Decline Felipepepe is unpleasant and points fingers - I wrote yet another rant on Gamasutra

[buzz]

Of course few bother about this article, it's as niche as you could get.

I mean, if the target audience of that article are people who moan about some shitty demo for some popular horror game, you really think you're going to gauge interest by talking about obscure cRPGs and shit? Articles and interviews and discussions about PLATO games, the Adventure Construction Set and various mentions of things like CGW, CRPGAddict, Neverwinter Nights modules and so on.

Most gamers care about gaming's history as far as this: First there was Pong, then there was Space Invaders and Pac-Man, then Mario came in and made everything awesome. When you say RPG, they'll think Chrono Trigger and Pokemon, not Pool of Radiance and Wizardry.

Even that Polygon article you praised, it's about Street Fighter 2 - arguably the most popular fighting game of all time. It's not about Guilty Gear or some obscure SNK fighter or whatever. It has roughly the same historical value a detailed article on Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time would have.

I really enjoyed reading it but still, it's "Why aren't unpopular things more popular?". It's a quintessential problem in human history. You think people gave much of a fuck about Robert Wiene outside of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari? The only thing I've found at a quick glance was this 1999 book about his other films, with only one single review on Amazon.



The only thing that can be done is do your own part, and hope for the best. As long as that one blog, website and book keeps getting made, it's a fine effort. Trust me, the cRPG part of gaming has it quite well due to a few dedicated people like yourself. Other sides, they're like dead wastelands.

 

[Don Peste]

People seem very concerned about this at the Watch...

I likely fall in the "I don't really care whether GameA is preserved" camp. Media really has to impact you in a meaningful way for you to lament its loss and nothing in the digital age has really accomplished that for me.

There is one exception though and that's the sudden closure of City of Heroes

I'd probably care more about this kind of thing if life wasn't so terribly short and I didn't feel the obsession with history and culture locks us down and holds us back a lot more than it helps us.

Personally, I don't care much about gaming history. I understand that this guy who wrote the article is passionate about it, but to me, it isn't that interesting.

I didn't know FelipePepe is Brazilian. I thought out he was from Portugal.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Great article – but for now, you are only on muffled megaphone status there. Next time play the social or ethnic angle a bit more or outright claim its an article about mobile monetization.

(Civilized countries have an obligation to submit published world (books) to their national library for preservation – a decade ago, there was talk about treating websites the same way, it could as well (and even more easily) apply to games.)

 

[Ellef]

Add one more pageview here. You're fighting an admirable battle against the clickbait age, and as you say, archiving isn't profitable for these corporations and might even be counter-productive.

nothing tweetable/10

 

[Karwelas]

Falling of NWN Vault was worst thing for player modules that happens in last 10 years. I heard however that web archive of it have active download links.

 

[felipepepe]

Falling of NWN Vault was worst thing for player modules that happens in last 10 years. I heard however that web archive of it have active download links.

It worked when the vault feel for the first time, in 2013. The guys at the new vault used those to archive everything, AFAIK. But now they don't work, all the data has been removed from the servers.

Another reason why that year-long "down for maintenance" thing is pure bullshit.

 

[laclongquan]

Nnot enough foaming at the mouth ranting~

Also, register to comment? Fuck that~

 

[felipepepe]

The only thing that can be done is do your own part, and hope for the best. As long as that one blog, website and book keeps getting made, it's a fine effort.

Yeah, that's why I wrote that thing at the end, to incentive people to go out and the that one blog, that one website....

Other than that, all I can really do is criticize the hypocrisy.

 

[Karwelas]

Falling of NWN Vault was worst thing for player modules that happens in last 10 years. I heard however that web archive of it have active download links.

It worked when the vault feel for the first time, in 2013. The guys at the new vault used those to archive everything, AFAIK. But now they don't work, all the data has been removed from the servers.

Another reason why that year-long "down for maintenance" thing is pure bullshit.

I checked it again and you are right. Thanks God they get shitload of modules. Fans are what saves this fucked up decline times.

 

[Don Peste]

Beyond redemption?
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061332392&postcount=10

We have no means of playing the original Bard's Tale games besides buying decade-old boxes on eBay for a fortune (and finding a USB floppy reader) or being pirates...

What possible use will the new generations have for this ancient crap? They won't be spending much time playing these games, that's for sure. Maybe the present and the future is what people should focus on [Holocaust never happened?]. Also fuck Das Cabinet.

 

[Infinitron]

RPGWatch, ladies and gentleman.

Now I feel bad for saying good things about Dartagnan in the Watch drama thread.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Read the article, as a hoarder it strikes home and makes me feel ashamed, that I'm not doing enough.

Then I went the extra mile and read the comments over at RPGWatch. The quote you left there Don Peste is golden, sums up their ignorant attitudes quite nicely:

History has always proven to be a burden too heavy for man to carry.

Combine that with the classic "Those whom do not study history are doomed to repeat it" and we have one of Mankind's greatest failings. Man doesn't give a fuck about history, yet we wouldn't be here without it.

