Transcoding Authenticity: Preserving Unreleased Gaming Software Outside of Memory Institutions (original) (raw)
Related papers
2008
This paper reviews the major methods and theories regarding the preservation of new media artifacts such as videogames, and argues for the importance of collecting and coming to a better understanding of videogame "artifacts of creation," which will help build a more detailed understanding of the essential qualities of these culturally significant artifacts. We will also review the major videogame collections in the United States, Europe and Japan to give an idea of the current state of videogame archives, and argue for a fuller, more comprehensive coverage of these materials in institutional repositories.
Video game preservation in the UK: a survey of records management practices
Video games are a cultural phenomenon; a medium like no other that has become one of the largest entertainment sectors in the world. While the UK boasts an enviable games development heritage, it risks losing a major part of its cultural output through an inability to preserve the games that are created by the country’s independent games developers. The issues go deeper than bit rot and other problems that affect all digital media; loss of context, copyright and legal issues, and the throwaway culture of the ‘next’ game all hinder the ability of fans and academics to preserve video games and make them accessible in the future. This study looked at the current attitudes towards preservation in the UK’s independent (‘indie’) video games industry by examining current record-keeping practices and analysing the views of games developers. The results show that there is an interest in preserving games, and possibly a desire to do so, but issues of piracy and cost prevent the industry from undertaking preservation work internally, and from allowing others to assume such responsibility. The recommendation made by this paper is not simply for preservation professionals and enthusiasts to collaborate with the industry, but to do so by advocating the commercial benefits that preservation may offer to the industry.
Keeping the Game Alive: Evaluating Strategies for the Preservation of Console Video Games
International Journal of Digital Curation, 2010
Interactive fiction and video games are part of our cultural heritage. As original systems cease to work because of hardware and media failures, methods to preserve obsolete video games for future generations have to be developed. The public interest in early video games is high, as exhibitions, regular magazines on the topic and newspaper articles demonstrate. Moreover, games considered to be classic are rereleased for new generations of gaming hardware. However, with the rapid development of new computer systems, the way games look and are played changes constantly. When trying to preserve console video games one faces problems of classified development documentation, legal aspects and extracting the contents from original media like cartridges with special hardware. Furthermore, special controllers and non-digital items are used to extend the gaming experience making it difficult to preserve the look and feel of console video games. This paper discusses strategies for the digital preservation of console video games. After a short overview of console video game systems, there follows an introduction to digital preservation and related work in common strategies for digital preservation and preserving interactive art. Then different preservation strategies are described with a specific focus on emulation. Finally a case study on console video game preservation is shown which uses the Planets preservation planning approach for evaluating preservation strategies in a documented decision-making process. Experiments are carried out to compare different emulators as well as other approaches, first for a single console video game system, then for different console systems of the same era and finally for systems of all eras. Comparison and discussion of results show that, while emulation works very well in principle for early console video games, various problems exist for the general use as a digital preservation alternative. We show what future work has to be done to tackle these problems. 1 1 This article is based on the paper given by the authors at iPRES 2008;
Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper
Over the last four decades, electronic games have profoundly changed the way people play, learn, and connect with each other. Despite the tremendous impact of electronic games, however, until recently, relatively few programs existed to preserve them for future generations of players and researchers. Recognizing the need to save the original content and intellectual property of electronic games from media rot, obsolescence, and loss, the Game Preservation Special Interest Group of the International Game Developers Association has issued a white paper summarizing why electronic games should be preserved, problems that must be solved to do so, some potential solutions, and why all these issues should matter to everyone interested in electronic games and play in general. In the white paper, the editing of which was partially supported by the Preserving Virtual Worlds project and by funds from the Library of Congress, its editor and six authors (Rachel Donahue created a survey for IGDA members not included in this article) issue a call for heightened awareness of the need to preserve electronic games-endangered by relatively rapid electronic decay and intellectual neglect alike-for play scholarship and for the culture of the twenty-first century.
