convo with andrew borman

How did you get into game preservation?
What do you do as work sort of on a daily basis as a preservationist?
Why do you think some companies do or don't like working with preservationists?

Thanks!
Miziziziz

Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>

Mon, Feb 8, 9:10 AM

to Miziziziz

Hi Miziziziz,

Sorry for the delay. I will answer the questions in-line:


How did you get into game preservation?
My interest goes back to Resident Evil 2. Every once in a while, I was lucky enough to get a new gaming magazine, which I was always excited about. Having played Resident Evil, I was extremely excited for the sequel. In particular, the screenshot with the zombie arms coming out of the jail cells. I eventually got my hands on the demo version included with Director’s Cut, and by then the police station looked entirely different. While the jail cell didn’t show up, I held onto hope that it would in the full game. Well, it didn’t, and from there, I was really made aware of how much a game can change in development.



My interest grew after the SEGA Dreamcast was pulled from store shelves, with games like Half-Life and Propeller Arena Online. Add in a few more games that would get cancelled, and I suddenly found myself in a new world of gaming.



In 2005, I started PtoPOnline, which would eventually morph into a YouTube channel focused primarily on game development items. This involved doing research and talking to developers, which was exciting for me! I went to college for Information Science, which focused heavily on research, eventually receiving a Master’s Degree, though focused on school librarianship because “game preservation” wasn’t an option. I continued to push forward with what I thought game preservation could be.



About three years into teaching, a job opened up at The Strong Museum, and rest is history!



What do you do as work sort of on a daily basis as a preservationist?

My day-to-day work can vary greatly. Part of my job is working on exhibits, which I find to be extremely exciting. We’re currently working on an expansion that will add nearly 90,000 square feet to the museum, much of which is focused on video games, and is currently taking much of my attention.



Part of what I do is the “curation” bit of my Digital Games Curator title. That is finding new things for the museum collection, whether that is online on sites like eBay, or through talking to developers and working with people on donations. When the collections arrive at the museum, I catalog them and help place them in a physical storage location, after which they are photographed. This can be an extremely time-consuming part of the process, but it ultimately helps make our collection findable, both to us at the museum and those outside of it.



Another part of what I do is what most people probably think of as game preservation, and that is backing things up and digitizing. Much of that work goes towards supporting our Library and Archives staff, focusing primarily on the rare and unique items that we have, like floppy disks from game developers. I also have opportunities to start thinking ahead to how we might make some of those one-of-a-kind items like prototypes more accessible, such as through the use of something like the MiSTer.



I also help support researchers at the museum, setting up original console and computer hardware to provide access to games.



There is a bunch more that I do in a given day, but this should give some idea as to the wide range of tasks that fall under game preservation.



Why do you think some companies do or don't like working with preservationists?



We’ve been fortunate enough to work with many large companies. We’ve gotten wonderful donations from companies like Microsoft, where they sent us many kinds of prototype hardware and other artifacts. We also worked with Activision and Toys for Bob to preserve the history of Skylanders, which included digital files, physical artifacts like prototype figures, portals, and even some manufacturing molds, along with interviews of people at the studio. This is in addition to many other developers, both individuals and companies, and conversations that are always ongoing.



One of the biggest challenges is time. Game developers are focused on putting a game out there, and don’t want to pull valuable resources and people that could help make that end result even better. But many have started to hire archivists and other staff to support internal preservation, with companies like EA having a team dedicated to just that.



What you are less likely to see though is companies putting everything they have on the Internet. There can be many reasons, like those highlighted above, but it is also extremely complicated to do so legally. To open-source something properly, you would need to make sure you have the license to do that for all the code, which often contains middleware and other packages that they likely don’t have the rights to redistribute. If you look at the instance where Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy source code was released, it briefly had to be pulled down because of Bink video code. This gets more complicated if a game uses more libraries than just video.



Putting things online may seem like an easy thing to do, but it often isn’t the case. That’s where we have found a lot of opportunities to work with developers, as use is limited to onsite at the museum, with paperwork signed by people accessing it. Controlled access allows us to share with researchers many development artifacts that likely would never have been accessible otherwise.







Hope this helps, happy to answer more!



Andrew
Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>

Thu, Feb 11, 12:24 AM

to Andrew
Thanks for sharing, this is great!
Some follow up stuff:
Could you send me some pics/vids of exhibits you're working on and pieces you're collecting?
How do you search for new items on Ebay? and how do you get in touch with developers or people interested in giving donations?
How are physical items stored? Can you send me some of those photographs you mentioned taking?
How are digital items stored, do you have an onsite thing or are you using third party stuff?
Is this the MiSTer you're referring to? https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html

thanks!
Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>

Thu, Feb 11, 10:11 AM

to Miziziziz

Unfortunately I can’t send you anything that we are currently working on for confidentiality reasons. But I highly recommend taking a look at our press room, which has photos and video of some of our current and past exhibits, and some of our storage. Some of them are a number of years old, but it should still do a good job of showing what we do.

https://www.museumofplay.org/press



We also have a small page on preservation here, along with a handbook we have been developing: https://www.museumofplay.org/collections/preservation



And yep, that is MiSTer. I posted a few pictures on my Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Borman18/status/1353812905905553408

https://twitter.com/Borman18/status/1353773566735626241



In terms of searching eBay, usually we will have items in mind and have various saved searches to help notify us when something comes up. In the past, we relied heavily on reaching out to developers, but more recently it is more often the case that developers reach directly out to us.



