Documenting Pocket Universes: New Approaches to Preserving Online Games
-
Derek L. Murphy
Derek L. Murphy is a graduate student in the School of Library & Information Science at Simmons College where he is the Fellow for Dean’s Initiatives. In that capacity he writes for the blog
Unbound: Library Futures Unfettered , and hosts and edits the podcastBeyond the Stacks: Innovative Careers in Library and Information Science . He has previously worked in libraries and film archives and is currently in post-production on his documentary featureSarasota Half in Dream. 
Abstract
When preserving massively multiplayer online video games over the long term, archivists must reckon with their player cultures or risk losing a crucial component in understanding the games. This article advocates for documenting player cultures in these games, investigates recent amateur archival efforts, and suggests possible new methods of documentation and preservation when one works with these games. Successful and suggested approaches include ethnographic writing, video documentation, and the crowd-sourcing of contributions from the player community itself.
About the author
Derek L. Murphy is a graduate student in the School of Library & Information Science at Simmons College where he is the Fellow for Dean’s Initiatives. In that capacity he writes for the blog Unbound: Library Futures Unfettered, and hosts and edits the podcast Beyond the Stacks: Innovative Careers in Library and Information Science. He has previously worked in libraries and film archives and is currently in post-production on his documentary feature Sarasota Half in Dream.
References
Adams, Suellen S. “What Games Have to Offer: Information Behavior and Meaning-Making in Virtual Play Spaces.” Library Trends 57.4 (2009): 676–93.10.1353/lib.0.0058Search in Google Scholar
Ashley, Robert. “Episode 2: Gotta Catch ’em All.” A Life Well Wasted. 3 March 2009. http://alifewellwasted.com/2009/03/03/episode-two-gotta-catch-em-all/ (accessed 11/15/14).Search in Google Scholar
Bartle, Richard A. “Archaeology Versus Anthropology: What Can Truly Be Preserved?” In Preserving Complex Digital Objects. Eds. Janet Delve and David Anderson. London: Facet Publishing, 2014, pp. 13–20.Search in Google Scholar
Blizzard Entertainment. “World of Warcraft: Azeroth by the Numbers.” Battle.net. Blizzard Entertainment, 28 Jan. 2014. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/12346804/world-of-warcraft-azeroth-by-the-numbers-1-28-2014 (accessed 11/28/14).Search in Google Scholar
Casey, Michael. “Real Economist Learns from Virtual World.” The Wall Street Journal Business. The Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2010. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/21/real-economist-takes-lessons-from-virtual-world/ (accessed 11/20/14).Search in Google Scholar
Chow, Anthony, et al. “The Information Needs of Virtual Users: A Study of Second Life Libraries.” Library Quarterly 82.4 (2012): 477–510.10.1086/667436Search in Google Scholar
Community Virtual Library. About CVL. Community Virtual Library Foundation, n. d. http://www.infoisland.org/about-cvl (accessed 10/18/2015).Search in Google Scholar
“EALand: See You Soon Party.” Online video clip. Archiving Virtual Worlds. The Internet Archive, 2008. https://archive.org/details/EALand_SeeYouSoonParty (accessed 11/15/14).Search in Google Scholar
Enis, Matt. “Saving Games: Video Games, Quickly Changing Touchstones of Digital Culture, Present Significant Challenges.” Library Journal 138.17 (2013): 44.Search in Google Scholar
GradualDIME. It’s Real to Me. n. p., n. d. http://itsrealtome.com/ (accessed 4/29/15).Search in Google Scholar
How They Got Game Group. Archiving Virtual Worlds. Internet Archive, n. d. https://archive.org/details/virtual_worlds (accessed 11/20/14).Search in Google Scholar
Karlova, Natascha, and Jin Ha Lee. “Playing with Information: Information Work in Online Gaming Environments.” Proceedings of the 2012 iConference (2012): 441–43.10.1145/2132176.2132241Search in Google Scholar
Lofgren, Eric, and Nina Fefferman. “The Untapped Potential of Virtual Game Worlds to Shed Light on Real World Epidemics.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 7.9 (2007): 625–29.10.1016/S1473-3099(07)70212-8Search in Google Scholar
Martin, Crystle. “Video Games, Identity, and the Constellation of Information.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32.5 (2012): 384–92.10.1177/0270467612463797Search in Google Scholar
McDonough, Jerome. “A Tangled Web: Metadata and Problems in Game Preservation.” The Preservation of Complex Objects, Volume 3, Gaming Environments and Virtual Worlds. Eds. Janet Delve, David Anderson, Milena Dobreva, Drew Baker, Clive Billenness, and Leo Konstantelos. London: JISC, 2013, pp. 49–62.Search in Google Scholar
Nardi, Bonnie. “Mixed Realities: Information Spaces Then and Now.” Information Research 13.4 (2008). Available at http://www.informationr.net/ir/13-4/paper354.html (accessed 9/20/15).Search in Google Scholar
Nardi, Bonnie. My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010.Search in Google Scholar
Pierce, David. “The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929.” The Library of Congress; Council on Library and Information Resources. Library of Congress, Sept, 2013. http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/files/2013silent_films_rpt.pdf (accessed 11/28/2014).Search in Google Scholar
Steinkuehler, Constance. “Massively Multiplayer Online Games & Education: An Outline of Research.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (2007): 675–85.10.3115/1599600.1599726Search in Google Scholar
Thacker, Issac. Personal interview. 11 March 2015.Search in Google Scholar
“TV Story on Earth to Avatars Conference on ‘Weird Web’ Segment of Strange Universe (Oct 1996).” Online video clip. Archiving Virtual Worlds. The Internet Archive, 2007. https://archive.org/details/TvStoryOnEarthToAvatarsConferenceOnweirdWebSegmentOfStrange (accessed 11/20/14).Search in Google Scholar
Winget, Megan. “Videogame Preservation and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62.10 (2011): 1869–83.10.1002/asi.21530Search in Google Scholar
“World of Warcraft Forums.” Battle.net. Blizzard Entertainment. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/984270/ (accessed 10/18/15).Search in Google Scholar
“Worlds Thread.” Archived online forum thread. 4chandata. 4chan, 29 Sept. 2012. http://4chandata.org/v/Worlds-ThreadAny-of-you-ever-explored-worlds-Anyone-want-to-http--www-youtube-com-watchfeatureendscreenviqel0k0NzNUNR1-a84953 (accessed 11/30/2014).Search in Google Scholar
© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- From the Editor-in-Chief
- From the Editor-in-Chief: Introduction
- Articles
- For Want of a Nail: Three Tropes in Data Curation
- Building Institutional Digitization Guidelines and Benchmarks for Nontraditional Materials and Collections: A Case Study of a Curious Collection of Fabric Swatches
- Documenting Pocket Universes: New Approaches to Preserving Online Games
- Currents and Comments
- Currents and Comments
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- From the Editor-in-Chief
- From the Editor-in-Chief: Introduction
- Articles
- For Want of a Nail: Three Tropes in Data Curation
- Building Institutional Digitization Guidelines and Benchmarks for Nontraditional Materials and Collections: A Case Study of a Curious Collection of Fabric Swatches
- Documenting Pocket Universes: New Approaches to Preserving Online Games
- Currents and Comments
- Currents and Comments
