[game_preservation] Game Database question
Billy Cain
billyjoecain at gmail.com
Sun Mar 14 22:39:46 EDT 2010
One more thought occurred to me: games released in Germany can't (or
at least couldn't) have red blood in them.
Is that a variant people would be interested in?
Re: collections of games - EA used to do multiple game titles in one
box. Sometimes with one copy of each game on a single disc and
sometimes in other ways. There are many variations on this. For
example, other countries have region encoding, multi-languages,
packaging variations, in-box prizes that differ from the originals,
etc.
The variations seem endless to me, and I have been a collector of a
lot of odd stuff for a long time.
I have donated a lot of my Origin stuff to Joe Garrity of the Origin
Museum, my Wing Commander stuff to the Wing Comander CIC, and I am
preparing to donate a large video game collection to the University of
Texas' Video Game Archive. I believe in what you ALL are doing - it's
vital.
Keep up the great work, all of you! I'll go back to lurking again
until I believe I have something worth saying. :)
Billy
On 3/14/10, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:
> All,
>
> Lots of interesting points here. I'm going to just make some quick
> comments and notes:
>
> 1. The issue of standards did come up at the Roundtable as a desired
> area to work on as a group. It's not really possible to go into depth
> at the Roundtable, but now that the issue is on the table, we can think
> about how to organize our efforts.
>
> 2. In formulating standards, libraries should be involved, and indeed
> the Preserving Virtual Worlds devoted some time to discussion of this
> topic at our recent close-out meeting. If a second phase is funded, we
> will devote some attention to this issue. We also talked about
> available databases and how to involve them, e.g. Mobygames. Jim, would
> you or someone else in the Mobygames group be interested in becoming
> part of the conversation in our project group? Jan, how about you?
> Anybody else working in this area that we should include?
>
> 3. Much of the discussion here about versions might benefit from a peak
> at what book cataloging. Not so much the standard AACR2 rules, but
> analytical bibliography. I'm thinking of Philip Gaskell's /New
> Introduction to Bibliography /as a good example of how deep descriptive
> bibliography works. Note that many of the issues around variants,
> pirated editions, etc., also come up in the rare book world.
>
> 4. I haven't read all the posts, so forgive me if I am making a dopey
> comment here: In the discussion about "versions" so far, I missed a
> treatment of what are most commonly called versions, that is, patches.
> This is a growing issue, esp. with respect to on-line games that are
> frequently patched. It used to be mostly a PC games issue, but not
> anymore.
>
> Those are just my quick thoughts for now. My main point is that if
> there is sufficient interest in a focused effort here, let's get a
> working group together and team up with Preserving Virtual Worlds
> folks. I'm happy to be a go-between, esp. since I have a foot in both
> worlds.
>
> Henry
>
> Devin Monnens wrote:
>> Let me begin by emphasizing something that I think should have been
>> emphasized at the roundtable more: we need to work on standards that
>> all libraries and archives can agree on.
>>
>> For cataloging, I would go back to 'what is the minimum amount of data
>> required to indicate how the game is identified'? Beyond this, we
>> would want to know 'what does it take to run this game as intended?'
>>
>> Jim makes a couple good points here as well.
>>
>> First, how different do two copies of a game have to be for them to be
>> considered different games? Golden Axe on HG101 is a good example of a
>> comparison. I don't know where I'd even begin here.
>>
>> http://hg101.kontek.net/goldenaxe/goldenaxe.htm
>>
>> An easier example. In the NES and Famicom versions of Castlevania 3,
>> you have graphical changes like the vampire frogs (!) replaced with
>> hunchbacks. The game functions identically despite this graphical
>> change, but it could be argued there is a different interpretation if
>> there are hunchbacks. However, the handshake switch does change some
>> meaning in the game (Trevor is righty or lefty/he is shaking Sypha's
>> hand or holding it delicately). On a more dramatic level, the music is
>> superior in the Famicom version, so this is a something notable that
>> could affect a player's perception (better music makes players think
>> the game is better). However, there is also a rule change where the
>> damage taken is different - in the US version, damage is based on game
>> level while in the Famicom, it is based on what kind of enemy hits you
>> (which makes later stages easier). I'm not sure I would consider these
>> big enough differences though to warrant calling it a different game,
>> more like different version numbers. With the Golden Axe examples, I
>> think there's greater leeway in calling a port a different game. There
>> simply isn't an analogue to this in film or novels because the content
>> doesn't really change if it's on vhs or dvd or in times new roman
>> versus arial.
