Category Archives: Videogame History

Videogame and computer history and preservation work, articles, news, etc.

Videogame History, Videogames

My Profile as a Videogame Historian

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I’m currently putting forward some help for the Home of the Underdogs revival project. Adding my profile to the volunteers list, I added “very amateur historian”. This fits the bill quite well – my work in the IGDA’s Game Preservation SIG is pretty much based on the gathering of knowledge around actual preservation work, rather then actively doing any myself. I have however helped on the nearly finished white paper, and have done a little worthwhile work at the National Museum of Computing.

Hopefully, certainly once there are resources in the UK available for researchers to play old games so I can research them more, I can move up the ladder. It will be self-taught, but I do hope to contribute authoritatively by research (rather then anecdote) to different areas – web or otherwise (I hope to get oral interviews done at some point in my life). At least this can be in the way of recording how a game works, which anyone can do but really not enough is done to help.

I also hope my project work in the SIG can help further some aspects of preserving videogame history. I am still working bit by bit on the plans for the Digital Game Canon website, and maybe with that I’ll work on a standard for metadata/data fields in the SIG. All my work in this area will be hopefully entirely public domain or as close to it as possible, as long as we can get it that way – this might mean contributions are tough to come by (but links will be a mainsay of this area anywhere with so much information being around the web and offline), although this is fine with me. 🙂

We’ll see how far I level up my historian skill this year I guess. 😀

Videogame Events, Videogame History, Videogames

GameCity Meeting – Connected Nottingham, National Videogame Archive and …Charades!

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Groan. Seed analogy for a company who is in Biosience.

Last Thursday evening I was able to attend some Gamecity things – firstly, the Connected Nottingham set of talks, which were from companies involved in the initiative and stating what they’ve done and are doing. See my gallery for some shots of this, the most groan-worthy one was the seed analogy on the right. It does seem there are some good active projects, and some totally business buzzword ones too.

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How Iain wanted everyone at GameCity to react

The most interesting one was Iain Simons putting forward his great plans for GameCity:

  • GameCity TV – Free, online, HD footage from the previous years and newly recorded footage.
  • OpenGameCity – An open platform for user generated content.
  • GameCitizens – A community site, feedback, forums and integration into existing sites like Facebook

He did also explain about the National Videogame Archive – they have an updated site, and the work done through Nottingham Trent University is going well.

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Iain and James (with their Wii avatars) discussing the archive

After this we went along to The Peacock to hear about the NVA from Dr. James Newman and Iain. It was going to be a curry at the Mogal, but this was called off due to a wedding 😉

The talk was enthusiastic, with a lot of great information on how the project was going and a lot on why it is going. The first thing they brought up was “Where’s Horace?” – the game Horace’s Ski Run was shown, and is a game that is unplayable today since no where sells it. Iain said he wanted to start the idea with James after reading James’ The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame. Iain wrote to James and got the idea rolling. They wrote the book 100 Videogames, where they found they could have put thousands of entries in – but the problem was, where do you find these old games to play?

Supersession was the main topic that came from that – the form of forced obsolescence (in software and hardware) and the nature of being dissatisfied with the current games, since magazines do so much previewing and everyone is putting out the idea that the next is always the best.

They set out the mission statement (below) but categorically stated that the archive is not to play the items, and it is different to a museum. The final main point was the archive had secured funding from the DCMS, and had visited the National Archives, so are setup to be a very permanent project.

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The archives mission statement

The talk was also a discussion too – people did shout suggestions and bring up topics or points to agree or disagree with James or Iain (some merged into the notes above). Horace was also spotted a few times for prizes 🙂 Interesting stuff! Some more pictures in my gallery too.

Next came, of all things, Game Charades. I made a video, which was is both of half-drunken quality and terrible sound (my camera keeps peaking and cutting out sound). You also can’t see much. For those brave of heart, or who want to hear how no one got Defender, go take a gander (it’s not on Youtube, it’s 12 minutes long so won’t go on. Thanks Google! 🙁 ).

The final thing was GameCity itself – Iain wanted to discuss the name – currently it was planned to be “GameCity [squared]” since it was fully going to be based around the main square (somehow, since I’m not sure how talks would do with trams running past!). Suggestions ranged from not using anything more then GameCity (my preference) or maybe having just a subtitle left out of the main logo, to some ideas like Game4City, GameCity 4, GameCity 2009, and others (many I can’t remember, I hope they wrote them down).

