Preserving Games

Author: TimA

  • Mark Methenitis’s “Copymark”

    Mark Methenitis is a practicing lawyer in Dallas and he rights a blog called Law of the Game in which he talks about various legal issues as they relate to videogames and the gaming industry in general.  Not surprisingly, he writes extensively about the complex nature of copyright law as applied to videogames and other software.  Recently, Methenitis has started a series titled “Intellectual Property 2.0” in which he discusses instances in which “the law has lagged behind the practicality of intellectual property management,” and he suggests possible solutions to these issues.

    In the “Intellectual Property 2.0” series on May 14th of this year, Methenitis posted an entry titled “Convergence of Copyright and Trademark.”  Essentially, as the title suggests, Methenitis proposes that we fuse together the rights of copyright and trademark into a “copymark.”   The age old problem that Methenitis is trying to address is that the date for release of copyrighted material into the public domain stands at 1923 and will probably continue to do so while Disney has the requisite funds to lobby Congress to keep Mickey Mouse from going into the public domain.  Underlying this problem is that although Mickey Mouse is a trademark of the Disney Corporation, the trademark will expire in the event that Steamboat Willie (the first appearance of Mickey Mouse) is no longer protected under copyright.  So extending copyright is all well and good for Disney and for other corporations who would like their money-making brands to stay out of the public domain, however 86 years of history are in danger of being lost forever because no one has access to certain copyrighted materials.

    There has been a lot of talk about how the copyright system is broken and about how we need to revise our system of protecting peoples’ rights over their works while at the same time ensuring public access.  The idea of copymark is so simple that I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this idea before.  Essentially, under a copymark provision, a company would forego their traditional rights to trademark and copyright over a given expression.   Under copymark, however, they would retain the same rights they would normally have to trademark and copyright, but they would have to renew the copymark periodically.  If they failed to renew, then the work would automatically be released into the public domain regardless of the 70 years after the life of the author provision as it currently stands under copyright law.

    This would create a situation, of course, in which Disney could continually renew the copymark over Mickey Mouse indefinitely, however the alternative is that Disney and other corporations continually lobby Congress so that nothing that was created after 1923 ever goes into the public domain.  Methenitis also points out that something which is copymarked would still have fair use provisions.  So copies of copymarked material would still be available in libraries and archives.

    For the most part, I think that this is a fascinating idea.  One major potential flaw that I see in a “copymark revolution” is – to whom do we allow the right to copymark materials?  If we allow it to everyone, then everyone could potentially copymark everything they create and then nothing would ever be public.  The solution, then, is to charge a fee which would be steep enough so that only those who are making significant amounts of money off of their copymarked material would have the incentive to renew their copymark.  This would potentially create a kind of heirarchy in which only industries could maintain a copymark, however if traditional trademark and copyright laws were to remain intact, I’m not sure that this would be a problem for individuals.  Disney could also, of course, balk at the requirement to pay to copymark their intellectual property, but they’re essentially doing the same right now by paying (who knows how much?) to lobby Congress.

    At the very least, I think Methenitis has proposed an interesting idea, and it is ideas like these which need to start circulating if we are ever going to have public access to the history of the generations which are alive today.

  • Are Videogames Art?

    John Lancaster recently published an essay in “The London Review of Books” titled “Is it Art?”.  The essay considers the position of videogames in global culture and asks the question: should videogames, which have surpassed music and video sales in the United Kingdom, be considered a form of art?  This is a huge and difficult question, and in order to answer it, one would have to consider that other overwhelming question -“what is art?”  Finding an answer to that question is beyond the scope of this humble blog post, but in reading Lancaster’s essay, I have derived five things-to-think-about in regards to the status of the videogame as an art form.  In no particular order, they are:

