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	<title>Preserving Games &#187; preservation</title>
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	<description>Archiving the Creation Processes of the Video Game Industry</description>
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		<title>Video Game &#8220;Extras&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/winget/2009/04/video-game-extras/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ibiblio.org/winget/2009/04/video-game-extras/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:06:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News and Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[archive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[creation process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[preservation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ibiblio.org/winget/?p=133</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In his article &#8220;Toward a Virtual Reenactment of History: Video Games and the Recreation of the Past,&#8221; Brian Rejack discusses the game Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and its &#8220;extras.&#8221;  As the player progresses through the game, he or she can unlock bonus features that can be accessed from the main menu.  Similar [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In his article &#8220;Toward a Virtual Reenactment of History: Video Games and the Recreation of the Past,&#8221; Brian Rejack discusses the game <em>Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 </em>and its &#8220;extras.&#8221;  As the player progresses through the game, he or she can unlock bonus features that can be accessed from the main menu.  Similar to the extras that accompany films on DVD, these extras take gamers behind the scenes to see how the game was made. </p>
<p>In the case of <em>Brothers in Arms</em>, the game developers provide side-by-side comparisons of World War II photographs showing, for example, soldiers standing next to a tank with the corresponding image from the game in order to strengthen the game&#8217;s claim to authenticity.  However, the player only has full access to these extras once he or she has completed the game.  Thus, Rejack argues, only when the player plays through the game a second time will he or she recognize those parts of the game that are based on historical truths.</p>
<p>In the months following the publication of Rejack&#8217;s article in September 2007, though, many games have provided these extras immediately to the player as DVDs do.  In fact, a large number of major video game releases are now offered in a &#8220;collector&#8217;s edition&#8221; package that includes a bonus DVD disc containing behind-the-scenes footage.  In these instances, the back of the game box, in addition to describing the game itself, will point out that the game includes bonus features; the Platinum Edition release of <em>Call of Duty 3</em>, for example, notes that a bonus disc includes the &#8220;Making of <em>Call of Duty 3</em>&#8221; feature.</p>
<p>With these bonus features becoming increasingly prevalent, we ought to consider how these videos should be treated with regard to archival video game preservation.  As we have discovered with our own project, many major developers are naturally unwilling to provide behind-the-scenes access to their programming innovations or their artistic creations, worried that competitors might steal their ideas or that their designs might become known to the public too early.  Thus, in our understanding of the creation process for a game like <em>Gears of War</em>, we may be limited  to the official &#8220;making of&#8221; features that the developers provide in these collector&#8217;s edition game packages.</p>
<p>So, should we be preserving these features in our video game archives?  When the developer is so hesitant to contribute the material creations that would normally be considered primary sources of research, do these documentary features then become our primary sources, or the closest thing to primary sources that we can obtain?  How will the archives be affected if game developers continue to commodify information?</p>
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		<title>Spawn Labs and Mobile Gaming</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/winget/2009/04/spawn-labs-and-mobile-gaming/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ibiblio.org/winget/2009/04/spawn-labs-and-mobile-gaming/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:25:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>walker</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News and Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[consoleGames]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobileGaming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[preservation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ibiblio.org/winget/?p=118</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When I think of mobile gaming, whether it&#8217;s on a laptop, iPhone or other device, I think of games sensitive to the processing constraints of those platforms: web-based items like Bejeweled or Tower Defense, a retro-graphics piece like Battle for Wesnoth, etc. The latest games on the PS3, 360 or Wii do not come to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span>When I think of mobile gaming, whether it&#8217;s on a laptop, iPhone or other device, I think of games sensitive to the processing constraints of those platforms: web-based items like <em>Bejeweled</em> or <em>Tower Defense</em>, a retro-graphics piece like <em>Battle for Wesnoth</em>, etc. The latest games on the PS3, 360 or Wii do not come to mind. </span></p>
<p><span>Peter Walker of <a title="Spawn Labs" href="http://www.spawnlabs.com" target="_self">Spawn Labs</a> and <a title="Vircion, Inc." href="http://www.vircion.com/" target="_self">Vircion Inc</a>., based out of Austin, gave a talk last week for the <a title="Texas Advanced Computing Center" href="http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/" target="_self">Texas Advanced Computing Center</a> that explained the company’s plan to break this mold in the realm of console gaming. Their ambition is to allow gamers to play their console games on any computer at any location. The central idea behind this technology is that remote servers will handle the processor-intensive rendering of graphics and other game computation, sending an audio/video stream of the processed results to the user’s computer. That would allow the client’s computer to strictly handle those AV streams, rather than be responsible for the serious number-crunching. Gamers would essentially be playing the AV streams of the processed results, which would be dictated by whatever input the player sent to the server.</span></p>
<p><span>Walker identified some trends in gaming: gigabyte requirements increase, as do CPU and GPU processing requirements. <a title="Moore's Law" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law" target="_self">Moore’s Law</a> seems to be in full effect. But Walker points out that cooling power can’t keep up. Already an increasing percent of battery power is spent just cooling the processing chips. As a result mobile platforms like laptops simply cannot pack the cooling power necessary to run resource-intensive games (at least not without burning your lap). Walker points out the success of smaller-scale games, but notes that these are a different kind of gaming experience, casual and less time-intensive than the likes of <em>Call of Duty 4</em> or <em>Mass Effect</em>, and constitute a gaming experience of a different order. Spawn’s research is aimed at bringing the gaming experience of the most graphically intense console works to a mobile community. </span></p>
<p><span>This is achieved through utilizing the increasing pervasiveness of broadband and the efficiency of audio and video codecs, specifically the <a title="H.264" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264" target="_self">H.264</a> standard. Key to this standard is the <a title="SVC" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding" target="_self">Scalable Video Codec</a>. This would allow the client computer to select whichever particular bitstream it was set up to decode, among the many a gaming server would offer. That allows a gaming server to only encode and transmit once and simultaneously support a range of client machines with different codec-decoding capabilities. </span></p>
<p><span>So what could all this mean for game preservation? Well, in a certain sense it will make the job much more challenging. Technology like this continues the trend of client computers handling less and less of of the actual content. In this model, gamers are essentially reacting to, and playing in, a movie (the AV stream) that their input incurs. Very little of the game’s actual binary content resides on the gamer’s computer. Compare this to a classic like <em>Ultima 4</em>, where a considerable preservation step is accomplished by possessing uncorrupted copies of the original 3.5” or 5.25” disks. Move ahead to <em>World of Warcaft</em>: the client side CD contains a lot of code and information, but a very large part of the game itself is not to be found there. In the model being developed here, gamers could possess even less of the binary makeup of the game, and might simply purchase a license to play the game. That leaves the individual’s personal game material as a minor component of preservation. </span></p>
<p><span>At the same time, it’s a fascinating model for more flexible, platform-agnostic gaming, and it could point the way to interesting methods of preserving games. After all, if gamers could be happy interacting with a dynamic video stream, perhaps a preservation effort could employ a similar approach. If nothing else, the success of a model like this might open up the possibility of remote access to actively preserved games.<br />
</span></p>
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