#GDC2024 Okay one more talk: what’s new in game history.
Phil Salvador, Laine Nooney, Henry Lowood, Kendra Albert, Chloe Appleby
Crowded room! Albeit this is one of the half-size rooms at thr conference center. Still, a lot of people interested in this.
(I know Phil from Myst fandom — he helped get a bunch of historical video from the production of Riven digitized and archived.)
Phil talking about citizen archivists and fan preservation projects. “The first line of defense”. Wheeler Dealers (Dani Bunten’s first game), found and preserved. Design documents from Donkey Kong. Games for thr Casio Loopy.
(I am part of this too, with my Infocom game file archive.)
There is rising recognition and support for community preservation projects. NCSoft licensing a City of Heroes fan server.
Fan emulation projects get brought on board to re- release old games. (Tomb Raider trilogy bringing in thr OpenLara person.)
Not getting all Phil’s examples — he talks fast!
Now talking about the Yuzu lawsuit. Things are still precarious. The line between piracy and presrvation is fuzzy, and shifts for each example over time. But things are moving in the right direction — the gap is closing.
Laine: scholarly publishing by professional and academic historians. Sort of the flip side of what Phil was talking about
Academic writing isn’t for the general audience. It’s not from a fannish context. Rather it aims at context, history, looking at the bigger picture.
(Not that fannish/citizen archiving can’t do that!)
Trend to decenter videogame topics — expand to tabletop games, arcade games, pinball, other kinds of play. The history that led up to the videogame explosion.
Sean Purcell, the history of jigsaw puzzles as part of 18th century British imperialism! Like whaaa?
Chaim Gingold on Sim City, other books I can’t keep up with
Videogame afterlives: ROMchip, a journal of game and history, repair, maintenance
Research into non- famous game history figures. QA tester, marketeers, etc.
Henry: games are finding a place in cultural institutions. Museums, libraries. Strong National Museum of Play!
(Come to NarraScope this June)
MOMA in New York, SFMOMA, Smithsonian have exhibited games. (I went to the Whitney Biennial a few years ago when they had Porpentine games.)
Japan House in LA had a Pokémon (and -inspired) art exhibit.
Museums acquiring collections (Sid Sackson, Infocom people who have donated their collections).
The Internet Archive. So much stuff. For years and years, starting long before the recent burst of game archiving interest.
Prediction: 2024 will be the year of tabletop game history. (“It had better be!”)
Kendra: the legal issues. Specifically the DMCA.
Section 1201 is the anti-circumvention clause - you can’t break copy protection even when the goal is legal (fair use).
There is a procedure to get around 1201. It gets reviewed every three years. Coming up in 2024.
The people on this very panel have talked to Congress in 2014, 2017, 2021. Coming up again. There is slow incremental progress.
2014: authentication server shutdown. 2017: on premise software access. 2021: off premise access for non game software.
@zarfeblong I hadn’t heard of the Strong Museum of Play until recently — @joningold ended up featuring a bunch of their pieces in Forever Labyrinth. I’d love to visit some day!
@iainmerrick @joningold I was there once, ten years ago. But they’ve expanded since then.
@zarfeblong (in case anyone else was wondering, I'm guessing this refers to this: https://hcommons.social/@teamseaslug/110117841024816841 )
@womump Yep that was it
@zarfeblong Any chance they've talked about Dark Sun Online, which I hear has had a flurry of recent activity in the server space?
@powersoffour Dont think it was mentioned but these were all condensed talks
@zarfeblong thank you for live tooting them. I'm really curious about this notion of 2024 being the year of TTG history!
@zarfeblong I NEVER thought I'd see the day.