Games as Transformative Works

The Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures has a new issue out devoted entirely to games as tranformative works.  One particularly interesting article, “The everyday lives of video game developers: experimentally understanding underlying systems/structures,” is based on three years of ethnographic study of game developers in both the U.S. and India.  Another looks at games as examples of participatory culture.  Worth a read.

When preservation fails

Apparently, the United States government failed to keep detailed records on the manufacture of a critical component of the nuclear warheads on Trident missles.  They are now spending large sums of money trying to figure out how to manufacture it again.  While this is obviously a rather horrifying slip up, there may be a small bright spot for those of us interested in digital preservation.  We will doubtless see more and more situations of this kind as both government and industry discover that critical electronic records that they need to sustain various activities are vanishing without a trace.  The expense involved in trying to figure out how to recreate something like the Fogbank substance used in a Trident warhead should be a strong motivating force to fund preservation and records management work at a more appropriate level.

Retro Games destined for PSP?

Short article over at MTV Multiplayer, with a quote from a Sony exec indicating that they are interested in making retro games, including ones for non-Sony platforms available over the PSN network for use on the PSP.  I’m trying to think of a way to do this in a manageable fashion from Sony’s perspective that does not employ virtualization, and I’m coming up empty.  A question for our project is whether freelance efforts to develop emulators might begin to fade if the commercial players start providing their own emulators for earlier platforms.  It will also be interesting to see whether the game  companies care to share their emulator code.