[game_preservation] Writing Biographies

[Andrew Armstrong]

Anyone here written biographies before? I don’t necessarily mean game 
developers or whatever, just generally.

I’m just thinking with the memorials project and whatever else we get up 
to it might be useful to know of any resources (good books, online 
stuff, courses) on writing them.

The main reason I ask is that, certainly in the entertainment 
businesses, the top dogs can be, let’s be honest, really dickish. I 
mean, I don’t want to sound annoyed, it’s just true, they come out with 
some real crap, certainly in the current events and future predictions 
areas.

What brought this to mind was Bill Harris’ commentary on John 
Riccitiello’s interview:

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/ea-returning-to-form.html

I mean, if we did a biography for him, would we mention he came out with 
this stuff? :/ Such a crass guy. I’m not sure I’d like to work under 
him, sounds rather mean.

I’m sure it’s not a struggle for some biography writers, who write about 
people either long dead (so no one can complain or sue or who you have a 
lot more facts and opinions on) or who write the angle that it’ll have 
to sell, so they make the person out as nice as possible (omitting 
things like that). You know there are plenty of shadow writers for 
autobiographies for instance.

But anyway, the historians who do try and put the facts and opinions 
together, what to do? This can also apply to companies, products and 
anything else of course, but people get less uppity and it’s generally 
considered more fact-like to say something like “The failure rate of 
product X was in the 50% or higher mark contributing to people being 
wary about buying them” etc. – basically, the problems, I guess, with 
libel and misrepresentation.

If there are no historians like this on the list we need to find some ;) 
Input from that area of written, typed or documented history is as 
important as the preservation of the physical items.

Andrew