[game_preservation] Game Canon

[Henry Lowood]

Andrew,

Funny you should ask. I just wrote a small section of our project report 
(Preserving Virtual Worlds) about this project.   Yes, the issue on the 
table is how to keep the Canon going.  I do have some interest from a 
community site that I need to follow up on, and I am also going to 
suggest in our report that perhaps Library of Congress could consider a 
connection. They do have an explicit connection to the National Film 
Registry here through their Film Preservation Committee.

All along, the idea was to make this a continuing list of titles (not 
just a single list of 10), with an eye to providing a "canon" for 
preservation and selection activities, much like the film registry 
projects around the world.

Henry

On 8/3/2010 10:34 AM, Andrew Armstrong wrote:

>  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

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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science&  Technology Collections;
   Film&  Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood