[game_preservation] Extra Punctuation: Keeping Old Games Intact

[Henry Lowood]

This is essentially what the Preserving Virtual Worlds 2 project is 
about -- what are the essential qualities of a game (in 
preservation-speak, "significant properties")  In other words, what 
properties do you monitor to make sure that your preservation and 
curation efforts are successful?   I understand the lamentation in the 
article, but in addition to that sensibility, we need guidelines and 
specifications in order to do the work.  Not Yahtzee's problem, I know, 
but we're working on it!

That said, I dis-agree with Yahtzee on a number of points, mostly when 
he says the problem is a unique aspect of games.  It's most assuredly 
NOT the same experience to run film through your hands and try to catch 
what the movie was about than it was to view the film in a theater. And 
the same for most any other medium.  Of course, you wouldn't jam a 
cassette into your PS3, but you wouldn't stick a VHS tape in your PS3 
either. His basic point still holds, I just think it's stronger if you 
point to this problem as being one shared by a variety of media, rather 
than to think of games as being unique -- for one thing, it generalizes 
the problem in a way that highlights the value of looking at the 
difficult problems around preserving videogames.

Henry




On 8/3/2011 11:59 PM, Mike Melanson wrote:

> Over at The Escapist, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's weekly Extra Punctuation 

> article is "Keeping Old Games Intact":

>

> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/9053-Extra-Punctuation-Keeping-Old-Games-Intact 

>

>

> Yahtzee is a unique writer and it's worth a read. The main thesis is 

> lamenting the constant re-releases of old games along with tech 

> upgrades that mask impurities in the original experiences. E.g.:

>

> "When you preserve a game for history it has to be preserved warts and 

> all, because the warts are just as interesting as the good bits. They 

> create a cultural context and an impression of the time and the 

> attitudes of the people thereof."

>


-- 
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