    1. The level of creativity and agency the videogame grants to the player. Lancaster states that most videogames “offer a model of play which is oppressively close to work” and that gameplay in most games is “repetitive, quantified, and structured.”  Recently, however, games like LittleBigPlanet and Neverwinter Nights have bucked the trend as they allow users to create their own game content.  Other games such as the Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls series have what Lancaster calls “sandbox potential” in that they allow players to ignore certain tasks and wander about the game world freely.  While one could make the argument that a videogame which only allows the player to go through a series of predetermined motions has little artistic potential, art is by nature a creative endeavor.  If a videogame allows the player to create their own content and/or narrative, that sounds pretty artistic to me.
    2. The visual aspects. This should require no explanation.  Human-made visual imagery has been considered art for centuries, and I would argue that the art direction and cinematography of videogames has reached a parity level with that of film and television.
    3. The artist vs. the corporation.   This is an inevitable struggle in all forms of media, however because the technology needed to create videogames is prohibitively expensive, it is difficult to find successful independent game design studios who do not have to dance to the tune of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo.  As in most corporate ventures,  the corporation considers only the bottom line.  Lancaster points to the “proliferation of sequels” as evidence that corporate interest takes precendence in the production of most games.  So, unless the price of gaming technology decreases (which isn’t likely, considering that newer technology is generated regularly) independent game designers may never be able to get a significant slice of the market.
    4. Better content writing!!! I think most gamers will know what I’m talking about.  While the quality of the visual aspects of videogames are on par with other forms of visual media, the writing is generally cliche and sophomoric.
    5. The degree of difficulty. Does degree of difficulty matter artistically?  I think it’s fair to say that most people would consider that both the creation and comprehension of any art form requires a certain level of skill.  Videogames certainly require skill.  Someone who has never played a videogame  would be hard-pressed to master Left for Dead or Fallout 3. However, as Lancaster states, “one of the most common complaints regular gamers make in reviewing new offerings is that they are too easy.” Here we have to think, again, of the role of the corporation and their desire to appeal to the bottom line in order to sell as many games as possible.  If a game is too difficult then players might get frustrated and not recommend the game.  Of course, the game can also be too easy and therefore a waste of time and money.  It has been stated in this blog previously that older games tend to have a higher degree of difficulty.  It is sad to think that the future of videogames might be an endless stream of “hollywood blockbuster” style games which are created to appeal to the widest possible audience and therefore require little skill to master.  Lancaster states, however, “if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desireable.”  Such is the state of modern life.

  • Playing Mario on a Keyboard

    Twenty three years after Super Mario Brothers was released in the United States, emulated versions of the game are available for download on numerous websites.  Playing Mario on a keyboard,  however, is not the most intuitive way to play the game.  As the actual Nintendo Entertainment Systems can not be preserved indefinitely, how does one capture the essence of Mario gameplay while playing an emulated version of the game?  There are a couple of ways that this can be done.

    The people at RetroUSB take actual NES and SNES controllers and reconfigure them with USB cords so that they can be plugged into a USBport.  As the website states, the controllers that they use are not replicas, but real controllers from the aforementioned systems.  For $35, you can have essentially the same gameplay experience that you did 23 years ago.

    The possibility of acquiring these USB controllers is , of course, dependent upon the continued existence of RetroUSB.com.  While it is possible that replicas of the NES controllers may be produced for the foreseeable future, there is another way to simulate gameplay using a standard keyboard that comes relatively close to the actual thing.

    The best way to understand what I’ll be getting at is to walk through this yourself.  There are probably hundreds of emulated versions of Super Mario Brothers, but I’ve found that a reliable (and free) emulated version can be played by using Nestopia.  This NES console emulator can be used to play all of the games (and there are a lot) that are availalbe for download in ‘the Vault’ at  Vimm’s Lair.  Click on the link for the ‘the Vault,’ then the link for ‘Nintendo,’ then the letter ‘S’ and then scroll down and select ‘Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt.’  After the game is downloaded, open the Nestopia executable file, use it to open Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt and voila!  Take a moment to revel in nostalgia.

    Now open the ‘Options’ menu and then ‘input.’  You’ll see that Nestopia wants you to use the directional buttons to control the motion of your character (makes sense) and the comma ‘,’ and period ‘.’ for the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons on the Nintendo game controller.  Try playing Mario using these controls.  You’ll notice that you are using five fingers to play the game: three fingers on your right hand for the directional buttons and two on your left hand to control the A and B functions.  I suppose that with time one could become accustomed to playing Mario this way, but it certainly feels awkward and I would argue that you’re not really capturing the ‘essence’ of Mario gameplay.

