Re:The quest to save today’s gaming history from being lost
by toxicFork on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @10:21AM
(#9652734)
We should delegate "mmo historians" and give them a salary just to record significant or even ordinary social interactions or events! We already have some services such as 3d print of your avatar which is similar to an artist making a portrait.
How did we end up having historians in real life? How can we give similar incentive or motivation for mmos or other games?
Now that I thought of it, there's excellent coverage of what happens in e sports, e.g. "this team did this to beat that team", which also links back to the documentation of ancient wars.
If you ask me, it's a mistake to obsess over the digital representation of a... collaborative performance? Even if you recreated everything about an online game in 50 years, it wouldn't be the same game without the same people, the same social context.
When you're playing a bit-for-bit identical, perfectly emulated game from 30 years ago - have you ever thought "ummm, this sucks, how did I ever spend so much time on it?" What got lost - your youth, your obsession, your manual dexterity, the lack of other entertainment ... you can't bottle all of that along with the disc image.
Something always gets lost, even if you copy all the bits.