>>
>> http://www.castlevaniadungeon.net/Games/cv3foreign.html
>>
>> The second I think is this dismissal of piracy categories, and here I
>> think there needs some clarification. Game lists such as 'Goodtools'
>> can be very useful in documenting changes between two games. However,
>> these are not currently tied to metadata so we don't know exactly what
>> changes were made or where each version came from (usually). I
>> wouldn't completely dismiss this resource as a byte-to-byte comparison
>> of the games can indicate if there is a difference in two games for
>> the same platform.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org
>> <mailto:trixter at oldskool.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On 3/14/2010 3:55 PM, Jan Baart wrote:
>>
>> Mobygames basically ignores the concept of
>> game versions and just throws it all into one kettle.
>>
>>
>> Considering I designed MobyGames to do exactly the opposite, I'm
>> curious what you mean. The main screens certainly try to
>> summarize all platforms so that comparisons can be made at a
>> glance, but the specific information is under the hood and is
>> accessible. Are you talking about different platforms for the
>> same game? (For example, Jones in the Fast Lane has a DOS version
>> as well as a Windows 3.x version, and each are listed as a
>> platform) Or do you mean different releases of the same game? If
>> the latter, then different revisions of a game can be noted along
>> with their version, date, and comments (see
>>
>> http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/kings-quest-v-absence-makes-the-heart-go-yonder/release-info
>> for an example)
>>
>> As for your differentiation between EGA vs. VGA as a "release",
>> both were included in the packaging (see
>>
>> http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/kings-quest-v-absence-makes-the-heart-go-yonder/cover-art/gameCoverId,43069/
>> ) so I'm not sure why those should be categorized as different
>> releases.
>>
>> One of the problems I saw in the late 1990s was that game listings
>> were dominated more by pirate group releases and not actual proper
>> publisher releases. As less and less people have access to the
>> original as years go by, this only gets worse. Both of your
>> examples point to a pirate-centric view. I'm not calling you a
>> pirate, btw -- *I* was certainly a raging pirate in the 1980s, I
>> ran the first abandonware site sent a cease and desist letter by
>> the (then) IDSA, and I still crack and release stuff I can get my
>> hands on today that doesn't seem to have made it into the wild.
>> But despite my love of reverse-engineering and my desire to
>> preserve history, categorizing games based on what pirate groups
>> distributed doesn't seem very sound.
>>
>>
>> What I'm basically wondering is this. Do you guys think of
>> these as
>> different games or just versions of games? After all, as food for
>> thought, these often differ more than ports from one system to
>> another
>> and such ports always get separate entries in game databases.
>>
>>
>> I'll illustrate my beliefs with the most difficult example I can
>> think of: Jones in the Fast Lane. That game had two package
>> releases:
>>
>> - DOS, floppy, 3.5" and 5.25", EGA and VGA
>> - CDROM talkie edition with Windows 3.1 and DOS binaries
>>
>> I would call these two different platforms, with two "versions"
>> per platform. That's not 100% accurate since the DOS and Windows
>> CDROM edition are in the same package, but it's close enough for
>> the purposes of our discussion.
>>
>> A different example is comparing Heart of China to King's Quest V.
>> Heart of China was published in two separate packages, one EGA/CGA
>> and another VGA. KQV was a single package with both sets of
>> disks. So I would say that Heart of China is two different
>> (publisher) releases, while KQV is one release despite having two
>> sets of disks in it.
>>
>> The bigger problem you pose is: How different does a game have to
>> get on different platforms before it's not the same game? When we
>> built MobyGames' platform support, we made sure to make things
>> easily comparable, because I find it historically fascinating to
>> see how a game was re-implemented on various platforms. Take
>> Elite as an example, and poke through
>> http://www.mobygames.com/game/elite/screenshots for some
>> interesting comparisons. It's interesting to see how it was
>> altered for the limitations of the platform it was destined for
>> (apple II has wireframe only, etc.) but it's obvious it's the same
>> game.
>>
>> Now, take "Tomb Raider" for the Gameboy:
>>
>> http://www.mobygames.com/game/gameboy-color/tomb-raider_/screenshots/gameShotId,256516/
>> Despite the common name and character art, it is clearly not a
>> port of the original; it is more inspired by it. So it shouldn't
>> be included with the main, consolidated entry, and it isn't.
>>
>> The Elite example illustrates why MobyGames needs more volunteers
>> -- the original Elite was for the BBC Micro which, despite the
>> many platforms that *are* listed, isn't yet a supported platform
>> in MobyGames.
>> --
>> Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org <mailto:trixter at oldskool.org>)
>> http://www.oldskool.org/
>> Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
>> Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
>> A child borne of the home computer wars:
>> http://trixter.wordpress.com/
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Devin Monnens
>> www.deserthat.com <http://www.deserthat.com>
>>
>> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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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 USA
> http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
> lowood at stanford.edu; 650-723-4602
>
>
--
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Billy Cain
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