The other thing to take away from the event was it was advertised only on Twitter and Facebook – everyone I chatted to commented that Iain needed to send out a proper news announcement more then 2 days in advance 😉 but it was an interesting experiment.

I hope to see those GameCity sites go up soon 🙂 and also maybe see more NVA news which I am sure to report on Preservation SIG blog.

Travel, Videogame History

National Videogame Archive Visit

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A Pile O’ Stuff to sort

Today I visited the National Videogame Archive, or the beginnings of it at least! I met with Tom Woolley, who is the Curator of New Media – the National Media Museum where this is going to be hosted is branching out into videogames after it’s name change – previously it focused on TV, radio, photography and film.

The archive in it’s initial state was pretty cool to get some pictures of, and the start of it considering it’s only been publicised this month, is a damn good one. Tom detailed every way the archive stuff at the museum was setup and his plans to put on hopefully a permanent exhibition (maybe with interactive elements and some games to play), or at least a temporary exhibition of videogames once the museum has enough material – perhaps in a few years. These are quite lofty aims, and hopefully the collection will rapidly grow to fill the need. When putting on an exhibition Tom will be able to get more material specifically for that exhibit too – hopefully adding interviews, oral histories, and so on and so forth to the collection.

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The original Sony Eyetoy Prototype!

There’s a great deal of work to do – luckily, it is run through the museum rather then it’s own endeavour so he has a lot of help (although, it comes with a cost of justifying all his decisions due to their somewhat limited space and money 🙂 ). He is requesting any material that might be worth via. the donations policy. Since they haven’t got a complete console collection yet, and not an abundance of games, now might be a good opportunity to help!

Since this is the only videogame archive in the UK now, since Swindon’s efforts are currently closed down for now, it is a worthwhile think donating and helping the project if you can. There are more general computer museums for mainframes and non-videogame computers of course, but this specifically will also archive all kinds of culturally worthy material for videogames too – including relevant magazine collections, digital material, and a lot of things developers might have 🙂

Interesting, Videogame History

NMOC D-Block

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A quick thing from the NMOC – I visited D-block with Adam and investigated the slightly damp, and sometimes dry collection of computers and bits and pieces there. A lot of the material would need to be moved into the archive once it is upgraded in space, and other bits I presume haven’t got the priority to be repaired or used yet or are duplicates of existing machines. Some interesting stuff there though, well worth visiting despite the state of the building (which has structural problems with the floor and had and vandals get in, and a fire previously).

General, Interesting, Videogame History

The National Museum of Computing

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The Museum

On Saturday 26th, I made it along to The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, in Block H to be precise. I’m aiming to volunteer some time before I apply to jobs, and also have an aim to sort some IGDA Preservation SIG work too.

The museum itself is in a pretty functional state when I had a tour – they still are tirelessly working on maintenance and fixing old machines and sorting new donations but there are around 6 or 7 rooms of material to look through, two of which are on the Bletchley Park tour. It also is currently free to get into, although I think a pass to the park is required. So, from the outset well worth a visit if you want to know of the beginnings of digital computing from the Colossus onwards – as long as it is a Saturday visit 🙂

See my gallery for the full picture set, including some of the back room stuff 🙂

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This seems to also be the major location now of any computing museum work. Sadly the Swindon museum has been put in storage, before I got to visit, and National Science Museum has a rather smaller display then I’d like, but against the more natural science Computer Science doesn’t have much space it’s fair to say.

If there is anything interesting I help with while there, I’ll report on it. The work is fascinating and the plans to finish the expansion of the museum for a potential September 2008 opening to the general public looks awesome. On the game side, there are of course some stored games machines, game software and so forth although it is no special aim of course, and hopefully will become fleshed out once the museum expands.

Videogame History, Videogame Industry

Preserving the memories

A new initiative has started within the IGDA Preservation SIG – we’re looking to put up memorials about for industry developers. This is to help preserve history of the people working in the videogame industry, as well as players and important people related to the industry.

It’s currently just starting, but if you know any people who should be listed, you can contact me or the Preservation SIG to have them added – eulogies and information are both very much welcome. It’s important to keep the information somewhere easy to find. While we don’t have the resources to document everyone in the industry like Mobygames attempts to, we can keep a good list of those who have passed on, and save the memories that people have of them for posterity.