So as I've said before quite recently, EVERYTHING should be archived.

(On that note, someone shoot this Dartagnan guy, what an ignorant fuck.)

But I AM doing a little here, a little there.

Case in point, a game called Legend, known in the USA as The Four Crystals of Trazere, a little-known isometric RPG from 1992 that's not much talked about nowadays. I own a boxed copy of it, and decided to see what info I could find online about it, and one paragraph of the Wiki article mentions the demo for the game (and its sequel). The demo has unique content, not present in the full game itself. And it was ONLY released on the coverdisk for the first issue of PC Home. (A similar unique content demo was made for the sequel the year after and also only released on a PC Home coverdisk.)

Sooo...anyone know where to get a copy of that demo? Or the one for the sequel?

*tumbleweed intensifies*

Anyway, that got me thinking to the time many years ago when I found the Space Quest 6 demo on a coverdisc (which is also a unique content game demo) and asked the guys over at The Virtual Broomcloset if they wanted it. "YES!" was the answer, and I had to spend some time filtering out the files on the disc that didn't belong to the game and then upload an 80 Mb file to them. (Shortly afterwards I was contacted by an SQ fan who asked to buy the coverdisc from me, which I agreed to.) Odds are good that the only reason the SQ6 demo is accessible today is because of my efforts back then.

So yeah, I'm gonna continue being the old codger in the attic with the dusty magazines and game boxes, yelling at 1337 gamer kidz to git off ma lawn and making sure this stuff survives for coming generations.

 

[Infinitron]

Unkillable Cat I remember the SQ6 demo! I also remember that for some reason, the demo worked faster on my aging computer than the final game did, despite having seemingly identical graphics. It was quite frustrating.

Bjorns and lemon sorbet, though. Good times.

 

[laclongquan]

Truth be told, I am not sure a great solution can be found. Many good ones, perhaps.

The asking of people to care is doomed to fail because history is a dry subject and you wont get that many interested. You can try but I doubt it goes well.

The effort of Wayback machine people is good and all, but it's a single source of failure. If the group fail, server down and there it goes~

Crowdsourcing a service to backup game related material?

 

[Lord Azlan]

Felipepepe

You sir - are slowly becoming one of my heroes. A real interesting and well written article taking us to places none of us want to go.

The only other articles I have ever read about the loss of PC Gaming history were also penned by you.

It sort of gets me hot and motivated - but where do I sign up? I can't say I don't have time to help since I just spend 100+ hours on Lords of Xulima.

Hmmmm

"And please, whenever possible, show your support for people like the EFF, Rolo Kipp, Carey Martell, the CRPG Addcit, Matt Barton and countless other heroes out there. And especially to Brewster Kahle and the folks at the Internet Archive. We can't even comprehend how important their work is."

I just found out about Matt Barton the other day on the Dragon Wars posting. I have followed CRPG Addict for a while. I will sign up to others if I can.

It's clear a lot of history is being lost. Heck every time I gained a child or moved house the resulting binning of my PC stuff like boxes and magazines was really troubling - all that stuff is now lost to me but in a sense chronicled my personal history. However, I am not sure you have made the clear case of why preserving this stuff is important. I accept it's very emotional - but is it important? Why aren't there more people doing it - where are the Resources.

Personally I would like to see these important sources of information linked to each other. Why don't codex link to the Addict or Barton or even RPG Watch. Why don't Codex link to TTLG?

I think because technology is changing so fast that it was really difficult to plan properly the proper archiving of resources. Like in any office - the archiving is left for the most junior person or is a job done at the end. I can understand in the new world of computer gaming how a lot of this stuff was missed and really REALLY appreciate your efforts.

A question - how do I suscribe to your writings?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Personally I would like to see these important sources of information linked to each other. Why don't codex link to the Addict or Barton or even RPG Watch.

*chuckles*

 

[MicoSelva]

Well done, felipepepe, although I am afraid your article about people ignoring preservation of gaming history will be ignored by the same people.

Still, raising awareness of the issue is a noble goal, and I salute you.

 

[Karwelas]

The most powerful weapon are fans. Look at NWN community. They saved everything they can. Look at Thief Taffers. They still make FM for each game. Fuck, they even make their own version of Thief (Dark Mod) that is free engine to create and play.

Gothic, Doom, Blood, TES and other series/games have wonderful fucking people that still make them alive and better. Go into our Codex Thief thread. There are people that are part of this. Melan and skacky , our 'dex bros. Yandros and Random_Taffer, two taffers that are still newfags, but from best kind. I'm myself still newfag and I feel ashamed. I can only look at these wonderful fucking people like them, Unkillable Cat , felipepepe , Infinitron, JarlFrank. Like many others on dex I may don't know. Be proud, dex fags, becouse you have them there.

 

[Raghar]

Gamasutra didn't tweet about this article as far as I can see, nor is it featured on the front page. The mystery of no comments solved: hardly anyone is aware of it, even on Gamasutra itself, not to mention outside it.

