
The quest to save today’s gaming history from being lost - signa11
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/the-quest-to-save-todays-gaming-history-from-being-lost-forever/
======
bad_user
Corporations claim that DRM is necessary for fighting piracy, for protecting
the rights of content creators, or to keep computers safe from viruses,
however there is no evidence that DRM has had any effect on any of those.

DRM is fundamentally flawed, because the user is both the recipient and the
would-be interceptor that DRM protects against, so because of this it means
the decryption key is at some point loaded in the memory of the user's device,
which means that there's no "uncrackable" variant, but even admitting the
possibility of an uncrackable DRM, you always have the analogue loophole. And
because of the Internet, ordinary people can easily access the pirated copies
made by other people.

The only thing that DRM proved effective for is vendor lock-in. Bought some
games on Steam? Bought some books on Amazon? Bought some apps on iTunes Store?
Those are "investments" hooking you in to these services for a long time.

And now DRM has infected W3C and web standards as well, because grandmas want
to watch Netflix and as predicted, open-source can't join the party, because
wouldn't you know, DRM is fundamentally flawed and is incompatible with open-
source.

~~~
superuser2
> you always have the analogue loophole

Give it time. Most everything these days supports HDCP. Screens are being
integrated with cameras.

HDCP + computer vision scanning of the room to ensure that only the licensed
number of people (and no cameras) are present isn't that far off.

~~~
bad_user
I don't think it will work, also because of self-interest (tragedy of the
commons :)), but I'm sure they'll try.

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dalke
> Scott came up with a theoretical case of a game featuring an enemy group
> logo that looks similar to that of a real-life terrorist group. After an
> outcry, the developer issues an automatic patch to replace the original logo
> with something more benign. That would be a PR win in the present, but a
> major loss from a future historian's perspective.

There's little need to posit a theoretical. Look to Wolfenstein 3D, which had
several changes. The Red Cross objected to the use of a red cross for the
health packs, so later releases used a red heart. Germany objected to the use
of Nazi symbols, the dogs replaced with giant rats, etc.

I can see how a future historian might use these as data points for a research
project.

~~~
digi_owl
You also have the case of Carmageddon, where the German release replaced all
pedestrians with green blooded zombies...

------
mattbee
I'm already far more interested in reading about the _stories_ that came out
of e.g. Eve Online, WoW, and the social connections people made, than ever
playing those games myself.

If you ask me, it's a mistake to obsess over the digital representation of
a... collaborative performance? Even if you recreated everything about an
online game in 50 years, it wouldn't be the same game without the same people,
the same social context.

When you're playing a bit-for-bit identical, perfectly emulated game from 30
years ago - have you ever thought "ummm, this sucks, how did I ever spend so
much time on it?" What got lost - your youth, your obsession, your manual
dexterity, the lack of other entertainment ... you can't bottle all of that
along with the disc image.

Something always gets lost, even if you copy all the bits.

~~~
toxicFork
We should delegate "mmo historians" and give them a salary just to record
significant or even ordinary social interactions or events! We already have
some services such as 3d print of your avatar which is similar to an artist
making a portrait.

How did we end up having historians in real life? How can we give similar
incentive or motivation for mmos or other games?

Now that I thought of it, there's excellent coverage of what happens in e
sports, e.g. "this team did this to beat that team", which also links back to
the documentation of ancient wars.

------
kristofferR
Honestly, the ones doing the most to preserve today's games are probably
cracking groups like RELOADED, CODEX and PROPHET.

~~~
yamalight
and GOG.com that pushes no-DRM approach (which is way better than cracking
groups for everyone)

~~~
kristofferR
Yeah. CD Project RED deserve massive props for publishing The Witcher 3 DRM-
free too!

~~~
yamalight
Both GOG and CDPR are a subsidiaries of CD Projekt. So, it's not all that
surprising :) But they definitely deserve props for lots of things, not just
being DRM-free.

------
glaberficken
Is it really that much a of problem that we won't be able to run specific
software from sometime in the past?

Historically relevant software should leave behind enough cultural artifacts
that its impact can still be understood regardless of the ability to re-run
that software as it existed originally. (video evidence, writings about the
medium etc...)

Imagine the case of emulators to see how this can easily become a recursive
paradox.

Today we have emulators that allows us to run most software from the beginning
of computation. Will it be relevant to be able to run those emulators 100
years from now in their current form?

