Preserving Virtual Worlds

The Opposable Thumbs blog has an interview with Jerome McDonough of the University of Illinois, who is involved with the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. The goal of the project is to recognize video games as cultural artifacts and to make sure they're accessible by future generations. Here McDonough talks about some of the technical difficulties in doing so: "Take, for example, Star Raiders on the Atari 2600. If you're going to preserve this, you've got a couple of problems. The first is that it is on a cartridge that is designed to work on a particular system that is no longer manufactured. And as long as you've got a hardware dependency there, you're really not going to be able to preserve this material very long. What we have been looking at is how feasible is it for things that fundamentally all have some level of hardware dependency there — even Doom has dependencies on DLLs with an operating system, and on particular chipsets and architectures for playing. How do you take that and turn it into something that isn't as dependent on a particular physical piece of hardware. And to do that, you need information about that platform. You need technical specifications that allow you to basically reproduce a virtualization that may enable you to run the software in its original form in the future. So what we're trying to do is preserve not only the games, but preserve the knowledge that you would need to create a virtualization platform to play the game."

Comments

Oh, please..

[Anonymous Coward]

even Doom has dependencies on DLLs with an operating system, and on particular chipsets and architectures for playing. How do you take that and turn it into something that isn't as dependent on a particular physical piece of hardware. And to do that, you need information about that platform. You need technical specifications that allow you to basically reproduce a virtualization that may enable you to run the software in its original form in the future

If there are two things that any "computer" with enough power and memory has, it's a port of Doom and a port of vi. What you need is this magical thing that iD released on December 23, 1997.

Re:Oh, please..

[PatrickThomson]

For the confused: This was when the source code was released, not the original game. That was way back in '93.

Old games, already done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a new idea, in fact their is a whole community based on running and preserving old games.See, http://www.oldgames.nu/ or search for abandon-ware. Their are many tools that can be used to make old games playable and even to run at the speed intended (a common problem games running too fast to be playable) The biggest problem I can see to this becoming a active/mainstream idea is the fact the copyright protection agency's will get involved and we know what kind of a mess that creates.

Re:WoW?

[lmcgeoch]

In my future in 50 years there will be a World of Warcraft Themepark. Where I can take my grandkids on a Zepplin ride and go on Molten Core roller coasters and get their face painted like a Tauren and go to Lady Jaina princess breakfasts.

(I like my future better)

It is the worsed example

[SmallFurryCreature]

Doom is the ultimate example of JUST how to preserve a virtual world. By releasing the source code iD has decoupled it from OS/Hardware and ensured its continued survival.

So Doom is NOT an example of how hard it is to preserve a game but rather an example of just how to make sure a game survives.

On the whole, don't use success stories as an example of how not to do something.