Well he posted it on a blog, what do you expected? Post it on front page of RPGcodex, how one of RPGcodex member supports computer piracy.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Gamasutra didn't tweet about this article as far as I can see, nor is it featured on the front page. The mystery of no comments solved: hardly anyone is aware of it, even on Gamasutra itself, not to mention outside it.

Well he posted it on a blog, what do you expected? Post it on front page of RPGcodex, how one of RPGcodex member supports computer piracy.

I suggested having it posted on the Codex, but felipe chose Gamasutra over us.

Spoiler

Not the entire story.

 

[da_rays]

Very interesting read. 'Dex is always full of surprise.

First off , tip of the hat to you , felipepepe for writing the most stimulating read of the month. I didn't know you were so actively engage in cRPG history , preservation and what we are now , us the consummers , how you've decided to let things go and hang on to other. How much power we have , and how we use ( or not ) it...that made me reflect a lot on how much I care about the subject ( which , I was aware to some degree , but never took a real stop to think and analyze ) . Also made me realise how does the gaming community react a bit better now. Interesting stuff , I think you've changed my ''gamer soul'' today , hopefully more critically judging , invested and aware. Again , a good read that's gonna swirl , boil and cook in my mind for the rest of the week. Heh, I'm the more interested in your book now.

Thx again for the mirror on ourselves

 

[Cadmus]

I've read it, finally.
It's ok, but it can be applied to many other things, and not only cultural and you are trying to stir up an interest in the latest generation's latest hobby which is defined by a short attention span.
I don't like the melodramatic rhetoric "THESE HEROES ARE FIGHTING FOR US"

There's no way for me to learn an obscure 17th century song because that one paper it was written on by the author got burned 2 days later, there's no way for me to drive some obscure early 20th century car, etc.etc. It's kinda sad, but don't pretend that anything ever disappearing is a huge loss to us. You certainly got a point, like that plato dnd game or wtf surely should be remembered but not everything is worth the effort because there's no use for tons of this crap. I like the history, I think it would be really nice for us to be able to slowly amass a gigantic, all-encompassing treasury of human knowledge and accomplishments, but as you can see from the state of the world, it's not possible, feasible or really needed.

I don't want to sound anti-intellectual with this because I'm not, but I think you will hardly find enough people to care about any obscure shit in the history and that might be partly because not everything is so valuable as you are trying to indicate in your article.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Gamasutra didn't tweet about this article as far as I can see, nor is it featured on the front page. The mystery of no comments solved: hardly anyone is aware of it, even on Gamasutra itself, not to mention outside it.

They usually tweet these articles only the following day or so. And apparently promote it depending on pageviews... my aspect ratio article slowly climbed their frontpage, but that was a way more popular article, full of cool pictures of Guybrush.

I take that back: https://twitter.com/gamasutra/status/605770513508466690

 

[Unkillable Cat]

There's no way for me to learn an obscure 17th century song because that one paper it was written on by the author got burned 2 days later, there's no way for me to drive some obscure early 20th century car, etc.etc. It's kinda sad, but don't pretend that anything ever disappearing is a huge loss to us. You certainly got a point, like that plato dnd game or wtf surely should be remembered but not everything is worth the effort because there's no use for tons of this crap. I like the history, I think it would be really nice for us to be able to slowly amass a gigantic, all-encompassing treasury of human knowledge and accomplishments, but as you can see from the state of the world, it's not possible, feasible or really needed.

I don't want to sound anti-intellectual with this because I'm not, but I think you will hardly find enough people to care about any obscure shit in the history and that might be partly because not everything is so valuable as you are trying to indicate in your article.

The problem with this stance is that you're not thinking ahead. To us, today, most of this stuff may seem irrelevant or even useless, but what about future generations? Odd as it sounds, they may find remarkable value in something we find trivial or take for granted today. I'm not just talking about video games here, but history and preservation in general.

Yes, things get lost in history, everyone knows that. That's why archiving everything is so important, you never can tell what will last for thousands of years and what won't. The more that is preserved, the more likelyhood there is that something will survive...even the inconsequential stuff. A lot of original Latin text from the times of Rome that still exists today are receipts, boring correspondence and various pompous declarations.

The reason so few people get involved in stuff like this is because recognition and gratification for doing this work takes decades, even centuries. Humans have this habit of wanting to be alive and well when they're thanked for their life's achievements, not rotting in a wooden box underground. Short attention span, indeed. People don't even seem to bother to look at the bigger picture anymore.

 

[taxalot]

Beyond redemption?
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061332392&postcount=10

What possible use will the new generations have for this ancient crap? They won't be spending much time playing these games, that's for sure. Maybe the present and the future is what people should focus on [Holocaust never happened?]. Also fuck Das Cabinet.

Quoting an anonymous fellow codexer reactiong to this post in IM : "If Ray Charles were alive today, he'd be more like Kanye West."