Evaluating strategies for the preservation of console video games
Proceedings of the Fifth …, 2008
The amount of content from digital origin permanently increases. The short lifespan of digital media makes it necessary to develop strategies to preserve its content for future use. Not only electronic documents, pictures and movies have to be preserved, also interactive content like digital art or video games have to be kept "alive" for future generations. In this paper we discuss strategies for the digital preservation of console video games. We look into challenges like proprietary hardware and unavailable documentation as well as the big variety of media and non-standard controllers. Then a case study on console video game preservation is shown utilizing the PLANETS preservation planning approach for evaluating preservation strategies in a documented decisionmaking process. While previous case studies concentrated on migration, we compared emulation and migration using a requirements tree. Experiments were carried out to compare different emulators as well as other approaches first for a single console video game system, then for different console systems of the same era and finally for systems of all eras. Comparison and discussion of results show that, while emulation works in principle very well for early console video games, various problems exist for the general use as a digital preservation alternative. It also shows that the PLANETS preservation planning workflow can be used for both emulation and migration in the same planning process and that the selection of suitable sample records is crucial.
Make Videogames History: Game preservation and The National Videogame Archive
This paper introduces and describes the UK-based National Videogame Archive, detailing the process leading to its creation and the core methodologies and aspirations of the project. It places the work of the NVA within the wider contexts of preservation, player culture and academia and describes initial projects undertaken by the NVA to supplement core preservation activities.
Sustaining Software Preservation Efforts Through Use and Communities of Practice
Int. J. Digit. Curation, 2020
The brief history of software preservation efforts illustrates one phenomenon repeatedly: not unlike spinning a plate on a broomstick, it is easy to get things going, but difficult to keep them stable and moving. Within the context of video games and other forms of cultural heritage (where most software preservation efforts have lately been focused), this challenge has several characteristic expressions, some technical (e.g., the difficulty of capturing and emulating protected binary files and proprietary hardware), and some legal (e.g., providing archive users with access to preserved games in the face of variously threatening end user licence agreements). In other contexts, such as the preservation of research-oriented software, there can be additional challenges, including insufficient awareness and training on unusual (or even unique) software and hardware systems, as well as a general lack of incentive for preserving “old data.” We believe that in both contexts, there is a rela...
Computer Game Archiving and the Serious Work of Silliness
As part of our scholarly work, we co-direct the Learning Games Initiative (LGI), a transdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group we founded in 1999 that studies, teaches with, and builds computer games. LGI maintains one of the largest working archives of computer game hardware, software, and related materials in the Americas. The LGI Research Archive (LGIRA) was the founding project of LGI, and was initially a small collection of games housed in a small space in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. Today, it spans a variety of locations and contains hundreds of game systems and peripherals, thousands of games, and numerous paratexts (e.g., scholarly and trade publications, paraphernalia, promotional materials, and so forth), all of which are available for academic use and study. It is a unique resource for animation scholars (and indeed anyone) interested computer games and their cultures.
Much digital preservation research has evolved around the idea of authentic digital objects and their significant properties. However, the nature of digital preservation work continues to be ill-defined. This paper unpacks definitions of digital objects and their significant properties to deconstruct misleading conflations. I review how the use of the terms digital object and significant properties has evolved in digital preservation, and I identify conceptual inconsistencies. By critiquing the system boundaries assigned by different writers to the term digital objects, I explore the metaphorical nature of the concept and show that the discourse routinely ignores the role of computation in favour of artifact-centred concepts of bits and records. As a consequence, I illustrate category errors around what it means to migrate and preserve digital objects. I suggest a reformulation of both terms based on their metaphorical nature and discuss how this reformu-lation aligns with insights from research on electronic records and digital preservation. The discussion shows that digital objects are best understood as a meta-phorical concept that allows us to articulate the emergent properties of computed performances relying on data, software, and hardware. Significant properties are best understood as mechanisms that allow curators to specify shared under-standings of what constitutes authentic reproductions of digital objects. At the core of digital preservation is the design of software-based information systems intended to reproduce authentic digital objects. The article thus contributes to a reframing of the nature of digital preservation and emphasizes the importance of the conceptual frame of computing and systems design in archival education and practice.