Game Preservation SIG/White Paper/2008 brainstorm/Core Concepts

International Game Developers Association

Core Concepts

Why bother with game preservation? And why should the game industry care about game preservation? What do we mean by "game preservation"? Answers to very basic questions such as these should drive the brainstorming and refinement of the White Paper's core concepts.

A Brainstorm of Core Concepts

• Games should be preserved because they represent an important part of our culture. ZV
• Game preservation encompasses a wide variety of archival activities: preservation of the games themselves, preservation of documentation surrounding the development of games, and preservation of historical narratives told by game developers and game players. ZV
• Game preservation presents a tremendous challenge to archivists in terms of answering questions about intellectual property rights alone. BG
• Clarifying archival, legal and I.P. issues around preservation of game software, assets, and data will benefit game developers, players, artists, and academics in many ways. HEL
• Game preservation is not just about software preservation; it is also about preservation of myriad activities around games, from play itself to social interaction, marketing, political commentary and advertising, to name only a few activities. It is about the entire culture around digital games, not just technology or development although technology and development are critical and core elements. HEL
• The preservation of games and the documentation that supports the games can be used for a variety of academic interests including business, fine arts, advertising and marketing, sociology, creative writing, etc. BG
• Documentation (of all types and formats) arising out of the game development process provides evidence for how the industry works at a specific point in time. ZV
• The most simple concept of archiving anything is: We have no way to know what is historically significant. - Jim Leonard
• History requires context to be relevant. An example: I own the C64/IBM game "Mental Blocks". The item itself has relevance, but takes on a new meaning when you examine how the product was created (see http://trixter.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/the-diskette-that-blew-trixters-mind/ for details on what I mean). - Jim Leonard