Podcast Interview: Zach from the UT Video Game Archive

Zach, from the UT Video Game Archive, talks about archiving video game history and how indie game developers can get their games archived…

You can download the podcast here…
http//www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gamearchive-podcast.mp3

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gamearchive-podcast.mp3

Show Notes:
Interview with Zach, the archivist from the UT video game archive.

Interview was conducted at the Austin Game Developers Conference

Their purpose is to preserve and document game history, through preserving games as well as documents and materials that are produced in the process of game development.

They preserve games themselves as well as design documents, correspondence between different teams working on a game, conceptual art, audio files, and occasionally some actual code.
Since they are trying to build their collection now, it’s a little restrictive when the get stuff. They plan that once their collection gets a little bit more established they will open it entirely to the public. The public will be able to browse through the inventory lists and request items.
There is a website you can visit now to get abreast of what’s going on or to submit things:
http://www.cah.utexas.edu/projects/videogamearchive/

Recently the archive was sent a dvd from tangent games. On it was all the code to one of their games, along with design notes, artwork, different versions of the game, assets, and tools.

The design documents and hand written notes are what Zach considers the most interesting items to look at. The hand written notes let you see how the person thinks. The correspondence between different teams is also very interesting.

Warren Spector from Ion Storm sent a submission. Zach enjoyed looking at the design notes and seeing how much feedback he had gotten and seeing how Warren managed to synthesize it into one working design document.

www.utvideogamearchive.org (both links take you to the same page)

Take care,
Action