The Documents and Assets Created During the Video Game Production Process

I. Introduction A. Purpose In 1975, when Atari released the home‐consumer version of its arcade hit Pong, it was probably hard to imagine how huge the video game industry would be in 2009. Even though it is relatively young, the video game industry has quickly grown from small companies operating out of garages to multi‐national companies contributing to the billion dollar industry. Pioneers from the 1970's and 1980's have molded video games into the serious business it is today. The records that have been accumulating with game companies and game professionals over the years are now of interest to archives, and rightfully so, considering the cultural significance of many of those records. Game developers have embraced this partnership with archives, looking to find a place that will care for the records that they hold so dear. Professor of Archives and Preservation Management at UCLA Anne Gilliland‐Swetland has said that archives are " fundamentally concerned with the organizational and personal processes and contexts through which records and knowledge are created as well as the ways in which records individually and collectively reflect those processes " (2000, p. 2). The problem arises, however, when records cannot be identified during appraisal, and an organization's processes are misunderstood. For an industry like the video game industry, where much of their processes and resulting records are so specific to the industry, it can be hard for an archivist to tell what they are looking at and to understand a record's significance in game production. It is, therefore, in an archivist's best interest to better understand the video game industry and it's many components before making selection and appraisal decisions. The purpose of this paper is to take that first step in helping archivists understand the video game industry by examining the documents and assets created by game companies. This paper is intended as a survey of the records generated during video game production, and an overview of why and how those records are created. It is not intended to be a statement on archiving best practices, but rather a tool for archivists to use when assessing and processing video game collections. It is an overview of how a video game is made and the paper trail left behind that an archivist might encounter. B. Research Techniques and Limitations Research for this paper was conducted over a single semester through the use of observation and informal …