Feature - Lateral Thinking - Either Archive Videogames or lose them completly
A sideways look at the gaming industry
Submitted by: Sideath
NOTE: I wrote this article a few months back, the original should be hidden somewhere in Insert Credit and Gamespot.
Intro Cut Scene
A year back, I was playing the flash game Sticky Wicket on the BBC webpage celebrating the Cricket World Cup, or something. A few things occured to me at this time: (i) That Sticky Wicket was a blatent copy of the original Donkey Kong, just with better flash graphics and with cricket as a theme instead of er... Donkey Kong, (ii) that most of Sticky Wicket’s players have never played the original Donkey Kong, and (iii) that most of the players that have played it recently have done so through illegaly, through emulation – the criminals.
Gotta Catch ‘em all
Ah, Nintendo. They schooled kids to catch ‘em all, and by God, it worked in thier favour. The same way that the X-Box wouldn’t be as popular without Halo and the PS2 wouldn’t be so desirable without GTAIII.
The basic theme of Pokemon was the sheer organisation of all of you monsters, and that you wouldn’t have really ‘completed’ the game until you caught all of the 150 or so Pokemon that were avaliable.
In the same way, Emulators and ROMs have evolved from the disfunctional random 2 or 3 roms there, 5 more random roms over there, to the few dedicated individuals archivng countless classics in the darkest corner of the web, constantly hunted by the gaming law officials such as the ELSPA. These classics now have a number – number of roms and emulators – and like the Pokemon kids, these ‘rommies’ have made it thier mission to Catch ‘em all.
A difficult relationship
The videogames industry has a curious relationship with emulation. On the one hand we have always told that videogames are a bad thing, that they are piracy (when you don’t own the original cartridge – in the case of 99.9% of all downloads), and is similar to, you know, home taping a so on. But still, its interesting to note that most of the people working in the gaming industry own a large selection of ROMs in the deep corners of thier hard drive. Besides, there’s an extra need for ROMs other than entertainment – there’s a historical need for them.
Pure History
If you want to read an old book, you go to the Libary. If the book does not appear there, you go to a bigger libary. If you want to watch or investigate an old film, you can buy or rent it. If you can’t find it, there are always the indies and the Historical Archives to try. However, if you want to play an old game, your options are limited. You can wait for it to turn up on eBay, you can scour over car boot sales for ageing classics, or you can scrap the waiting and the wind and download the ROM off the internet. It’s quite sad that many people who write articles abou past gaming history have done so by playing the emulation, downloaded off the internet.
Solution
It really is a mess. But instead of ELSPA whining about the ‘illegal black market’ of games trade, they should do thier job properly. The videogaming industry is supposed to be maturing, after all, and we should therefore have a more mature solution to this problem.
The problem should be solved through the process of a soon-to-be-registered charity, in the name of the European Videogames Archive (EVA).
EVA’s mission is to produce a complete record of every videogame ever produced, created and published in Europe. It would also be to achive a hard copy of every game, along with copies of design documents, sketches, and - where released by the author – source code. EVA’s physical presence would initially be along the lines of a research libary, with resources accessible to members of institutions who paid its membership fee – universities, developers, publishers, individuals. Anything stored electronically could be requested and delivered electronically. But for the real experience, one would have to visit EVA in person.
EVA-lution
EVA’s building would be gently lit and filled with quiet, soundproofed booths. Visitors would select games on terminals and book slots to use hardware of their choice. When their turn came, they would have a garish game box thrust into their trembling hands, and be directed towards the appropriate machine. No emulation here – it would provide the full experience. They would have the tedium of waiting for a game to load, the pain of switching disks and the exhilaration of jamming fingers in the disc drive to jinx the software into running.
Funded by membership, sponsorship, and charitable donations from parties with a vested interest in making the European software industry look good (ELSPA, TIGA, the British government), EVA would not make a profit, but would certainly prove as popular as, say, the Museum of the Moving Image (http://www.ammi.org/) in New York, or any publicaly-funded archive. Expansion would bring a larger museum, more focussed exhibitions, and here’s a stroke of genius – while all originals would stay within the confines of the EVA, if visitors wanted a copy of a game to take home with them, they’d be welcome to. EVA would have a small backroom where any existing game could be copied, tape-to-tape, floppy-to-floppy, even to blank cartriges. A printer would clone the covers and lables from scans of the originals, adding a discreet EVA logo somewhere. Cost? Nominal; materials, plus a gratuity for the copyright holder and EVA. You could walk in and buy a brand new 2003 issue of Donkey Kong, and not revet to playing terrible copies on the net.
FinEVA provides people with an opportunity to revisit old games as they were inteded. So who loses? At worst we would have a static record of what we’ve done; at best we’re educating people, indicating to the public that this isn’t a craze, it’s an art with a history and a future. The path that the videogame is taking is contiually branching, and at present, that path is only being archived by amateurs, by the underground, and our reward to them is potential prosecution. We can curse the pirates as much as we want, but in 20 years’ time these perfectly labeled ROMs will be the only coherent record we have of what we’ve been doing. Pokemon may have affected the direction of gaming, but only as much as the hundreds of games from throughout the 20th century, and leaving any record of that to chance – now that really is criminal. CWg
Submitted by: Sideath
NOTE: I wrote this article a few months back, the original should be hidden somewhere in Insert Credit and Gamespot.
