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OfficiousBrick35 karma

First off: thank you all for taking this on. I am a doctoral student in digital studies at a US research university and have watched this problem develop from the margins. Many of us in higher ed are frustrated that this endeavor has received so little attention and we ourselves are relatively limited in what we can accomplish. Without interest from our administration and no resources to invest in procuring and curating physical artifacts, we've taken to live-streaming games to preserve the experience. What obstacles and considerations are there in this? What else can be accomplished through universities to contribute? Are there grants available to fund archiving projects?

With regard to MMOs, I'm personally intrigued by the Star Wars Galaxies project and the collaborative reverse engineering that's being conducted to reconstruct the initial SWG experience. Is this a viable model or are they on borrowed time?

Thanks so much for your work to preserve this cultural institution!

OfficiousBrick6 karma

Curious if you could share the legal justification for preserving MMOs. I get the socio-cultural value of these artifacts but I'd love to hear your perspective. Also, what differences and similarities exist (if any) between the fights to preserve games and to preserve software in general?

OfficiousBrick4 karma

Absolutely - in academic circles, there's no shortage of justification and the amount of anthropological, psychological, sociological, etc. etc . research that can be undertaken in these spaces is incredible. So much has already been done but as you know, we were hardly able to scratch the surfaces of these platforms before they disappeared.

Wondering if any MUDs, MOOs, or the like are also on the radar? I imagine that many of them still exist in some form or another. Just curious.

OfficiousBrick4 karma

Correct. Ok. No.

OfficiousBrick3 karma

It would be wonderful if this were the case. When toying with the idea to start a platform archive here at UWM, we ran into issues of space, and security. Funding, of course, is also the big issue: to obtain platform hardware and backups for parts is prohibitively expensive. Have independent collectors and dealers affected these prices?