[game_preservation] Value in archive website?

[John Andersen]

I agree that the main challenge will be citing sources and making sure all information is valid.  Right now I am working on a Data East preservation project and I am facing some challenges just gathering credit lists for games that either never had credits, or staff that never got credit at all.  I'm working with former designers and programmers and getting credits for all the games they've worked on from all the companies they've worked for.  So I'm relying on their word, and I'll have to credit them once I publish these lists.  Sadly, as many people I'm sure have experienced, there will be people who will not reply to your inquiries, because they left game design and have no intention of going down memory lane for any number of reasons.
One designer gave me the names of all the games he designed at Data East, but refused to name the other games he created after he left Data East.  He claims he can't name them due to copyright, but the other reason might be due to confidentiality.  So, there will be designers who will go completely uncredited.  Even with a game like Burgertime, I've discovered it was never programmed at Data East, but only designed there and the programming was outsourced by another company with different staff.  Then there are the job titles you will have to customize.  There will be many complicated aspects but I also want to see something like this.
- John Andersen
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 13:55:02 +1000
From: richard at archive.vg
To: lowood at stanford.edu; game_preservation at igda.org
CC: wiweeyum at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] Value in archive website?

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—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, Planet Virtual Boy, and Lemon Amiga 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, 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. As an interesting aside, we're looking at possibly enabling video uploads directly from OpenEmu in future.


We have an iPhone app, 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 on the Virtual Boy Sacred Tech Scroll or this on a JavaScript Game Boy emulator for iPhone 5), and longer features that go in-depth on a topic or individual (eg, this, this, and this).


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, 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:
        
          
            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.
            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.
            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, only we'll
              offer tools to the public download the data in raw format.
            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 list
game_preservation at igda.org
http://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 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood

  


_______________________________________________

game_preservation mailing list

game_preservation at igda.org

http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation





_______________________________________________
game_preservation mailing list
game_preservation at igda.org
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20130530/8fb3a020/attachment.htm>