Enrolling Heterogeneous Partners in Video Game Preservation

Abstract

This article extends previous work known as Preserving Virtual Worlds II (PVWII), funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The author draws on interview data collected from video game developers, content analysis of several long-running video game series, as well as the project’s advisory board and researcher reports. This paper exposes two fundamental challenges in creating metrics and specifications for the preservation of virtual worlds; namely, that there is no one type of user or designated video game stakeholder community, and that significant properties of games cannot always be located in code or platform. The PVWII data serve to explain why existing ideas about preservation of video games are inadequate when games are treated as digital cultural heritage. Preservation specialists need to bind nebulous and dynamic digital objects, a process that is necessary while inherently artificial.

Preserving Software: Motivations, Challenges and Approaches

“…These properties might include details of the software stack needed to be able to run it; bibliographic information and persistent identification for citation; key descriptive information about algorithms or languages employed. (Bettivia 2016;Katz et al, 2019;McDonough 2010;Smith et al, 2016) As yet, there is no single ontology or metadata vocabulary for software description, or indeed agreed-upon taxonomies for these and other possible sets of criteria.…”

“…There are many possible candidates for the contextual material and information we should collect with the software, including material aspects (such as distribution media); user guides; reference manuals; postings to old listservs and electronic boards; and original hardware on which the software ran. Possible approaches to preserving context include documenting what a running program 'looks like,' using screen shots, videos, or automated session recorders, and noting what the operation of the program 'takes for granted' -including gestures such as swiping, or the use of auxiliary devices such as keyboards and mice (Bettivia 2016;Cranmer 2017;Depocas et al, 2003;Newman 2011).…”

Metadata and video games emulation: an effective bond to achieve authentic preservation?

“…Significant values can be assigned within a predefined environment (when e.g. a preservation strategy has already planned by a community), but essential values make sense when it is necessary to outline the boundaries mentioned by Bettivia (2016).…”

“…However, not every evaluable characteristic must be associated with the actual look and feel of a performance. Even ephemera like manuals can be assessed as significant properties (Bettivia, 2016), particularly if they can help users to proceed in the game or perform unusual actions. Significance is, therefore, the result of both tangible and abstract elements revolving around a wide horizon of meaning.…”

Cyber-ludic pedagogies: towards a post-critical methodology of video games as cultural sites

“…Digital games drove the development of the technologies supporting them in universities across the Western world (Jerz, 2007;Donovan, 2010). Finally, they also include the relationship between early video game companies and the educational software market, which gave rise to the genre of 'edutainment' games, exemplified by titles like the Carmen Sandiego and Oregon trail franchises in the 1980s (Kinder, 1996;McDonough et al, 2010;Bettivia, 2016).…”