“Would You Like to Play a Game?”
A Review of Challenges and Current Practice in
Game-Related Collections
:: Megan Winget ::
University of Texas at Austin
Why Preserve Videogames?
On Average, Halo
9 games
3 were sold
every
second
of day
every
day
of
And beat
Better
first
first
day
sales
sales
of…
than
Spiderman 32007
opening weekend
…and that’s the best opening weekend… ever…
What are Games?
What are Games?
• Highly Diverse…
–
–
–
–
Formats
Platforms
Game Types
Player Types
Digital Preservation General
Strategies
::: “The Viewing Problem”
:: Migration
:: Emulation
::: Documentation (Metadata)
Migration
• “Migrating” from one format to another
– Allows for consolidation, easier management
– Problems: Ignoring that it’s expensive, time-consuming
and inelegant; Migration also creates more problems than
it solves, particularly when we’re talking about cultural
objects
• Complexity: Data-centric administrative programs are simple
compared with multimedia or graphics applications
• Format: intrinsically important to a work’s meaning
• And Anyway: Videogames have no standard formats or systems
to migrate to
Emulation
• Develop systems that mimic the application
software used to create the original
– File Format (an enormous undertaking)
– Hardware: by writing just a few hardware emulators we
could “run dozens of operating systems, thousands of
applications, millions of documents.” (Rothenberg, 1999)
• Problems
– Focus on stand-alone applications rather than networks
– Disruption of some important formal elements
Documentation
• There are no descriptive standards for video games
• Currently, Rhizome (new media art) uses:
– Modified Dublin Core Schema to capture information
about the object and its underlying code
– Artist Questionnaire
• Technical profile
• Artist Intent
– Capturing basic information about the object itself
Digital Preservation Challenges
Specific to Games
• Variability of game code (game mods)
• The concept of the “Authentic
Experience”
• Games as performance
Preservation Challenges:
Game “Mods”
Preservation Challenges:
Games as Performance
• Interactivity > Actions > Player
Performance
– Mastery of Technology
– Success in the Game
– Public Exhibition
• Game as Performance Platform
Need for Documentation Strategies
Preservation Challenges:
Idea of “Authentic Experience”
Videogame Collections
1. Emulation Testbeds
2. Game Performance Archives
3. Archives of Documents, source code,
digital assets, ancillary documentation of
game development
4. Artifact collections
5. Collaborations among Libraries, Archives
& Museums
Videogame Collections
1. Emulation Testbeds
2. Game Performance Archives
3. Archives of Documents, source code,
digital assets, ancillary documentation of
game development
4. Artifact collections
5. Collaborations among Libraries, Archives
& Museums
Archival Materials
Project Overview
• Systematic exploration of the creative
behaviors and methods of artists,
designers, and developers who work in the
video game industry.
– Ethnographic research project focused on
supporting the collection and preservation of
massively multiplayer online (MMO) games.
Project Goals
• The primary goal of this research project is
to come to a better understanding of the
video game industry's creation methods,
behaviors, and attitudes for the purpose of
building more meaningful models of
preservation and collection of these
materials.
Project Process
• The process of this project will be twofold:
1) to examine the creation methods and behaviors of
video game developers, designers, and artists
through in-depth interviews and work
observation; and
2) to create in-depth inventory lists of their artifacts
of creation - the digital or physical doodles or
sketches, manifestos or proposals, early versions
of a work, or even 3-D models or visualizations of
an environment.
Project Output
• Digital audio interviews
• Transcripts
• Case study reports of the interviews at the
studio and individual level
• Observation transcripts, and inventory lists of
creation artifacts
… will be made freely available on the
Internet, through the Video Game Archive,
housed at the Center for American History at
the University of Texas at Austin.
What We Have Been Doing So Far
•
•
•
•
•
Making Lists (People, Companies, Games)
Contacting Industry People
Conducting Interviews (3 so far)
Playing Games – writing technical reviews
Assessing issues in published interviews with game
developers (developing content analysis themes)
• Delicious bookmarks:
http://delicious.com/winget/gamepreservation
• Blog linked from project site:
http://www.preservegames.net
Issues & Implications:
Models of Collection & Representation
• Differs from Traditional Print or Museum
Culture
– Impermanence
– Flexibility of Use / Interaction
– Multimedia
• Since the 1980s field has been calling for
convergence between Libraries, Museums &
Archives (ArchLiBreum?)
• “Cabinet of Curiosities” approach tuned to
subject matter rather than to format.
Happening on the individual level, but not at
institutions…
Future Work
• Complex Authorship
– Need a formal model of new media authorship
– Hundreds of people contribute to “final product”
– Role of the player in creation = ambiguous
• Multiple Versions of Collections
– “Authentic” version / “player” version
• Representation of Complex, Networked Digital Objects
– Made up of many pieces
– Must include contextual information
– Creation of robust digital repositories
Thanks!
• Comments?
• Questions?
Megan Winget
megan@ischool.utexas.edu
http://www.preservegames.net/
My WoW avatar, Orlaithe (draenei, mage)