Video Games Archive Project
From CIRCA
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Context
Digital games (aka computer or video games) are currently ayoung medium. New also are developments in the areas ofpreservation, documentation/archiving, and exhibition of video gamehistory. Beginning in September 2012 the GRAND research group atthe University of Alberta has been exploring the practice ofdocumenting and archiving games. Here are some key aspects of thevideo games archive project to date:
- We were given access to a physical collection, currently being stored on campus, of about 1000 items of physical copies of games, boxes, manuals, and so forth from the personal collection of a private individual.
- We conducted an 'environmental scan' of existing
preservation efforts to identify best practices and a find niche
where we could contribute - the major developments in the
preservation scene thus far fall into three categories:
- Museum exhibits of games
- Projects such as Preserving Virtual Worlds have
- The "crowdsourcing" style of preservation, that is,the creation of community websites with databases of publicationinfo, game-related art (digitized box covers, manuals, videos ofgame-play) is quite extensive to the point where it is possible tofind at least some information about any published game.
We noted that a further issue beyond compiling information about
games is the need to preserve the functionality of games as
'playable' artifacts - the latter is a complex and involved
task recently being undertaken by
- We recognized that the unique value of a particular physicalcollection of game paraphernalia is its localized and personalhistory, not simply gathering published items that in some casesmay the only of their kind still in existence.
- We interviewed
- One of our critical findings regarding the preservation of gaming materials is that
preservation of a game itself is insufficient; we need to also preserve the information thatcontextualizes the game and helps researchers achieve a more complete understanding of thegame???s significance and use.
complexity involved in preserving video games
Video games are a medium interdisciplinary in scope, synthesizing all forms of art and craft (material, procedural, and digitized) into artifacts that can be viewed and 'played' on a particular hardware 'platform.' The core distinguishing feature of games is their procedural interactivity
