[game_preservation] Ian Bogost on the 'thingness' of games

[Andrew Armstrong]

I know the person who curated the museum - I can contact him about this 
if you like. I wrote up a report (it's linked to from our preservation 
blog) and yes, along with documenting the archives and projects, 
documenting the exhibitions is something to do :) Might be a good start, 
kind of have a "form" to fill in about it.

As for how he got the stuff - a lot of direct contact AFAIK, which is 
pretty much how you'd do it anyway I'd hazard a guess. As you might 
note, the exhibit didn't have much in the way of "big publisher" things 
donated (sadly!), but a lot of temporary donations by developers. 
Without any real permanent videogame exhibits in museums (or a videogame 
museum as it were), there is little way for companies or developers to 
go to the people running it to ask if they want to run a special exhibit 
or whatever :)

Andrew

Devin Monnens wrote:

> Actually, while we're on the topic, I assume we've got a detailed 

> report on Videogame Nation in Manchester? The exhibit is closing on 

> the 14th of September. I just read an article on it in Retro Gamer, 

> and was surprised to see that many objects in the exhibit had been 

> donated by developers (including original artwork from Broken Sword 

> donated by Charles Cecil of Revolution Studios). This was exactly the 

> kind of thing we were talking about in the White Paper, and I wanted 

> to know if anyone had done a case study on this to see how the 

> developers were contacted for donations and what level of value these 

> objects had to the developers themselves and the reasons why they 

> decided to donate. This could be coupled with analysis of the Get Lamp 

> project as well as the Wing Commander documentaiton project.

>

> Along the lines of what to preserve, maybe there's two parts - one 

> being defining what all aspects of a game could be preserved or 

> documented, and the other being which area does the archive want to 

> focus on. You can't preserve everything because eventually you have to 

> find a place to focus on. You can either do a poor job at trying to 

> save lots of things or you can do a good job specializing in one area. 

> That's my idea at least. Who knows with digital, but I can certainly 

> see it from the research and analysis side of things (not all archives 

> are going to have a detailed collection of curated text adventure game 

> materials).

>

> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Andrew Armstrong 

> <andrew at aarmstrong.org <mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org>> wrote:

>

>     I mean to post up a report on the IGDA Preservation SIG wiki on

>     our presentation at DiGRA actually. For those interested, I made

>     lots of notes on the sessions I attended:

>     http://aarmstrong.org/notes/digra-2009

>

>     One of the things we discussed between ourselves was, to a point,

>     exactly this: a multitude of "questions we dare not ask". I am

>     sure all history and preservation people deal with this too (in

>     fact I should try and get in contact with some of them to gather

>     consensus from what they work on! Perhaps Tom Wooley knows more

>     about this since he works in a multimedia museum). Dan Pinchbeck

>     suggested a meeting between everyone for a day at one location so

>     things like this could be discussed - he might try and get some

>     money to cover people's travel, and it'd be awesome to lay out

>     things like this with some discussion.

>

>     As for the question "what to preserve" specifically? It's

>     difficult, everyone thinks one thing is more important then

>     another. There isn't unlimited space (although many places are on

>     a "we'll accept anything of given quality we don't have some

>     copies of already" but think in 10 years or so if that'll be true

>     still). I personally don't know the answer, although sometimes you

>     can have a historical record of something without the actual item

>     - the record of things with photographs, scans and metadata might

>     prove useful for space saving. Volunteer time is another big one

>     too - even with the items, it is a choice between what to restore,

>     present, research and archive depends on the time you have. Some

>     guidelines would be good - beyond the simple "if it is rare/one

>     off, it is usually worth preserving", since I'd hope this is

>     mainly obvious (depending on the item).

>

>     Tetris might be a nice one to do actually for the "multiplicity of

>     objects" mainly because DiGRA had a presentation by a (I think

>     non-games researcher) on basically "What is Tetris?":

>

>     http://aarmstrong.org/notes/digra-2009/evolution-of-the-tetromino-stacking-game-an-historical-design-study-of-tertris

>

>     It's interesting because it was an early game, it had direct and

>     indirect influences, it has a strange story on the "IP" angle and

>     other things too. I got permission to put his paper online so I'll

>     get it on the IGDA site at least. Doom is a good choice too,

>     certainly in some ways more "limited" - it influenced other

>     things, but no real direct copycats and since it wasn't released

>     as long ago there is, statistically, less there. The ET example in

>     Ian's keynote again is another one - certainly "easier" to

>     determine "what" it is, except that "what" changes constantly even

>     for such a one off game.

>

>     Also, Ian's keynote went basically *woosh* for most of it, being

>     very hard to follow for me personally (them start and middle

>     mainly was the problem - the last bit makes sense). It being down

>     on a page is a lot easier to follow :)

>

>     I'm also infused with energy to get the bibliography work to a

>     point I can get a prototype up and running, since the researchers

>     themselves admitted they find it hard to find research material -

>     usually, it appears by most accounts, it is "find a similar paper,

>     and look at the references, then look at those references", and so

>     forth. Not that the project is just for research papers of course,

>     but as a mass of content in themselves, they're mainly top of the

>     pile.

>

>     Andrew

>

>     Devin Monnens wrote:

>>     Ian Bogost recently gave a keynote in DiGRA on videogames and

>>     ontology. In it, he argues that videogames may be defined as a

>>     multitude of things, from code to plastics to experiences to

>>     cultural phenomena.

>>

>>     http://www.bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess.shtml

>>

>>     I believe this brings up an interesting question that we've

>>     encountered a few times in our discussions: what is it that we

>>     are preserving?

>>

>>     Is this question made any easier to answer once we consider

>>     videogames as a multiplicity of objects? Obviously, not all of

>>     these elements are preservable. Maybe we don't want to preserve

>>     some of these elements anyway. Or maybe this gives us many things

>>     we would like to preserve but are unable to preserve them all.

>>

>>     Can we apply this to a case study, such as the preservation of

>>     Doom, by breaking Doom into a multiplicity of objects? 

>>

>>     -- 

>>     Devin Monnens

>>     www.deserthat.com <http://www.deserthat.com>

>>

>>     The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------

>>

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>

>

> -- 

> Devin Monnens

> www.deserthat.com <http://www.deserthat.com>

>

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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