Zach Vowell and Tim Arnold archivists supreme
One fine sweltering day here in Texas, Tim and I got to visit The University of Texas Videogame archive, a magical place full of the most delightful and historic games ever created!
The archive, which officially launched in September 2007, features ancient hardware, design documents, meeting agendas, and composition tapes. Anything and everything that goes into making games is piled, boxed, and/or crammed into this small room of academic endeavor. The following Q & A comes from our discussion with Zach Vowell and Tim Arnold, the main gents that run the archive.
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Question: We don’t mean to sound brash, but why chronicle game development? It seems almost recreational.
Answer: It’s an interesting subject in its own right: How are games made? For the vast majority of the public, and even for the majority of gamers, it’s a black box—most people have only a superficial understanding of what and who goes into the making of a game.
Q: So does the design process differ drastically between genres? For a drastic example between Final Fantasy and Halo?
Well, ultimately, this is the reason we want to document game development. We recognize that game development is a serious, often creative pursuit, and that it has given us some of the most influential cultural products in recent memory. And, as many have pointed out, since games are interactive, they are an entirely new kind of creative work.
But only a very shallow sort of research can be conducted if there are no repositories of documentation, particularly primary sources, for researchers to draw upon. And we in no way claim that the UT Videogame Archive is a one-stop shop for videogame research.
The archive is packed to the wall with gaming relics, such as this Atari disk drive and joystick.
Q: Isn’t “research” just an excuse to play the best video games throughout history!?
A: Is there something wrong with that?
Q: (Chuckles) Not at all. But seriously, when did you realize that you wanted to chronicle video games as a medium?
A: The people responsible for bringing us to this realization were video game developers who were concerned with the imminent loss of video game history if something was not done now. Those developers being Richard Garriott, Warren Spector, and George Sanger. Their first contact with us would have been in early 2007, but it was not until the middle part of that year that the Briscoe Center decided to establish the archive.
We recognize that game development is a serious, often creative pursuit, and that it has given us some of the most influential cultural products in recent memory.
Q: Spector, Garriot, and Sanger are fantastic contacts. What other gaming heroes would you like to add to your collection? John Carmack?
Texas-based game development is of particular interest, so yes, Carmack is pretty much at the top of our list, though we have not directly asked him for donations yet. The rest of id Software’s original team, most notably John Romero and Tom Hall, are also on our radar. In fact, we’ve started discussions with Hall already.
Other game development veterans we’ve received donations from include Gordon Walton, Rich Vogel, Harvey Smith, and Heather Kelley. And indeed all of these worked extensively in Texas.
Alkabeth, Richard Garriot's breakthrough title with original sketches
I’ve met and corresponded with Chris Crawford, the noted game designer of Eastern Front (1941), Balance of Power, and Trust and Betrayal; early theorist of the possibilities of interactive game design; and the founder of the Computer Game Developers Conference (now GDC). Though he has not committed any donations yet, we remain interested in what he might contribute.
Going back to Texas, I’ve briefly talked with Raph Koster, who worked on Ultima Online here in Austin for a time. Apogee and 3D Realms staff, especially Apogee’s founder Scott Miller, would also be of interest.
Then, if you’re really allowing me to think with my head in the clouds, certainly we’d love to talk with the likes of Will Wright, Sid Meier, Trip Hawkins, Peter Molyneux, etc. One particularly intriguing developer from the AIAS Hall of Fame — a group I’m borrowing from here, as you might have guessed — is Danielle Bunten Berry, fka Dan Bunten. Danielle passed away in 1998, and I’ve attempted to locate her papers a couple of times to no avail. If anyone knows her papers’ whereabouts, I’d be extremely interested in knowing if the current custodian would be willing to donate them to the UT Videogame Archive.
GPB's Tim Horn, former blogger now Knight of Legend
Q: Hot damn! That’s quite a list, does this influence your plans for the future of the archive?
A: I would like the archive to become well-rounded in three areas: 1) A body of documentation in all media formats, from paper to digital video to the games themselves, which gives the researchers a glimpse into the inner workings of game development. 2) Public access to a machine (and I know I’m really dreaming here) where researchers can play ROMs of games from all sorts of platforms, PCs, consoles, arcades, etc. etc. Or, in cases where console hardware is still available for use, researcher access to the original hardware. 3) And lastly, a reference library that provides access to the most current writings, scholarly and otherwise, about video games and their effect on our culture.
How are games made? For the vast majority of the public, and even for the majority of gamers, it’s a black box.
Q: Didn’t you mention that Goodwill has set up virtual servers for you to play games?
A: At the moment, the Goodwill Computer Museum has not yet set up servers that would allow us to play games meant for obsolete hardware/software configurations. Instead, at least in our collaboration with them, GCM has set up a machine that will allow us to preserve access to digital media (floppies, zip disks, etc.) found in the collections. So far, we’ve found in these media art/visual assets from Duke Nukem 3-D, Crusader: No Remorse, and Prey, audio files from Advanced Tactical Fighters, The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, Putt-Putt Goes to the Zoo, and various SNES games George Sanger contributed to, milestone deliveries for Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, and unidentified (as yet) documents for a baseball game developed by Looking Glass Technologies. As we go, we hope to expand the capabilities of our collaboration, so that we can eventually recover digital content from just about any media, and do so within the content’s original hardware/OS/software environment.
This is the inside cover of a game from the late 80's, displaying the fact that developers had a different market presence.
Q: So do you primarily play older titles? What are you playing at the moment?
A: I have to be honest, I’m not much of a gamer anymore. I loved my parents’ Texas Instruments TI-99/4A games, as well as any Nintendo, Sega, or arcade I could get my hands on when I was a kid, but after the TI lost support, neither my family nor I ever owned a console or gaming PC, and I somehow lost the bug when it became inconvenient to seek out places where I could play. Anyway, end of sob story. But I will also say that approaching games from an archival perspective has brought much of the intrigue back, though I still haven’t gotten that first console or gaming PC. I tried to download Deus Ex and Portal from Steam awhile back, but my current home PC is way too dinky RAM-wise.
Q: So what are your top five games?
(Chuckles) Well taking the preceding answer into account, in no particular order: Super Mario Bros., Kid Icarus, Blaster Master, Parsec (on old TI game), and NBA Live ‘98.
Q: Nice. Okay we’re gonna wrap up here, but we wanted to get your opinion on the general stigma concerning video games as a low-brow form of entertainment.
Well I can say that the more we research, the better we can confront that stigma. Literary scholars and historians of art/music/film have long been interested in the processes—creative and otherwise—involved in the making of literature, art, music, and film, and we see game development in the same light.
It was also obvious from various dated game packaging that the documents, maps, etc. were more detailed. One fighting game from the mid 80's even came with a copy of the I Ching!
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Thanks again to Zach and Tim for their courtesy and hard work. Live Long and Prosper.
