Video games: Library of Congress cultural artifacts |
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Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, has a proposal that has been submitted for the consideration of the US Library of Congress, the research arm of the United States Congress and what is practically the national library of the United States of America.The proposal, to use the words of Heather Chaplin from the New York Times, is video games have "a history worth preserving and a culture worth studying." The proposal was drafted by a consortium: Stanford University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Illinois.
Video games have a cultural and historical significance. On March 8 at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007, Henry Lowood announced a game canon, a list of important video games worth preserving. "Creating this list is an assertion," Lowood said, "that digital games have a cultural significance and a historical significance."
The video game canon: "the stuff we have to protect first." Below is a list of the members of a five-person committee that presented a canon of games worth preserving at the GDC.
- Henry Lowood, curator, History of Science and Technology Collections, Stanford University
- Warren Spector and Steve Mertzky, game designers
- Matteo Bittanti, academic researcher, Humanities Lab, Stanford University
- Christopher Grant, game journalist, editor of joystiq.com
- Three classic games: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980)
- Tetris (1985) (The designer, Alexey Pajitnov, won a GDC Award at GDC 2007.)
- SimCity (1989)
- Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
- Civilization I (1991) / Civilization II (1996)
- Doom (1993)
- The Warcraft series: Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994), Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995), Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002)
- Sensible World of Soccer (1994)
Emulators and preservation. Lowood explained a particular challenge. Hardware has changed so much that thousands of games can only be played using emulators - which technically violate copyright laws. It's something to think about - isn't it - that emulators and piracy are serving, in their own way, to keep the memory of old games alive. Now let me see if I can bring up Shadow President (DC True, 1994) on DOSBox.
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Comments
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Shamefully ignorant list of games to be preserved so far. Not to say those games dont deserve a place in history but where are others like Pac ma, Space invaders, frogger, Elite, Asteroids, Command and Conquer, Rescue on Fractulas, etc
It took them long enough. I've been waiting for years for them to realize that video games aren't just a passing fad, and that even the very first video games are still played and loved like they were back when they first came into existence. I mean, how often have you gone and played some Pong, Pac-man, or Space Invaders? Point made.
I would like to see them make something of a more comprehensive list, but this is an okay start I suppose.
DUNE from Westwood Studios was the first RTS... How can the Civ games and Warcraft be on the list but their common predecessor isn't?
While I don't doubt those are some good games, where are the games everyone knows: Pac-Man, Galaga, Centipede, etc.?
Never really took off until Warcraft. I mean next you'll be suggesting Wolfenstein should be in rather than Doom, which is quite clearly ridiculous as, like Warcraft, Doom solidified the genre.
I'm stunned to see Sensible World of Soccer on the list. Ecstatic, but stunned.
That list was wrong, the important game are those with significant history like: Pong for the arcade(first game ever made), Mario bros. for the NES (best selling itle), Half Life 2 (Best application of physics and mathematical knowledge that has ever been put on a video game), Tetris for the arcade (first game made by government funds {Russia} and it's expansion to the USA), Quake (first game to have it's source code leaked out thus being one of the games who boosted the idea of piracy in videogames), World of Warcraft for the pc (shows hthe effect of videogames on people's live and how it's addiction can destroy lives), and Spasim (The First First-Person-Shooter 3D Multiplayer Networked Game
{1974})
Wow you dont know anyting about games Grumpy stfu you never played Warcraft Orcs and Humans when it came out for the PC (at that time the Win 95 was out) so you have no gaming history at all and your going to call the list shameful stfu before i ***** slap you
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