Edoc.hu-berlin.de/humboldt-vl/ernst-wolfgang-2003-10-21/PDF/Ernst.pdf. Www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub103/pub103.pdf. Game archiving faces challenges as technology evolves, digital-only media prevails, say experts. Preserving video games presents an unique challenge: while physical products deteriorate over time, newer games are increasingly made digital-only and technology rapidly evolves, how do we archive them? Speaking at the 2013 Game Developers Conference today, a panel of industry personnel, professors and museum curators spoke about these challenges.
The panelists discussed what is currently being done to archive games and what can be done in the future to successfully preserve them. Indie developer Loot Drop's CEO John Romero said we need to archive the creative process, citing older games including Chrono Trigger and early Final Fantasy titles as products the industry has been unable to replicate in past years.
Recording interviews with developers and discussions on their work is key to leaving behind information for future developers to work with. "What happens when you don't have a physical product anymore? What happens when everything is born digital? " Saving the game: Why preserving video games is illegal. I’m part of the Sonic the Hedgehog generation. I grew up spending a lot of rainy afternoons playing games on a Sega console with my older brother, who only allowed me to play Sonic’s little sidekick Tails the Fox and of course beat me every single time. I also spent hours on end reading through my vast book collection, but it’s fair to say that I’m part of the first generation that video games influenced just as much as literature. Now in 2012 and looking back over the past three decades of gaming, there is no doubt that video games have established themselves as part of our cultural heritage.
One form of proof is that museums have started to present video games as such: an artform, a part of our culture, something we have to preserve. But preserving is in this case a challenging task. Unlike preserving a canvas, a sculpture or a book, keeping software alive means dealing with a much more ephemeral medium. A part of the 30,000 games strong collection at the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin.
Frank Cifaldi's Blog - Dear Rolling Stone: That's not what Luigi looks like. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Something was really bugging me about the Super Mario Bros screenshot above, as seen in a fun little profile piece on Shigeru Miyamoto published by Rolling Stone today. It took me a second to realize it, but: that's not Luigi!
Luigi doesn't look like that! He looks like this! So what happened, here? Well, Rolling Stone -- a publication I assume is still adhering to some pretty strict editorial guidelines that probably haven't been revisited in years -- chose to only run images provided officially by Nintendo of America. So what do you do? And here are the two brothers, side-by-side. So I guess what I'm saying is that Rolling Stone needs to go back to hanging out with rockstars and going to concerts and stuff and leave the vintage video game screenshots to the experts.