No B.S.: The Contemporary Practice of Game Education, Design, and Development

This interview is excerpted from a series we conducted in 2010 with Quentin Rezin, a scripter/level designer at inXile Entertainment (http://www.inxile-entertainment.com/). Prior to joining inXile, Rezin studied computer science at the University of Arkansas and interned at Disney Interactive Studios/Buena Vista Games. He is currently working on Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

Evoking the Inexpressible: The Fine Art and Business of Games

This interview is excerpted from a series we conducted in early 2010 with Brian J. Moriarty,  Professor of Practice at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Moriarty has been developing games for the better part of 30 years, and has worked for Analog, Infocom, LucasArts, Rocket Science, Mpath, Hearme, Skotos Tech, and ImaginEngine. He has produced a host of critically and commercially acclaimed titles, including Wishbringer, Trinity, Beyond Zork, and Loom, which earned MacWorld's Adventure Game of the Year in 1990

Sustaining Software Preservation Efforts Through Use and Communities of Practice

The brief history of software preservation efforts illustrates one phenomenon repeatedly: not unlike spinning a plate on a broomstick, it is easy to get things going, but difficult to keep them stable and moving. Within the context of video games and other forms of cultural heritage (where most software preservation efforts have lately been focused), this challenge has several characteristic expressions, some technical (e.g., the difficulty of capturing and emulating protected binary files and proprietary hardware), and some legal (e.g., providing archive users with access to preserved games in the face of variously threatening end user licence agreements). In other contexts, such as the preservation of research-oriented software, there can be additional challenges, including insufficient awareness and training on unusual (or even unique) software and hardware systems, as well as a general lack of incentive for preserving “old data.” We believe that in both contexts, there is a relatively accessible solution: the fostering of communities of practice. Such groups are designed to bring together like-minded individuals to discuss, share, teach, implement, and sustain special interest groups—in this case, groups engaged in software preservation. In this paper, we present two approaches to sustaining software preservation efforts via community. The first is emphasizing within the community of practice the importance of “preservation through use,” that is, preserving software heritage by staying familiar with how it feels, looks, and works. The second approach for sustaining software preservation efforts is to convene direct and adjacent expertise to facilitate knowledge exchange across domain barriers to help address local needs; a sufficiently diverse community will be able (and eager) to provide these types of expertise on an as-needed basis. We outline here these sustainability mechanisms, then show how the networking of various domain-specific preservation efforts can be converted into a cohesive, transdisciplinary, and highly collaborative software preservation team. [This paper is a conference pre-print presented at IDCC 2020 after lightweight peer review.

Before It’s Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper

Over the last four decades, electronic games have profoundly changed the way people play, learn, and connect with each other. Despite the tremendous impact of electronic games, however, until recently, relatively few programs existed to preserve them for future generations of players and researchers. Recognizing the need to save the original content and intellectual property of electronic games from media rot, obsolescence, and loss, the Game Preservation Special Interest Group of the International Game Developers Association has issued a white paper summarizing why electronic games should be preserved, problems that must be solved to do so, some potential solutions, and why all these issues should matter to everyone interested in electronic games and play in general. In the white paper, the editing of which was partially supported by the Preserving Virtual Worlds project and by funds from the Library of Congress, its editor and six authors (Rachel Donahue created a survey for IGDA members not included in this article) issue a call for heightened awareness of the need to preserve electronic games—endangered by relatively rapid electronic decay and intellectual neglect alike—for play scholarship and for the culture of the twenty-first century

Apportioned Commodity Fetishism and the Transformative Power of Game Studies

This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as practice, persona, and vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification

Game for Anything

Two unmarried academic colleagues who live and research together also search for jobs together in academia

"Stay Small and Keep it All": Making a Big Splash in Boutique Game Development

This interview is excerpted from a series we conducted in 2010 with Michael Thornton Wyman,  founder and CEO of Big Splash Games (http://www.bigsplashgames.com/). Big Splash Games is a boutique game design and development studio well known for its Chocolatier series of casual games. Before founding Big Splash Games, Wyman worked as a Producer for Electronic Arts and Maxis, and a Project Leader for Lucas Learning, contributing to such titles as SSX On Tour, Def Jam Fight For New York, Star Wars Pit Droids, and SimTunes

Sustaining Software Preservation Efforts Through Use and Communities of Practice

The brief history of software preservation efforts illustrates one phenomenon repeatedly: not unlike spinning a plate on a broomstick, it is easy to get things going, but difficult to keep them stable and moving. Within the context of video games and other forms of cultural heritage (where most software preservation efforts have lately been focused), this challenge has several characteristic expressions, some technical (e.g., the difficulty of capturing and emulating protected binary files and proprietary hardware), and some legal (e.g., providing archive users with access to preserved games in the face of variously threatening end user licence agreements). In other contexts, such as the preservation of research-oriented software, there can be additional challenges, including insufficient awareness and training on unusual (or even unique) software and hardware systems, as well as a general lack of incentive for preserving “old data.” We believe that in both contexts, there is a relatively accessible solution: the fostering of communities of practice. Such groups are designed to bring together like-minded individuals to discuss, share, teach, implement, and sustain special interest groups—in this case, groups engaged in software preservation. In this paper, we present two approaches to sustaining software preservation efforts via community. The first is emphasizing within the community of practice the importance of “preservation through use,” that is, preserving software heritage by staying familiar with how it feels, looks, and works. The second approach for sustaining software preservation efforts is to convene direct and adjacent expertise to facilitate knowledge exchange across domain barriers to help address local needs; a sufficiently diverse community will be able (and eager) to provide these types of expertise on an as-needed basis. We outline here these sustainability mechanisms, then show how the networking of various domain-specific preservation efforts can be converted into a cohesive, transdisciplinary, and highly collaborative software preservation team. [This paper is a conference pre-print presented at IDCC 2020 after lightweight peer review.