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

[Stuart Feldhamer]

Whoops, somehow I sent this just to Andrew.

 

Stuart

 

From: Stuart Feldhamer [mailto:stuart.feldhamer at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 10:52 AM
To: 'Andrew Armstrong'
Subject: RE: [game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas (Please
respond!)

 

OK, point taken on my comment about 10 games per year. That was more of a
whining complaint about how most games today are derivative of earlier
works. And yes, I know that all media is derivative, I just mean that game
released today are less likely to be worthy of canonization than games
released 30 years ago, at least in my opinion.

 

Stuart

 

From: Andrew Armstrong [mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org] 
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 10:40 AM
To: stuart at feldhamer.com; IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] Spring Cleaning the SIG+2009 ideas (Please
respond!)

 

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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