[game_preservation] Value in archive website?

[Henry Lowood]

Scott,
 From an institutional point-of-view, the main issue with any project 
focused on preservation (besides what it actually contributes) is 
sustainability.  Another issue if there is interest in working with and 
contributing to the work of institutional repositories is 
interoperability - particularly with emerging metadata schemes.
Henry

On 5/29/2013 9:55 AM, Scott Sheppard wrote:

> For several years, I've tossed around the idea of creating a website 

> platform that blended the benefits of wikipedia style crowdsourcing, 

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

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