    Now, I have to give credit where it’s due so I will give a shout-out to Brandon Schoech for showing me this, but you can reconfigure the keys that you use on your keyboard so that you can play Mario using your thumbs the way that you would on an NES controller.  Open the ‘options’ and ‘input’ menus and then in the third column select ‘set all.’  For the left directional button select the letter ‘a,’ for up select ‘w,’ for right select ‘s,’ and for down select ‘z.’  For the ‘B’ functions select the period ‘.’ and for ‘A’ the slash ‘/.’  You can leave the settings for ‘Start’ and ‘Select’ as they are, or change them as you see fit, since you won’t use them as much.  Now you can postion your thumbs on either side of the keyboard and the effect is remarkably similar to that of using the NES controller.  One key aspect of this configuration is that you can use your right thumb to hit the ‘A’ and ‘B’ controls simultaneously, which is especially important in Mario as (if you’re like me) you will want to hold down the ‘B’ button indefinitely so that Mario will run through the entire game, but still be able to hit the ‘A’ button to throw turtle shells and shoot fiery spitballs.  This key configuration also takes a little getting used to, but it takes less time than the default setting and is certainly more true to the actual Mario gameplay.  Incidentally, I haven’t played Mario in something like eighteen years, but with the two-thumb key controls, I’ve managed to make it to the end of the fifth level.  I feel like that’s not too shabby.

  • Spacewar!

    Spacewar! is arguably the first videogame ever created. It was released in 1962 on the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processing) computer which had marked a massive shift in the philosophy of computer design when it was released just three years earlier in 1959. For today’s gamer, Spacewar! seems rather simple. There are two spaceships. Each player controls one spaceship. Each player tries to shoot the other player’s spaceship. There are four commands: turn clockwise, turn counter-clockwise, thrust, and shoot. And that’s basically it. No one wins. The ships will be regenerated until the two players get bored and decide to stop playing.

    That being said, there are some aspects of Spacewar! that are considerably innovative, even by today’s gaming standards. At the center of the screen is a wormhole created by a dieing star. The spaceships are constantly pulled towards the wormhole and the players must maneuver the spaceships so that they do not fall into the wormhole while at the same time avoiding the bullets of the other spaceship. As the player must also somehow attempt to shoot the other spaceship, the gameplay that results from simultaneously coordinating three separate actions is quite sophisticated and was not seen again until at least the 1980s. The gravitational pull that is constantly tugging at the spaceships is based on the actual laws of gravity and the PDP-1 made 100,000 calculations per second to determine the motion of the spaceships in relation to that gravitational pull. The “thrust” command, for instance, does not actually move the spaceships forward (as it almost certainly would in any videogame that were released today). The command actually slows the spaceship down so that the user can gain control of the ships so that it does not go spinning into the wormhole. If timed correctly, the thrust command can use the force of gravity to propel the spaceship into the orbit of the dieing star so that the spaceship will go around the wormhole. The resulting motion is something akin to the way that comets travel around planetary bodies rather than crashing into them. One must be parsimonious with the thrust command, however, as the ships have a limited supply of fuel. The bullets that are the spaceships’ ammunition are also subject to the gravitational pull of the star and will circle around the star at the same rate as the spaceships.

    While certainly sophisticated, Spacewar! lacks a lot of the customary modern game conventions. As mentioned earlier, the game does not designate a “winner” and a “loser.” While one spaceship can destroy another, the ships will just be regenerated ad infinitum until the players decide to end the game. Neither does Spacewar! tally “wins.” Also, as mentioned earlier, the spaceships have a limited fuel supply, however there is no bar at the bottom of the screen alerting the player as to how much fuel remains. Also, the spaceships seem to disappear randomly, for no apparent reason, only to reappear at the starting position. It is not obvious whether this is due to some sort of internal, unspecified time limit or if it is just a glitch. All in all, while Spacewar! is a game that could certainly not be played for hours (or even one hour), the need for players to simultaneously coordinate three actions will definitely provide at least fifteen minutes of engrossing gameplay for the modern gamer.

