Comments on: My personal plea to those in the game industry

By: cary

cary — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 13:13:57 +0000

You’re right about that. While there are archives and archivists who specialize in preserving media (film, photos, negatives), many places with old media in their collections have no idea how to deal with that kind of stuff. In that case, all you can do is try to keep things environmentally sound and hope for the best.

On a positive note, there are several museums (In America, and maybe in Europe) that now actively collect and preserve video game technology — games, consoles, printed matter, and such. But I don’t know how many of those places are investing in also collecting the paper and digital records of game creators and companies. As you said, that’s the stuff that future historians are going to want to look at. There’s only so much information one can gather from just playing through an old game or flipping through a manual.

By: Astro Adam

Astro Adam — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:19:05 +0000

As someone who completed a degree in history, I think this is wise advice for the industry. There are so many electronic forms of communication these days that can be easily deleted and lost forever. What sources,then, is the historian to use?

Also, I believe the film industry may have a problem with older formats. As that industry moves completely to digital movies, what happens to the old film canisters? Imagine losing silver screen classics. Video game makers could learn a lesson from the film industry.

By: cary

cary — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 14:31:35 +0000

One of the questions I get asked most often as work is “do you throw things away?” The answer boils down to “not regularly, bu it depends.” It makes sense in a technical environment such as yours that record-keeping would be a big deal, and I can imagine that you wouldn’t want to make a habit of discarding things willy-nilly. One of my main jobs is to make sense of collections of records, so it’s a huge plus when a collection turns out to be more organized than less. Less work for me!

The question of digital records is a big one for museums, archives, and libraries right now. There’s tons of variables to consider, from organization to accessibility. Unfortunately, there aren’t any perfect solutions our there…yet.

By: cary

cary — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 14:19:08 +0000

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it? Now, I’m not saying that we should all become packrats just for the sake of saving things that *might* become valuable — let’s face it, human beings create a lot of useless, worthless stuff. But when you’re in a position of making things that benefit the general populace in some way — whether it’s recording the first ever Super Bowl or creating the first ever video game — it’s worth taking a moment to think about the life of that object, paper, or thing beyond it’s immediate future.

Did they ever locate that recording?

By: fminuzzi

fminuzzi — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:08:15 +0000

Thanks for the reblog, I hadn’t read this the first time around. I used to work in a lab, and one of the first things I was taught was not to throw anything away – how are you going to know the exact details of that experiment you carried out years ago if you didn’t write it down and keep it organized? It’s a bit harder for games, I don’t have a daily lab book (so things are often in random notepad documents, for example), but I try to keep it all in one place, at least. And everything being digital helps.

By: Rampant Monetization to a Modern Gamer | Murf Versus

Rampant Monetization to a Modern Gamer | Murf Versus — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 21:45:30 +0000

[…] United We Game: My personal plea to those in the game industry. […]

By: gamesthatiplay

gamesthatiplay — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:38:56 +0000

That picture alone brought out great nostalgia in me enough to read through everything :-) I remember when the NFL was trying to find a recording of the first Super Bowl, because someone at the network either taped over the master copy or threw it out thinking it wouldn’t be a thing. It’ll never be famous.

By: cary

cary — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:56:33 +0000

Reblogged this on Recollections of Play and commented:

I write...a lot...and it's only natural that some writings, over time, become less memorable than others. But this article I wrote for United We Game, though nearly two years old, still lives fresh in mind, because the issue of lost records is something I face nearly every day in my work. I believe that the game industry is producing some of the most fascinating technology-related records of today's society, and it'd be a shame to lose all that valuable work that could inform and lead future developers to either a shredder or a "delete" button. Therefore, my plea to the industry remains strong: Save your records!

By: simpleek

simpleek — Sat, 11 May 2013 13:14:53 +0000

That sounds familiar. I think that may be the same one!

By: cary

cary — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:11:59 +0000

I've said it before, but I really am in awe of folks who have been able to successfully amass their own collections of games, games consoles, etc. And it's certainly true that collectors, both casual and hardcore, prefer to disks to downloads, but it;ll be interesting to see how this trend pans out as the "all-digital" future looks more and more likely. Thos video game objects could become priceless! (Which is why I'm happy to see museums are finally catching on to this. Though I do hate to see games behind glass, living out their lives as objects to behold rather than play.) I'm totally drawn to articles about gaming history (Playing the Canon does this really well.) As I replied to Space Giraffe's comment, it'd be fascinating to be able to explore it more in depth. Maybe someday. For now, I'm thrilled to see that video game history is really becoming a thing to study, and I hope that the industry is taking notice as well.