Historic video game console at Stanford University Green Library media room.
March 26, 2010 -- The Preserving Virtual Worlds project team met recently in Palo Alto, CA. Participants discussed the project’s many results which touch upon how institutions could collect and preserve virtual worlds like Second Life and highly complex multi-player video games. Hardware and software obsolecence, intellectual property issues and metadata capture are all challenges the project is addressing.
As part of the effort, the team created the Archiving Virtual Worlds Collection. (external link)The collection is made up of information resources that support research into and the preservation of video games. Included are documentation of the development of important Second Life projects like Gone Gitmo (external link) a virtual installation of the Guantanamo Bay Prison, interviews with gamers and game developers, and video captures of key moments in virtual worlds. An example of the latter is the video EA-Land: The Final Countdown (external link); EA-Land was a massively multiplayer online game and the video captures the last moments before it closed in 2008.
The group toured the Stanford University Green Library media room, which provides access to an extensive video game collection. The collection is used a teaching resource for education technology, as well as gaming history, psychology and development.
Preserving Virtual Worlds project team.
The Preserving Virtual Worlds project expects to issue a final report in the near future. The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program provides support for the project.
