With this project we hope to create a digital library record of the experiences of ordinary (and extra-ordinary) people who played video games in the 1980’s and 90’s. The past two decades saw amazing changes and developments (both technological and social) in the medium of video games. What is important to us is what those who played video games in this period thought about them. We recognise that a very significant part of video games as a medium are the people who play them. While it’s an important task (and a big challenge) for record-keepers to preserve old video games (hardware and software) to enable people to experience them in the future, it’s equally vital that we keep some record of what the people who played these games at the time actually felt about them and descriptions of how these games were played.

We want to know how the games that you played mattered to you, to hear about your favorite moments, and to re-live them with you. Tell us how you felt that time when you finally beat your older brother’s high score on Bubble Bobble, or what it was like to spend $20 on a 3 hour Mortal Kombat marathon at the arcades. We’re interested in hearing all about your favorite level in Lemmings, or why you always picked Chun-Li in StreetFighter 2.

The Narrators:

For the initial project, we should probably aim for aquiring recordings from at least two people each in formal “interview” sessions, from among our immediate friends and family. The only general criteria for participation should be that the person has played a game that was released in the 1980s or 1990s (a pretty broad range) and can remember enough about their experiences to talk about them at length. We shouldn’t restrict participants to talking just about a single game, though. They should be free to talk about their gaming experiences over the past two decades in a general sense. However, we are particularly interested in discussions of individual titles. If the narrator is able to limit their conversation to just discussing what they thought of PacMan as a title, and how and where they played that title, this would be more useful, especially when it comes to describing and organizing the content later on. I do realize, however, that it’s probably quite difficult to talk for ten sustained minutes about playing PacMan!

Personally, I’m thinking that one of my two interviews will involve more than one person, too: I would like to record my wife Michelle and her cousin Michael talking together about their experiences playing Doom & Woflenstein together with her brother and sister. They have told me in the past about how they used to set up a mattress in front of the computer and then fall back onto it, as if they had been shot, whenever the player was hit by an enemy attack.

The Interviewers:

A lot of the commentary on Oral Histories that I’ve looked at suggests that the role of the interviewer is quite an important one. Usually a trained social scientist or historian, the interviewer has a strong bearing on the quality and usefulness of the final outcome as she directs the flow of the conversation. While I do have a social science background, I don’t have any prior knowledge of oral history techniques. This means that, due to our time constraints, we’re just going to have to try our best with recording. I’d also like to experiment with allowing participants to record and submit their own narratives online. If the project is a success, I’d be interested in keeping the collection running, myself. I would like to set up a simple website with Greenstone and allow gamers from around the world to record their recollections and experiences for inclusion in the digital library.

File Formats:

The files can be recorded in .wav or .mp3, but will be converted into .mp3 for storage in the digital library. We’ve chosen .mp3 format, despite it being a reasonably ‘lossy’ format because it is generally accessible by the vast majority of computer systems in use today. Using .mp3 format will also provide us with relatively small audio files, which will be easier to manage when presenting the digital library for assessment on CD.

Interview Length:

At this stage at least, we should aim for recordings around five to ten minutes in length. It shouldn’t be an issue if we go over this time limit, though. We plan to edit down the files to approximately five minutes, for easier handling of the files, and to remove any extended pauses or tangential content. We may find that participants speak for much longer than this, or for quite a bit less - but we won’t really know until we start recording.

The Questions:

The interview should begin with a quick introduction, which will be useful for us when creating metadata, but also a way to warm the narrator up to speaking and answering questions. The narrator should state her name and age/age-group and perhaps be encouraged to share a little bit of her gaming background (e.g. “Do you remember the earliest video games you played? Do you still play video games now? Do you find you enjoy a particular type of game more than others?”). This is in line with giving context to the person speaking, helping those listening to her narrative in the future to get an idea of her perspective on the topic. Discussion of the particular game or event that the person wants to talk about would ideally come next, and will probably flow on from the introductory questions. The questions should be open - we want the other narrators to talk much more than we do as the interviewers - so as to draw out extended answers, as opposed to ‘yes/no’ responses.

• We could try asking the person to describe the circumstances in which they first came across the game they wish to talk about. Did someone introduce them to it? What was it like playing the game for the first time?
• It would be interesting to know where (and with whom) they played the game - did they play it at home, by themselves, or with a group of friends? What system was it on?
• Ask them to describe the game in their own words: What were the controls? What was the purpose of the game? Was it hard? What were the visual andaudible representations like? Were there any strategies they used that worked particularly well? Could it be played in a way that was different from the original game design? Did they make up their own rules for playing it?
• Ask them to describe what it was that makes this game so memorable or important to them. Are there other games that are similar or reminiscent of it? Should it be considered a significant title in the ‘gaming canon’?

The Digital Library

In addition to the audio file itself, we are planning to include an additional HTML document which describes and provides a transcript of what is said in each audio file. Digital library users will be able to read along with the audio files, and the full text will aid the searchability of the original files. Additionally, the ‘detail’ section of the transcript document will make visible to the user any metadata associated with both files the and will provide a platform from which the sound file can be easily played. I’ve drawn a quick layout mockup of how I imagine the completed page will be set up.

My biggest question at the moment is to what degree we should include the mp3 files themselves in the search process. Is there any value in allowing users to search for just mp3 files or only transcript documents, especially when the transcript documents automatically include links to the audio files embedded in the page?

I think it might be clever to simply have the audio files in the library, and include the entire transcript text actually in the metadata of each library object… but I don’t think that Dublin Core allows for a field like that, and I don’t know if there’s actually a limitation on the amount of text that can go in any one field. Also, removing the html description/transcript files would also remove our ability to have the audio file play embedded in the webbrowser using the html embed command. I don’t think that I understand how greenstone works well enough that I could persuade it to embed the audio automatically.

Getting Started

At this stage, it would be a good idea to prioritise what we need to get done, and assign due dates to the various parts of the project. This is my breakdown of the project:

• Contact participants and record interviews.
• Convert interview recordings into mp3 format.
• Send copies of the mp3s to be transcribed (at this stage, I’m happy to pay for someone else to transcribe the data, I’ve sent off an email to the group at Canterbury Uni who do transcribing services to pricecheck it).
• Finalise decisions on and create metadata for the 8-12 files. We’ll be using DCMI terms to describe them.
• Incorporate the files and metadata into the Greenstone Digital Library.
• Finetune the user interface.
• Create the Digital Library CD, and send it to Wellington.

Please feel free to add your comments, thoughts and suggestions, and let’s get some deadlines set, too!