Game Preservation SIG/SIG Resources/2008 Roundtable

International Game Developers Association

Here are my notes from the Preservation SIG roundtables at GDC. I waited a few days to post this, so attendees who were not already members of the SIG could sign up for this mailing list.

First, these were the best-attended meetings in the four (five?) years’ worth of roundtables that I have attended. I counted 44 people between the two sessions, 41 of whom signed up on the circulated sheets. That’s about twice as many as attended last year. And that’s with a 9am session on Wednesday.

Second, before I get to detailed notes, here right off the bat are the “takeaways” that I noted as forming a todo list for the SIG over the next year. If I have left anything out, please remind me. I am happy to revise the notes before posting to the wiki. I will wait a week or so to give people time to revise, add, etc.

Takeaways

1. An oral history program.
2. Profiles of collectors and/or collector contact information or information for/about collectors made available via the SIG wiki.
3. Facilitate coordination among repositories, e.g., Texas, Stanford, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Strong National Museum of Play (these repositories were represented by attendees at the roundtables).
4. White paper on issues/needs/value of game preservation and history. (Follow up in 2009 with a white paper documenting best practices.) This would begin to address issues of outreach, developer awareness, contact with developers & designers regarding archival materials, etc. (volunteers for this effort: Henry Lowood, Warren Spector, Chris Grant, Steve Meretzky, Frank Cifaldi, Liz Lawley, Jean-Paul Dyson, Don Hopkins -- did I miss anyone?)
5. Volunteer to act as liaison to IGDA Education SIG.

So, the task for the SIG now is to organize these projects and get to work.

Details and discussion topics:

As chair, I opened with a 5-minute introduction, covering two main areas:

1. the SIG’s activities over the last year. These includes the Digital Game Canon event at GDC 2007 and the formation of a group of volunteers who have taken over responsibility for the mailing list and wiki. The wiki has grown quite a bit under the leadership of Andrew Armstrong. Two areas esp. worth mentioning are the pages devoted to documentation of the ten games put forward as the Digital Game Canon (organized by Andrew and Simon Carless) and the new program of memorial pages (organized by Devin Monnens and Andrew).
   The Digital Game Canon will continue as an annual affair, but it was not accepted in 2008 as a GDC program. So we are looking for a new venue (which could be on-line or a RL meeting). Now that GDC has passed, it is time to investigate seriously how we will continue this program. (After the meeting, Chris Grant opened up an interesting possibility of working with Joystiq on this program.)
2. The “Preserving Virtual Worlds” project funded by the U.S. Library of Congress, through NDIIPP’s Preserving Creative America program. Cf. http://www.ndiipp.uiuc.edu/pca/. Handouts about the project were passed around. See the project site for more details.

The first roundtable meeting opened with around-the-table introductions, punctuated by a wide-ranging discussion about what it means for a game to be “preserved.” Topics included emulation, migration, museum exhibitions and the different ways of experiencing a game.

Another topic brought up was the tendency of game developers to use networked technology in ways that make game preservation more difficult, an example being online activation of games (e.g., Bioshock). This topic introduced the theme of how to increase awareness among developers about long-term preservation of digital games and how current practices might interfere with that goal.

The NDIIPP project brings up the issue of how to connect knowledgeable, quick-moving, energetic private collectors/players/fans/designers/hackers who have done so much about game preservation to the large cultural institutions that are beginning to take notice of the need for the long-term “industrial strength” solutions they can provide. How do we put together the strengths of the pt-boats and the battleships? The NDIIPP project offers one avenue for participation; another suggestion was to try to create a network of collectors through the SIG. A wiki page devoted to collectors and possibly to contact information about collectors seems like a good place to start.

In the first roundtable, several people suggested that there is need for more work not just on software preservation, but also on matters such as archival collecting, oral histories, and video documentation of gameplay. There will be a new Virtual World videos collection on the Internet Archive as part of the NDIIPP effort. In the second roundtable on Thursday, more meat was put on the bones of a possible oral history project or set of projects that the SIG could facilitate. Some of the ideas proposed:

1. Coordinate or survey current oral history or interview efforts and survey existing collections (probably something for the wiki).
2. Share information about interviewing techniques and perhaps develop a list of common questions. (wiki?)
3. Coordinate a program of oral histories under the umbrella of the SIG -- get names of volunteers who would carry out interviews? Find repositories for the raw interviews (Stanford, Texas, and WPI have all done some work in this area – maybe put copies in all three repositories) and a host for streamed content and transcripts (cf. Stanford’s Silicon Genesis site for a model – http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu). Make sure the three dominant ways of accessing oral histories are addressed: (1) watching an entire interview; (2) reading a transcript; (3) searching for interviews relevant for a particular topic, person, company, etc.
4. Should we put together a small project group to get this going?
5. Modest funding might be needed to help with costs associated with interviews, hosting, creation of metadata. (Henry can provide estimates based on Silicon Genesis.) Hal Barwood suggested contacting Bob Bates at IGDA Central about this project.

Besides fleshing out the oral history discussion and repeating some of the conversation topics from the first roundtable, the second roundtable added the following topics to the mix:

1. Should the SIG establish a liaison to the Education SIG? This would connect the educational use of game collections to the educators likely to use these materials. We need a volunteer for this role?
2. Coordination of archival collecting efforts by cultural repositories (libraries, museums, etc.) would be a good idea. How can the SIG facilitate this? Would a regional approach work? It would be good to convene a group of curators and others who would like to develop this idea.
3. Several participants commented on the different kinds of collections that are needed: game software and hardware, contextual material (e.g., archives and oral histories) and material about player behavior (videos, data, etc.).
4. How do we get developers to contribute materials to collections (in all of the above categories)? This question led to the takeaway of preparing a white paper in 2008 that addresses the needs and value of game preservation – to the industry, in particular, but also to academics, players, and others. A group of about 8 people volunteered to participate in organizing and writing this white paper. We would then consider putting together a second white paper in 2009 to document best practices – this would tie in nicely with the scheduled completion of the NDIIPP project at the end of 2009.

A good time was had by all. My sense is that by the end of the second roundtable, we had a good sense of shared community and some projects we can work on over the next year. See you at the 2009 roundtable!