Digital Cowboys: Episode 124
Posted on : 03-10-2009 | By : Alex Shaw | In : Podcasts
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Preserving Games / Halo 3: ODST
Commander Tim of Gamehounds and The Widget joins us this week to discuss one of his specialties; the preservation of software and hardware, and what happens to our precious video games as the ravages of time render tapes unplayable and chips into soldered garbage. What’s being done to keep these memories alive? Some surprising home truths come to light about the finite nature of our favorite form of entertainment.
After this we have a full review of Halo 3: ODST from Tony and I. Find out if it’s over-hyped, under-hyped or actually worthy of being a full-price game. Along with this we have competition updates and my brand new game-related project for 2010.
Marian Call supplies the music for the end of the show with the particularly appropriate ‘In the Black’ from her album ‘Got to Fly’.
Enjoy.
Alex
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Sorry to tell you this, but some of the songs and advertisements for this episode are edited in a minute or so early (Specifically the “Some Other Castle” advert and the Paul and Storm song “Cheetos”). The run over your voices, drowning you out, and leaving large segments of silence where they should be. Also, there seems to be background music throughout much of the episode (Not sure if that was done on purpose or not, it seemed kind of awkwardly edited at times to me).
Anyway, I am one of the few users of the Zune platform, as opposed to iTunes, so I am leaving you your first review there (it is too long, but then again, so is this comment. It’s how I do things). I don’t know if you count that into your contest or not, but you might want to mention that people can review your show there as well (unless you simply don’t care about the Zune platform, which I could understand. It’s hard to make a case for it against iTunes, even if I personally prefer it).
Aside from the editing issues, I enjoyed the show a lot. I can’t say I personally care much about physically saving hardware, but the preservation of the hardware documentation, as well as software, is pretty important to me. I know that Archive.org is working on trying to archive any media that has fallen into public domain, as well as taking snapshots of the internet as a whole for historical reference. They have a software section of the website, which has a lot of content from CLASP (Classic Software Preservation Project) which includes some games.
Thanks for the feedback and letting us know early Chris. I’ve gone back to the original edit and moved the unruly tracks. It was a pretty easy mistake to make at 1am after six hours of editing, but that doesn’t make it any less stupid. I’ve also removed most of the background music from the preservation discussion.
I was going for something of a ‘Life Well Wasted’ vibe, but it may have come off as distracting. If you downloaded that version, my apologies, but you have still snagged yourself a rarity. Like an action figure with the wrong backing card. It may be worth a mint in years to come.
We’ll have a Zune competition too, but you are the first person to request one. The new podcast should be up very soon.
The only problem with CLASP is that they can only release a piece of software that they’ve archived when the patent has run out. It’s an amazing project, and someday could very well be the definitive archive of classic software, but again, they hit the wall of legality. As it stands right now, it’s nothing more than a highly public personal collection.
Alex, I believe you have confused me with someone else, as my name is not Chris. Anyway, regarding the background music, it just seemed more pronounced and greater in quantity than any background music you have had in the past, so I thought it might have been part of the botched editing. You say that the first version of this podcast is now ultra rare, and therefore, a collectors item, which begs the questions, who is in charge of the Podcast Preservation Project? In 30 years, we will talk about the great podcasts we used to listen to, but they will all be gone!
Commander Tim, thanks for clarifying CLASP for me. I had seen it when fooling around with the Archive.org Wayback Machine, and honestly didn’t know too much about it. Having now read through some more of the details of it, while you are correct that they don’t release anything still under copyright, they are legally allowed to copy and preserve it, due to a case they won, granting them exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So, while they aren’t currently distributing these titles, they are being preserved, so that’s at least something.
That was a great discussion on game preservation, it’s one of those topics that make you sit up and listen instead of letting the podcast drone on in the background.
Sorry again MS HUman. I was up till 2 editing, then Chris O regan (Kropotkin of Superhappyfuntimeshow) texted me and woke me up to outline the problems with the show so i lurched out of bed and ran into the office to re-edit. I must have blearily looked at your comments and thought you were him.
As I said, the music in the first section was all intentional but clearly was way too overbearing. Also your point about Podcast preservation is a very good one. They’re the ultimate in disposable entertainment, but so many hours of work go into them. It just seems wrong that they disappear forever.
I guess I caught the re-edit, as the music sat really well with me, it added to the discussion as it was quite and emotional subject I would say. Gaming is something we love, and we have seen what has happened in other media where some classic works have been lost, and now is definatly the time to look into this as the majority of the early games are still playable in some form, but before long more and more will become lost forever.
We can think of this documenting of hardware and software as extracting the DNA of gaming, so at any point in the future, technology permitting, recreation will be possible.