[game_preservation] Game Canon

[Andrew Armstrong]

  Hey all,

Should get back myself to thinking more about games and so forth - 
history wise - since currently all I'm doing it hard labour trying to 
sort parts of the UK's National Museum of Computing.

Recently saw a link to a list of Game Canon - from a book appendix from 
2008 - which reminded me of the SIG's attempt at it - 
http://gameshelf.jmac.org/books/canon.html

Interesting reading; but in any case, should we get that restarted 
again? Or actively work on any projects between ourselves besides what 
small things me and Devin randomly do? It'd be interesting to utilize 
who is here if anyone has any time to put forward; I know we've randomly 
discussed things at GDC (although it seems the notes from 2010 have not 
materialized just yet, although I forgot myself :) ) but it's a bit more 
work to get something done.

In any case, should we start some kind of informal list of game canon 
entries - notably with our own comments on each one - since Canon lists 
like the one above typically have a lot more recent games which do a 
disservice to the pioneers and in fact sometimes is oddly wrong or 
ignorant (even if the actual entries are okay to describe as good game 
examples) - for instance, in that list we've got StarCraft as the 
genre-defining strategic combat game - yet ignoring many previous much 
more important RTS games like Command and Conquer (and Dune) which 
literally defined the genre conventions, including the majority of 
StarCraft's.

Andrew