Thursday, February 14, 2008
Currently trying to set something up for game preservation. I came across the Gameology emulation blog post from Laurie, which asks the question: when is emulation enough?
Myself I appreciate the emulation scene to preserve games that way, as digitalizing through emulation saves a lot of space and issues with hardware compatibility. Personally I prefer however the game as it was originally perceived, which means as much the visuals as the playability. A game is not only the graphics mixed with the gameplay, it is also the materiality of the hardware it is played on. My preference has probably also to do with my preference of perceiving a game not as something that is played with the mind alone but also with the physical body. Differences in controls, control schemes makes for different bodily actions. Every gameplatform has its own materiality one way or the other, disregarding that is throwing part of the game experience into the bin.
The IGDA has a special interest group (SIG) dealing with game preservation. More about it can be read at the igda wiki.
I never had any qualms about emulation until recently. I'm going to be teaching a videogame course next semester and I found myself buying an Atari 2600 so that my students could play the games on the original system -- particularly paddle games like Pong or Warlords.
Is "you need to play it on the original system" the new "you need to see it on the big screen?"
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