result.

>

>  

>

> Once the slate is final, it is put forward to the general membership 

> of the IGDA for voting. Say for example they can vote for 5 of the 10 

> nominations to make it into the canon. This should go out to the 

> membership similar to the emails that go out for voting for the IGDA 

> board, with some time period for responding.

>

>  

>

> The "winners" are presented at a GDC panel (without being revealed in 

> advance), with some kind of award given to the lead 

> developer/designer/producer/creative team/whatever. Since IGDA members 

> will have voted, there will be much more buzz around this and a desire 

> to see who wins, and I would be very surprised if this wasn't 

> something that GDC would be interested in hosting.

>

>  

>

> As an aside, we need to do a much better job of "canonizing" those 

> titles that do make it into the canon.

>

>  

>

> Stuart

>

>  

>

>  

>

>  

>

> *From:* game_preservation-bounces at igda.org 

> [mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew 

> Armstrong

> *Sent:* Monday, January 19, 2009 9:39 AM

> *To:* IGDA Game Preservation SIG

> *Subject:* Re: [game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas 

> (Please respond!)

>

>  

>

> Yeah, I checked that out before responding myself. They take up to 50 

> votes per person, films must be 10 years old, and the votes are taken 

> into account. It's interesting as a system (I might also have to email 

> them about it, see how it is setup, how it runs in the background, etc.)

>

> The problem? we're so unknown that even Videogame 

> museums/archives/collections don't know who we are. There simply isn't 

> a critical mass of experts in this SIG, and certainly any votes like 

> that for 50 games would be, well, a dozen or so maybe? It'd be a bit 

> silly, to be honest. It'd also have to be international, too, and for 

> all the good game fans there are some who love to ballot stuff. I'll 

> have to do some kind of online system I think if we did the public 

> vote thing :)

>

> We'd need to setup a proper site. Devin; to respond to Gamastura or 

> whatever, I have no idea about that, maybe that is a route. I still 

> need to build a site to host some information about the canon games 

> (like the NFR website to a degree, certainly better then a Wiki 

> however, since it needs forms for ballots etc.).

>

> I think the reason Matteo Bittanti helped was he's part of the 

> Stanford stuff - 

> http://www.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=blog/15 (and 

> here: http://mbf.blogs.com/about.html ), so academically inclined like 

> Henry, and Christopher Grant was a journalist (and still, at Joystiq, 

> who did express some interest in hosting a monthly "Game of Canon" or 

> something), so had that perspective - it's important of course not to 

> just see what the developers and historians think is important, but 

> what the press and players think is important too. I also think they 

> were not just "oh, I have 2 picks, my faves can go in", they got 

> discussed.

>

> It was only a start, as far as I know Henry never intended it to be 

> like that forever or anything, but I doubt you could get a set of 

> games decided on using a complex system of voting (which needs to be 

> done a full year in advance) then having a larger set of experts 

> deciding - in 2007, there were much less members here then there were 

> now too :)

>

> For last years I am sure Henry did some work on that and got 10 more 

> too, but I can't recall who he mentioned helping, I think Simon 

> Carless was involved too though.

>

> I'll look into this though as a serious project if you have some more 

> ideas. Can you put forward what you think would be a "Perfect" system 

> for releasing up to 10 games per year into the Canon of games? How to 

> publicise it, maybe how to get public votes in, and how the panel can 

> decide on them and when in the year? (possibly do a years voting 

> starting January 1st, and decide the years entries in the month of 

> January onwards for the previous year - so 2009 would have games 

> released in 1998 or earlier added, etc....maybe do it monthly)

>

> I'll jot down these ideas once people have had time to comment on the 

> entire list - I'll note down all of this, all of your concerns and 

> also "What is happening about the missing years" - we might just do a 

> catchup of them, who knows?

>

> Andrew

>

> Stuart Feldhamer wrote:

>

> OK, so I can understand Steve Meretzky and Warren Spector, and even 

> Henry Lowood, but who are the other 2 people on the panel? I mean, why 

> were they chosen?

>

>  

>

> Funny you should mention the National Film Registry:

>

>  

>

> http://www.loc.gov/film/vote.html

>

>  

>

> I am still digesting your comments about collectors and oral histories...

>

>  

>

> Stuart

>

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