[game_preservation] Value in archive website?

[Richard Moss]

I'm involved in a similar project called Archive.vg, only it's pitched more
as something "for the people" that academics might benefit from than
explicitly for academics.

We launched a proof-of-concept beta website, API, and app in July last
year, and right now we're prepping a 2.0 release with a completely new
backend and design. Unfortunately most of our data is inaccessible at the
moment (and parts of the website don't work—long story), except perhaps
through the API, but you can get an idea of our scope at this stats
page<http://archive.vg/stats>—100,000+
games, nearly 2 million credits, 300,000+ ROM identifiers, lots of images,
and more. We don't want to host any actual games—only information about and
related to them.

If you want to discuss specifics, it's probably best to hop onto our IRC
channel—irc.freenode.net #archive—and chat to Niemann. He's the founder and
lead developer. I'll quickly run through a few things here, though:

These three blog posts might provide some helpful background and context:
http://archive.vg/blog/8-site-news/35-welcome-to-the-archive
http://archive.vg/blog/8-site-news/42-we-re-now-open-to-the-public
http://archive.vg/blog/8-site-news/99-archive-summer-relaunch-announcement

We're trying to build something akin to an IMDb for games—a one-stop shop
for information about video games; it's kind of like MobyGames and
GameFAQs, but with a design that's inviting and easy to use (this is key to
our vision) and technology that's modern and scalable. We already have a
huge amount of data; moving forward we plan to integrate more types of
information and a system for community contributions whereby there is a
points system and a number of trusted "curators" who are responsible for
ensuring accuracy in their domain—I'm pretty geared in to the history of
Mac gaming, for instance, so I might be put in charge of checking user
contributions in Mac games.

My hope is that on top of these community contributions, we'll be able to
strike partnership deals with groups like World of
Spectrum<http://worldofspectrum.org/>,
Planet Virtual Boy <http://planetvb.com/>, and Lemon
Amiga<http://www.lemonamiga.com/>to ensure highly-accurate and
highly-detailed information related to each
platform.

Anyone can pull information from our servers via an API. You can request a
key by emailing ryan at archive.vg. There's a bunch of stuff using our API at
the moment, mostly in the arena of media centers, emulation, and personal
game libraries. Perhaps the best example is OpenEmu <http://openemu.org/>,
an open-source plugin-based emulator for Mac with a beautiful UI. It's not
released yet, but you can compile it yourself via
github<https://github.com/OpenEmu/OpenEmu>.
As an interesting aside, we're looking at possibly enabling video uploads
directly from OpenEmu in future.

We have an iPhone app <http://archive.vg/mobile>, too, which will hopefully
get a major update and an iPad version later this year.

Our blog (which I run) is dedicated to the history and culture of games. I
try to do as much proper reporting and journalism as I can, but there's
also some more light-hearted criticism/analysis and discussion on there.
For instance, I do a monthly feature highlighting great long-form writing
about games, a series where I pick a random game to play and write about,
news pieces with original research that no one else picks up (like
this one<http://archive.vg/blog/21-news/91-writing-the-manual-on-the-virtual-boy>on
the Virtual Boy Sacred Tech Scroll or
this<http://archive.vg/blog/21-news/101-game-play-lets-you-play-game-boy-on-your-iphone-5-without-jailbreaking>on
a JavaScript Game Boy emulator for iPhone 5), and longer features that
go in-depth on a topic or individual (eg,
this<http://archive.vg/blog/12-feature/80-a-fool-and-his-money-cliff-johnson-s-long-journey-to-develop-a-sequel-to-a-25-year-old-game>,
this<http://archive.vg/blog/12-feature/36-the-perils-challenges-and-uncertainty-of-collecting-and-preserving-video-games>,
and this<http://archive.vg/blog/12-feature/97-the-history-of-thq-through-its-logos-and-branding>
).

We're currently bootstrapping, which means that progress is slow because we
all have day jobs. I'm a freelance writer/journalist, our lead is a high
school teacher and CTO at Tackk <http://tackk.com/>, our designer works for
Twitch.tv, our database guy is in IT management, and so on. There are seven
of us in the core team, plus some helpers. (And we're always eager to talk
to would-be team members, helpers, or investors.)

I'll do my best to answer any questions you might have, but Niemann on the
IRC channel is your best bet for specifics.

Richard


On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:46 AM, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:


>  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 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

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing listgame_preservation at igda.orghttp://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>

>

> --

> Henry Lowood

> Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;

>   Film & Media Collections

> HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall

> Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood

>

>

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>

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