  • Preservation and Emulation – A Guide to Installing “Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness”

    An important method to preserve videogame content, and all content contained in electronic records for that matter, is emulation.  In order to access many DOS-based videogames, for example, one must download a DOS emulator.  These emulators are now widely available on the Internet and videogames that are no longer playable on modern operating systems can be played through this application which emulates the functionality of DOS.  Below is a guide to installing one of the most influential DOS-based games, Richard Garriott’s “Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness.”

    In order to play Ultima 1, you must first download a DOS emulator. Currently, one of the most popular DOS emulators is DOSBox 0.72, which can be downloaded free-of-charge at www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1. Choose the version of DOSBox that corresponds to your operating system, save the installer executable, and follow the steps to install DOSBox.

    DOSBox can be used to play a number of DOS-based games. Finding these games can be tricky as websites with DOS game libraries often require you to enter personal information including e-mail and physical addresses before the site will let you download a game. www.oldschooldos.com allows you to download games anonymously. To find Ultima 1, from the Old School DOS homepage click the link for “RPG” games. Listed on this page are six classic DOS RPGs including two other games that are widely considered to be foundational to the RPG genre: “NetHack” and “Dungeon Master.” In order to play Ultima 1, follow these steps:

    (Note that the following steps are valid only for Windows operating systems. Directions may vary for other operating systems).

    • In the RPG menu at oldschooldos.com, click on the link for “Ultima 1” and download the zipped file.
    • Extract all of the unzipped files into a new folder on your C:\ drive, and title the folder “dosprog”
    • Open DOSBox.
    • In DOSBox, enter the following command string: “mount c c:\dosprog\” and hit enter. I’m not totally sure about this, but in entering the above command string you are essentially convincing the emulator that in accessing the “dosprog” folder, it is actually accessing the c:\ drive. If you forget the above command string, you can also enter the command “intro mount” and DOSBox will remind you how to mount the folder “dosprog” as your c:\ drive.
    • Once you have mounted the dosprog folder, type “c:\” and hit enter. You will notice that the beginning of the command string changes from “Z:\>” to “C:\>.”
    • Now type “ultima” and the game should start.
    • When a picture of a castle appears, hit the space bar.
    • You will be prompted to create a new character or continue a previous game. Choose the former.
    • You will now be prompted to generate a character. From this point the best thing to do is follow a walkthrough. www.gamefaqs.com is a good website for walkthroughs of all videogames from all eras. A walkthrough for Ultima 1 can be found here: www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/562657/9073. This walkthrough has good tips on how to stay alive as Ultima 1 is much more difficult than the average modern RPG.  A walkthrough that takes you through the narrative can be found here: www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/562657/1804. FYI, you should definitely consult the first walkthrough before you create your character. After you designate your character’s attributes they cannot be altered and certain attributes are more essential than others depending on the race and character class that you select.
    • Once you create your character you can start playing the game.  You can command your character by hitting certain letters on your keyboard.  You can “attack,” e.g., by pressing the letter “a.”  A complete list of keyboard functions for Ultima 1 can be found here: www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/pc/ultima1/commands.shtml This website also offers a brief walkthrough and some interesting game facts.

    The walkthrough for Ultima 1 is pretty essential.  Unlike modern games, there is no tutorial element in the first part of the game, so you pretty much have to figure things out on your own.  These walkthroughs, however, are considerably shorter than a walkthrough for a modern game.  This is due largely to the fact that the narrative element in Ultima 1 is pretty thin.  You will spend most of your time simply killing monsters and trying to stay alive (which is a tall order).  Through killing monsters you will raise your attributes and acquire gold which you can use to spend on weapons, armor, and food.  Note that you must level up considerably before attempting any “quests.”  Also expect to die often, but don’t let this discourage you.  Remember that unlike modern games, dieing is just a part of the experience (one might say frustrating experience) of playing older games.

