July 02, 2009

[Monthly SIG Roundup] July 2009

The SIG will have their first white paper presented at DiGRA, which Dan Pinchbeck is still organising and has posted news on, although I've been too busy to work on anything additional for the SIG and no one has other contributions this month.

Preservation SIG Juny 2009 Work

I've been busy, so apart from some planning haven't got anything to put forward as work. The SIG hasn't got any other ongoing projects right now, but if you are interested, at all, in preservation to help us with our projects (and if you think something is missing, please tell us).

Future Work for July 2009

All our projects need to get going really!

Mailing List Discussions

If you've not joined our mailing list, please do so. We've never tried using our forums it seems :) we stick to old-fangled email. This will eventually change when the IGDA site changes over - although those wanting email can still get it.

June had mainly discussions on the the SIG paper at DiGRA. We'll sort the paper being presented, and I'll be down for the panel in October.

Devin also has kept us updated of some very neat items - the making of Earthworm Jim, 1Up on Michael Jackson, and Unseen 64 Call for Art.

Preservation SIG Blog Updates / Links

Have I missed anything this month? Then email it in to preservation_news @ igda.org !

I'm afraid there's been nothing presented my way, or anything I've seen, to post about regarding the state of game preservation.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully I'll get my spare time sorted to work on some of the projects. I want to try and finish or at least get going one per month. Please, however, if you're interested in helping just put some work into the information on the wiki would really help :)

Andrew Armstrong

IGDA Game Preservation SIG Site/Blog editor

Posted by AndrewArmstrong at 02:46 AM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2009

[Monthly SIG Roundup] June 2009

Not much activity this month from our SIG, although we've discussed the IGDA's own backup situation and that will be investigated in the future.

Preservation SIG May 2009 Work

No work as far as I'm aware this month apart from me working on backend material for the Bibliography project - make sure if you are interested, at all, in preservation to help us with our projects if you're interested (and if you think something is missing, please tell us).

There was however some bits of news and discussion, check it out below.

Future Work for June 2009

I have still got to contact the Japanese collection of material, and projects still need leads and work started on them. I hope that by the end of June, which at least in the UK is around the same time as all the Universities ending the final semester, people will be around with a bit more time :)

Mailing List Discussions

If you've not joined our mailing list, please do so. We've never tried using our forums it seems :) we stick to old-fangled email. This will eventually change when the IGDA site changes over - although those wanting email can still get it.

May had mainly discussions on the IGDA's backup situation. Many of the topics discussed in early may were mentioned in the last newsletter such as Encarta dying. After the update, we have Old printers and trueSpace having stopped support.

There was an interesting discussion touching on aspects of preserving non-physical games - download, MMO and others. A very tough part of the work that is going on.

Finally, there is a discussion on the news that IGN is shutting down their hosting, for all but FilePlanet and IGN.com it appears. We'll obviously see more shortly.

Preservation SIG Blog Updates / Links

Have I missed anything this month? Then email it in to preservation_news @ igda.org !

A few items of news this month:

Final Thoughts

I've got a list of things the length of my arm to follow up, so less time spent writing this the better. Adios!

Andrew Armstrong

IGDA Game Preservation SIG Site/Blog editor

Posted by AndrewArmstrong at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

[Exhibit] Videogame Nation at the Urbis Gallery

I've been last month to the opening of the Videogame Nation exihbit at the Urbis in Manchester, England. I entirely forgot to post the links here, where I intended to - so here it is! The exhibit is the only UK Videogame exhibit which includes anything on the history of videogames - and at that does a very reasonable job at portraying the different UK developers and large variety of games, from the start of videogames to the present day. I do wish it was actually an even bigger exhibit so more could be put into it :)

Posted by AndrewArmstrong at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 31, 2009

IGN Hosted Sites - Classic Gaming/Gamespy Networks Shutting Down

IGN is shutting down the hosting of all their hosted sites on August 31st 2009. Devin brought up the news, the sites affected appear to be all the XXX.gamespy.com sites ("Planet" sites), all the XXX.classicgaming.gamespy.com sites, xxx.ign.com sites ("Vault" sites) and possibly others. FilePlanet and IGN.com remains, and presumably the main Gamespy site and services/branding too.

