[game_preservation] Generations standards?

[Martin Goldberg]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Andrew Armstrong
<andrew at aarmstrong.org> wrote:

> On 15/04/2010 00:35, Devin Monnens wrote:

>>

>> Personally, I think the 'generations' term is a bit overused and isn't

>> really very meaningful (to the average person) when we talk about anything

>> older than about 10 years. Generation is also used when discussing cell

>> phones (2G vs 3G), so I am a bit curious as to how and where this

>> terminology arose. 'Current Gen' 'Last Gen' and 'Next Gen' is used rather

>> frequently when talking about games in retail, and this is usually what

>> people are thinking - anything older than PS2 can really be considered

>> 'classic' at this point, which effectively limits our realm of thinking.

>

> I'd certainly quote this part of Devin's response - mainly because this is

> truly what occurs for most people, and I've honestly never really heard much

> about "generations" myself - although the "era" thing comes up a lot ("8-bit

> era", etc.). It's generalised to "old consoles" and "tinny music" I think,

> mostly driven by the chiptunes and so forth nowadays.

>


I've usually heard generations, eras, and other formats used
interchangeably.  Generation is pretty well used in the media for
instance.  I certainly agree with what you guys are saying above.



> You are right though, that it's not been defined and that in fact there are

> some good reasons to roughly define things. I certainly still want to push

> on doing some actual history articles with SIG members - and to do so,

> having a baseline of definitions would greatly help any ease-of-ing. Stating

> years is typical but referring to a general era or generation makes sense

> too - sometimes more so since a systems height of power might be different

> to simply it's released dates (for example the PlayStation 2 is still

> selling, but is not at it's peak - but if it was stated it was a main

> console at the moment, it'd be the wrong "generation" and typically not be

> what you'd refer to - although it does still sell of course!).


The problem with going to era though as well is the muddledness of
clear tech based "eras" as the industry moved along.  I.E. the TG16,
the Jaguar, etc. and the almost complete abandonment of that by the
time we hit the Xbox and PS2 and later, in favor of "generation".
That's why I'm of the mindset that any definition we come up with is
going to have to take in to account both "generation" and "era".


>

> So it might be worthwhile to define some general era's or generations -

> using whatever terms are appropriate, since I think in many cases all 5 of

> those points can cover things, and generations/eras obviously overlap, and

> so forth.


That's kind of why I brought it up here, in the hopes we could all
discuss, agree upon, and map out some form of documentation for this
all.


> More complicated to do a

> worldwide perspective for sure - gives people a good general view about what

> was happening at the time, to allow some kind of comparisons, although Devin

> is right that PC and arcade hardware is generally always superior to home

> consoles.

>


A worldwide perspective should be included though.  For instance, when
you take "the rest of the world" in to account, there's a question as
to whether the non-dedicated/cpu based era of consoles starts with the
Fairchild VES or Radofin's 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System.
With the issue of the worldwide, it brings up the question of
definition on era (8-bit) vs. marketing (current "3rd generation"
definition), since technically the technology was out "pre-crash" in
'83 in Japan as the Famicom of course.



> One thing that is harder to track down sometimes is the length of support or

> sales of the device or the games for a certain console, or even worse when

> people actually stopped using the consoles (ie; brought a replacement).


When people stopped using it would be, but save for the more obscure
consoles, actual company support shouldn't be hard.  Most of that was
usually announced.


> Would be nice to have a timeline with all this info, since the bars would

> highly vary in length :)


A timeline of active console support would be a great addition besides
the generation/era/etc. definition. :)

Marty