    That being said, in terms of game mechanics, there is not that much difference between Ultima 1 and Final Fanasy XII, for example,  or World of Warcraft.  You have a character for whom you select a character class, a race, and a gender.  You designate that character’s strength, intelligence, etc.  You kill monsters, cast spells, go on quests, buy weapons and armor and eventually fight “bosses.”   One minor (though significant) difference is that when you start the game you will find that if you start fighting the monsters that are presented to you, you will die pretty quickly and you will be unable to progress.  If you take a look at one of the walkthroughs, you’ll find that you need to start fighting in the first level of a dungeon in order to get money and to raise your hit points.  This is a salient difference from modern RPGs in which the challenges that you are presented with are almost always tailored to the level of your character.  You get the sense, in Ultima 1, that the world of the videogame pre-exists your character and you need to figure out how to acclimate your character to the world.  This seems like a much more “realistic” approach to gameplay and one that more closely resembles the layout of a modern MMORPG than a modern single-player RPG.  Apart from this sort-of “pre-existence” of the videogame world, however, there is surprisingly little difference between the content and structure of Ultima 1 and that of a modern RPG.

    Because of this relative lack of difference in game structure,  I don’t think that someone who is familiar with the gameplay of modern RPGs will have much difficulty playing Ultima 1.  From a preservation standpoint, including a walkthrough with the emulation would be helpful, if only to convince the player to not give up after dieing a couple of times.  Also, including the list of keyboard commands is essential as I have been unable to locate one in the game itself.  Other than that, from a thirty-year vantage point, Ultima 1 is still largely intelligible and playable for a modern videogame player.

  • A New Kind of Archive

    Unlike books, movies, or even console videogames, the design process of MMORPGs does not have a fixed endpoint. After the MMO is initially released, designers continue to work on patches and expansion packages and game content is updated continuously. This presents a unique challenge to the archivist, especially one who is interested in preserving content created during the design of the MMO. If MMOs, much like living organisms, are never explicitly “finished,” at what time does the archivist stop archiving artifacts developed during the creation process? Would a collection of artifacts that document the development of the “World of Warcraft” software package released in 2005 accurately represent the design of the state of the MMO in 2008? The short answer, of course, is “no.”

    While the consistent incompleteness of the MMO presents a challenge, it also presents an opportunity to create a new kind of archive. Alterations that are made to the source code of a particular MMO are recorded by game designers in what are called “living documents.” These documents were originally saved individually as MS Word files on local workstations, however developers are increasingly using Wikis instead of Word files so that multiple developers can update the design documentation simultaneously. Like the design documentation, the source code for an MMO is also updated continuously. Initially, when updates were made to the source code, the code that was being replaced was lost forever. Increasingly, however, programmers archive their source codes in databases so that previously replaced code is retrievable. They do this largely because updates will frequently cause unintended errors, and the only way to determine at what point the error was introduced is to revert to previous code. What this means for the archivist, however, is that it is within the realm of possibility to preserve the design documentation along with the databases that contain the various versions of the source code. One could then, theoretically, examine the updates to the design documentation and access the state of the game content at the time that the design changes were implemented.

    This prospect is certainly ambitious. The most salient issue standing in the way of the archivist is intellectual property. Game development companies will not likely allow access to their source code or even their design documentation. One would hope, however, that with time, executives will become less protective of outdated source codes and design documents that are no longer explicitly relevant to maintaining the current functionality of the MMO.

    The archivist, as always, has other options. If the source code, for example, is just too valuable for company executives to allow access to it, there are periodic “snapshots” of the current state of the MMO that executives release internally. A “snapshot” includes an executable file and a copy of all of the files in the game at a given point in time. Since these snapshots are released internally to all members of the company, executives may be less protective of them. While they would not allow access to an uninterrupted history of the evolution of the MMO, the snapshots would at least lend some idea, however incomplete, of the various stages in the MMO’s development.

    There are certainly some significant challenges to achieving this goal, however to know that it is possible to preserve both the evolution of the game content of the MMO and the documents that illustrate the design changes to that content is nothing short of inspirational.