Rehosting is offered by Konfiskated Technologies Network, although I urge anyone reading this who has access to data that IGN hosts to send it our way so we can preserve it somewhere, and to crawl your sites or the sites you want to save now, download any files, and make backups immediately as well as inform readers that it will disappear for good. A lot of crawling will need to be done since no doubt many of the sites are not maintained often, the Archive Team might be called into action once I have a chance to gather more information on what will be shut down permanently.

Posted by AndrewArmstrong at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2009

[Monthly SIG Roundup] May 2009

In the previous month we're trying to restart some of the projects the SIG wants to run. Hopefully anyone who is interested can get involved!

Preservation SIG April 2009 Work

The projects listed on our front wiki page have been put forward on the mailing list to get volunteers and interested people involved. Sadly, if there is no action on some fronts the projects will indefinitely lie dormant. If you know of anyone outside the SIG who is interested in videogame preservation and can lend a hand, please invite them!

The Memorials project has had a few updates, both to the layout and to the people added to our records. We are looking for biography writers, and also any missing entries, so please email memorials -at- igda -dot- org to suggest anything.

Devin Monnens has also started setting up Facebook and LinkedIn pages/groups, we'll advertise the links once they're up and running :)

Future Work for May 2009

Apart from being late doing the roundup (with a mixture of a server issue for a week at the start of May and me being busy), so actually this is mid-may, there are still things to finish. Among them I intend to finally get the last museum I actively know collecting a major amount of videogame material which is situated in Japan, and then hope to publish the list and start on gathering more detailed information about the museums soon.

The projects also need some active work put into them, but this is up to the individual project leads. I can help organise things, so give me a shout if you're too busy to get specifically started or need some help.

Any unassigned projects also need leads, and all the projects do need more help (since no project has more then one person working on it!). Please see the main page for basic information and the mailing list discussions below:


Mailing List Discussions


If you've not joined our mailing list, please do so. We've never tried using our forums it seems :) we stick to old-fangled email. This will eventually change when the IGDA site changes over - although those wanting email can still get it.

April had discussions on online DRM, Soviet Game Museum, Geocities going under, TV emulation and a massive UK Ebay auction.

SIG stuff - GDC roundtable notes, Bibliography Project, Improving the News area, Facebook / LinkedIn pages, and finally a discussion on Our Membership - importantly on who we want to join up in the future.

Preservation SIG Blog Updates / Links

Have I missed anything this month? Then email it in to preservation_news @ igda.org !

With me working on the Bibliography project, intended to replace the "Linkblog" of old, and the fact this means that there can be automatically generated, cross-referenced and accurately sourced articles and stories means the current blog will only post preservation-related news.

I have, however, fallen behind on this, meaning not much added this month, including internal SIG news. I have no idea what the readership of the blog is like, but I want to improve this over the coming months - by posting SIG project news, and news about emulation, preservation projects and museums, and so forth. I'm going to be visiting the Urbis in Manchester tonight for the opening of a videogame history and play exhibit, which is one of the types of article I hope to link from the blog.

Once the bibliography is up, I'll code up some RSS feed for it, but also make a function to be able to linkdump a ton of interesting entries people enter that are flagged up as good to publish (being relatively new).

Final Thoughts >

With so many recent videogame companies closing their door, it appears history and game preservation isn't really near anyones minds at the moment. It's a tad shameful that the only bits of of 3dRealms own material is being released by people looking for new jobs rather then by the company itself (or letting it be preserved!) - showing they had been working, not just doing nothing on the infamously long Duke Nukem Forever project. This is one of the best reasons to preserve unfinished and incomplete projects, and document the closing of companies in more detail. Maybe in the future we'll be able to provide more direct assistance in doing this across the world!

Andrew Armstrong

IGDA Game Preservation SIG Site/Blog editor

Posted by AndrewArmstrong at 03:27 AM | Comments (0)