“Would You Like to Play a Game?”

:: Megan Winget ::University of Texas at Austin

A Review of Challenges and Current Practice in Game-Related Collections

Why Preserve Videogames?

On Average, 9 games were sold every second of every day of

2007

Halo 3Better first day sales than

Spiderman 3 opening weekend…and that’s the best opening weekend… ever…

And beat first day sales of…

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 Testbeds2. Game Performance Archives3. Archives of Documents, source code,

digital assets, ancillary documentation of game development

4. Artifact collections5. Collaborations among Libraries, Archives &

Museums

Videogame Collections

1. Emulation Testbeds2. Game Performance Archives3. Archives of Documents, source code,

digital assets, ancillary documentation of game development

4. Artifact collections5. 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 Wingetmegan@ischool.utexas.edu http://www.preservegames.net/

My WoW avatar, Orlaithe (draenei, mage)