[game_preservation] Value in archive website?

[Scott Sheppard]

For several years, I've tossed around the idea of creating a website
platform that blended the benefits of wikipedia style crowdsourcing,
last.fmstyle community interaction/scrobbling, and imdb style credits
and
profiles, for video games.

As my ideas have formalized over the years and I've learned more about the
business side of the industry, it seems more and more plausible as a
beneficial tool for the industry as a whole. I believe that this could also
be beneficial for helping facilitate preservation, though in a not so
direct way. I'm not as familiar with the requirements that are unique to
library standards of data organization, nor am I deeply knowledgeable about
what is considered important to preservation of video games in particular.

So my question then is this, do you feel that such a platform would be a
viable way to collect important aspects of games for preservation? What
would need to be in place so that libraries or other institutions could use
this data to their benefit? Here are the (still rough) mission of the goals
to be achieved with this platform:

   1. *To document and digitally archive as many aspects of the video game
   community and culture throughout history as possible. This includes but is
   not necessarily limited to Games, Credits, Companies, Characters, In-game
   Items, Photos, Videos, Blog Posts, and Real-Time Play Metrics for every
   video game and video game platform that ever was or will be created.*
   2. *All data is collected by the community, employing lessons learned
   from game design as a way to help guide the community's interaction as a
   whole.* -----ie. The overall community goal is collection, with
   algorithms in place to help people understand where to focus their
   attention for the largest community benefit.
   3. *All data entered or collected by the community is 100% open and free
   to duplicate/distribute as a 'cultural work' (ie. wikipedia), so long as it
   does not infringe on the original holder's copyright.* -----This will
   allow libraries/archives, companies, players, developers, analysts,
   scientists, and any other interested parties, to use the data in any way
   they deem important. Akin to the Steam Hardware
Survey<http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/>,
   only we'll offer tools to the public download the data in raw format.
   4. *Present collected data to the public community under the context
   that it is a platform for community interaction and information, with the
   intent of becoming the defacto hub for all things related to digital games.
   * -----The intent is to be an organized location where players,
   developers, and academics alike can link to the original content. Thus not
   competing with existing platforms, simply acting as a hub.


-- 
-Scott

"We build our games like a Japanese garden, where the design is perfect
when you cannot remove anything else."
-Jenova Chen
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