~~~
itsybitsycoder
Historians have always considered artefacts more valuable the closer they are
to the original event. This is because the more steps removed you are, the
more bias and mistakes can creep in, like a game of telephone.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source)

~~~
glaberficken
Yes I understand the argument about primary sources =).

My point is about the feasibility side of it (or lack of it).

Why should we have the expectation that we are going to be able to archive
everything just because now information is stored digitally? Seems a bit
delusional assuming that it is possible at all to archive everything... well I
agree that theoretically it is possible, but in practice as we are already
seeing barriers pop up all the time. I would bet ancient people were faced
with the same problems when dealing with written information.

------
endgame
> As an example of why this kind of early version archiving might be
> necessary, Scott came up with a theoretical case of a game featuring an
> enemy group logo that looks similar to that of a real-life terrorist group.
> After an outcry, the developer issues an automatic patch to replace the
> original logo with something more benign.

This isn't theoretical - something similar actually happened with the
different cartridge versions of Ocarina of Time on the N64. The original music
for the fire temple sounded too much like an Islamic prayer and was
changed[1].

[1]
[http://strategywiki.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of...](http://strategywiki.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time/Versions)

~~~
coldpie
More on that music here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U34MFcJdGCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U34MFcJdGCo)

Spoilers: turns out it actually comes from a stock sound effects CD and was
used in a handful of other games, too!

------
patorjk
There are some good gaming history channels on youtube (ex: "The Gaming
Historian"). They typically cover stuff from the Atari and NES era, and tend
to use the original hardware to show off the games. I hadn't even thought
about how such a show might work 20 years from now. I'm glad to see someone is
thinking about how to best preserve the current era of games, because gaming
history is actually pretty interesting and says a lot about our culture.

------
facepalm
Funny idea - what if all the moves and chat messages in World of Warcraft were
recorded, and in the future would be replayed for spectators to watch? It
would be an exact representation of peoples lives while they were playing WoW.
Somewhat eerie.

~~~
navbaker
Tangentially related, but this recent article is one of my favorites about WoW
and nostalgia: [http://kotaku.com/the-people-who-still-play-world-of-
warcraf...](http://kotaku.com/the-people-who-still-play-world-of-warcraft-
like-it-s-2-1704465372)

~~~
digi_owl
Giving up the girl to kill the dragon, don't think i'll ever have that level
of dedication to a game. But perhaps it was more the community thing than the
game thing. I keep having the impression that what keeps many playing WoW is
that it is pretty much a oversized chat room for them. That is where the
people they know "hang" so that is where people need to get hold of them, and
so it becomes self-reinforcing.

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RattCatcher
Save the throwaway game's history!

Because really, what else compares for wasting time than fucking video games?

~~~
irishcoffee
Watching a tv show? Watching a movie? Pintrest? Reddit? HN? Facebook? Twitter?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well, video games are unique in being able to suck an entire weekend away
without you noticing.

~~~
corysama
If you've never spent a solid week on a couch reading a book, I highly
recommend doing so at least once in your life.

~~~
logfromblammo
A whole week? Even the biggest novels top out at around 1000 pages. The
fattest single-volume mass-market paperback novels I have seen other people
actually reading are King's _It_, Michener's _Hawaii_, Mitchell's _Gone With
the Wind_, and Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_. Those _might_ last the whole week,
_if_ you spent most of it napping.

That said, I recommend it be done on a sandy beach or on a hammock rather than
the couch, and at least once per year, rather than once per lifetime.

~~~
corysama
For me, it was Stephen King's "The Stand" (1152 pages) when I was on summer
break in high school. I fully admit it would be harder for me to schedule a
stretch like that today.