Intro Cut Scene
A year back, I was playing the flash game Sticky Wicket on the BBC webpage celebrating the Cricket World Cup, or something. A few things occured to me at this time: (i) That Sticky Wicket was a blatent copy of the original Donkey Kong, just with better flash graphics and with cricket as a theme instead of er... Donkey Kong, (ii) that most of Sticky Wicket’s players have never played the original Donkey Kong, and (iii) that most of the players that have played it recently have done so through illegaly, through emulation – the criminals.
Gotta Catch ‘em all
Ah, Nintendo. They schooled kids to catch ‘em all, and by God, it worked in thier favour. The same way that the X-Box wouldn’t be as popular without Halo and the PS2 wouldn’t be so desirable without GTAIII.
The basic theme of Pokemon was the sheer organisation of all of you monsters, and that you wouldn’t have really ‘completed’ the game until you caught all of the 150 or so Pokemon that were avaliable.
In the same way, Emulators and ROMs have evolved from the disfunctional random 2 or 3 roms there, 5 more random roms over there, to the few dedicated individuals archivng countless classics in the darkest corner of the web, constantly hunted by the gaming law officials such as the ELSPA. These classics now have a number – number of roms and emulators – and like the Pokemon kids, these ‘rommies’ have made it thier mission to Catch ‘em all.
A difficult relationship
The videogames industry has a curious relationship with emulation. On the one hand we have always told that videogames are a bad thing, that they are piracy (when you don’t own the original cartridge – in the case of 99.9% of all downloads), and is similar to, you know, home taping a so on. But still, its interesting to note that most of the people working in the gaming industry own a large selection of ROMs in the deep corners of thier hard drive. Besides, there’s an extra need for ROMs other than entertainment – there’s a historical need for them.
Pure History
If you want to read an old book, you go to the Libary. If the book does not appear there, you go to a bigger libary. If you want to watch or investigate an old film, you can buy or rent it. If you can’t find it, there are always the indies and the Historical Archives to try. However, if you want to play an old game, your options are limited. You can wait for it to turn up on eBay, you can scour over car boot sales for ageing classics, or you can scrap the waiting and the wind and download the ROM off the internet. It’s quite sad that many people who write articles abou past gaming history have done so by playing the emulation, downloaded off the internet.
Solution
It really is a mess. But instead of ELSPA whining about the ‘illegal black market’ of games trade, they should do thier job properly. The videogaming industry is supposed to be maturing, after all, and we should therefore have a more mature solution to this problem.
The problem should be solved through the process of a soon-to-be-registered charity, in the name of the European Videogames Archive (EVA).
EVA’s mission is to produce a complete record of every videogame ever produced, created and published in Europe. It would also be to achive a hard copy of every game, along with copies of design documents, sketches, and - where released by the author – source code. EVA’s physical presence would initially be along the lines of a research libary, with resources accessible to members of institutions who paid its membership fee – universities, developers, publishers, individuals. Anything stored electronically could be requested and delivered electronically. But for the real experience, one would have to visit EVA in person.
EVA-lution
EVA’s building would be gently lit and filled with quiet, soundproofed booths. Visitors would select games on terminals and book slots to use hardware of their choice. When their turn came, they would have a garish game box thrust into their trembling hands, and be directed towards the appropriate machine. No emulation here – it would provide the full experience. They would have the tedium of waiting for a game to load, the pain of switching disks and the exhilaration of jamming fingers in the disc drive to jinx the software into running.
Funded by membership, sponsorship, and charitable donations from parties with a vested interest in making the European software industry look good (ELSPA, TIGA, the British government), EVA would not make a profit, but would certainly prove as popular as, say, the Museum of the Moving Image (http://www.ammi.org/) in New York, or any publicaly-funded archive. Expansion would bring a larger museum, more focussed exhibitions, and here’s a stroke of genius – while all originals would stay within the confines of the EVA, if visitors wanted a copy of a game to take home with them, they’d be welcome to. EVA would have a small backroom where any existing game could be copied, tape-to-tape, floppy-to-floppy, even to blank cartriges. A printer would clone the covers and lables from scans of the originals, adding a discreet EVA logo somewhere. Cost? Nominal; materials, plus a gratuity for the copyright holder and EVA. You could walk in and buy a brand new 2003 issue of Donkey Kong, and not revet to playing terrible copies on the net.
FinEVA provides people with an opportunity to revisit old games as they were inteded. So who loses? At worst we would have a static record of what we’ve done; at best we’re educating people, indicating to the public that this isn’t a craze, it’s an art with a history and a future. The path that the videogame is taking is contiually branching, and at present, that path is only being archived by amateurs, by the underground, and our reward to them is potential prosecution. We can curse the pirates as much as we want, but in 20 years’ time these perfectly labeled ROMs will be the only coherent record we have of what we’ve been doing. Pokemon may have affected the direction of gaming, but only as much as the hundreds of games from throughout the 20th century, and leaving any record of that to chance – now that really is criminal. CWg
posted by sideath at 4/30/2005 11:55:00 am
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