Our Google Arts and Culture page has a lot of great things as well, including online exhibits, the ability to virtually walk around the museum (second floor has most of the video games), and some of our collections objects. https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-strong



Hope these help!



Andrew



From: Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:25 AM
To: Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>
Subject: Re: questions about game preservation



CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders.
Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>

Thu, Feb 11, 10:12 AM

to Miziziziz

One more quick thing to add, you can see some really great pictures of our expansion that we are currently planning here:

https://www.museumofplay.org/expansion-campaign



Andrew



From: Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:25 AM
To: Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>
Subject: Re: questions about game preservation



CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders.

Thanks for sharing, this is great!
Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>

Fri, Feb 12, 10:41 PM

to Andrew
oh thanks, that's great! btw how should I refer to you in the video? He/She/They?
Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>

Fri, Feb 12, 11:09 PM

to Andrew
Also, few other things:
what was PtoPOnline before it was a youtube channel?

you said the museum having controlled access makes it easier for devs to share things with them; is there some legal provisions or something that make this ok or something? For example, the Bink video codec thing; if they had given the original source code only to you, would that have been ok since only the museum had access to it? Why is that?

After the dreamcast was pulled from shelves and games got cancelled, you said you were aware of a whole new world of gaming; could you elaborate on this? How did you go from seeing games getting cancelled to finding and showcasing them on PtoPOnline?

After you graduated, what did you teach?

and do you mind if I put a copy of this convo in the video description when it's done?
Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>

Thu, Feb 18, 4:09 PM

to Miziziziz
PtoPOnline started originally as an idea for an e-zine of sorts with outside contributions. That never materialized, so I focused more on the blog aspect, hosting my own gameplay videos. I tried many services, including Stage6 by DivX which offered HD support, but YouTube ultimately won.


When a former developer, and not a company, donates something, they are specifically given a form that they can indicate whether or not they have intellectual property. They can choose to donate the IP to us, or just simply sign over the physical or digital property itself, which is what normally happens. In this case, the museum and people accessing the resources in the future acknowledge that we don't have any ownership over the intellectual property. As an accredited museum, we have different considerations than a collector, for instance. Copyright is extremely complicated, so I can only really give some guidance on resources that get into more detail, but there many activities museums can do to allow us to use resources even when we don't have IP rights.


https://www.copyrightuser.org/educate/intermediaries/museums-and-galleries/​


When the Dreamcast was removed from store shelves, many games were cancelled. While I had been aware of the development process for a while, a lot of these games were titles that I was interesting in. The Internet is a great resource, so finding people sharing images and information about titles was huge. But there are tons of titles that no one had ever heard of or titles where details were still unknown, so being interested in doing research, I took it upon myself to use what limited resources I had to find more information, rather than wait until someone else did it.


I taught in school libraries, so Kindergarten through 12th grade at various times. My specialty was focusing on research and information skills.


You're more than welcome to share the conversation.


He/Him works for me.


Andrew

________________________________
From: Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2021 1:09 AM
To: Borman, Andrew
Subject: Re: questions about game preservation


CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders.

Also, few other things:
what was PtoPOnline before it was a youtube channel?

you said the museum having controlled access makes it easier for devs to share things with them; is there some legal provisions or something that make this ok or something? For example, the Bink video codec thing; if they had given the original source code only to you, would that have been ok since only the museum had access to it? Why is that?

After the dreamcast was pulled from shelves and games got cancelled, you said you were aware of a whole new world of gaming; could you elaborate on this? How did you go from seeing games getting cancelled to finding and showcasing them on PtoPOnline?

After you graduated, what did you teach?

and do you mind if I put a copy of this convo in the video description when it's done?


On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 10:41 PM Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com<mailto:tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>> wrote:
oh thanks, that's great! btw how should I refer to you in the video? He/She/They?

On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 10:12 AM Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org<mailto:aborman@museumofplay.org>> wrote:
One more quick thing to add, you can see some really great pictures of our expansion that we are currently planning here:
https://www.museumofplay.org/expansion-campaign<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.museumofplay.org%2fexpansion-campaign&c=E,1,-JAT7m41CafXjYPEnnzdzBerbmcFiC16By20A-gz_ovV4kI3MVY5cTGD70Z9-ziAsmOcmR5hfqjG_YUzI0eK9DlsA5ut4Luj-qdi8A5pbDu5EMfV&typo=1>

Andrew

From: Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com<mailto:tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>>
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:25 AM
To: Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org<mailto:aborman@museumofplay.org>>
Subject: Re: questions about game preservation


CAUTION: This email originated from outside your organization. Exercise caution when opening attachments or clicking links, especially from unknown senders.
Thanks for sharing, this is great!
Some follow up stuff:
Could you send me some pics/vids of exhibits you're working on and pieces you're collecting?
How do you search for new items on Ebay? and how do you get in touch with developers or people interested in giving donations?
How are physical items stored? Can you send me some of those photographs you mentioned taking?
How are digital items stored, do you have an onsite thing or are you using third party stuff?
Is this the MiSTer you're referring to? https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.retrorgb.com%2fmister.html&c=E,1,_puTDWnRbYMiMgiKQ_9u__Pc6edDUUtmWc_nKivL32BEHwwpkUwBAvmuYUr68JHiLB2kMfbt55f0UstyRz_YGO_xTPlT4tPk4j4qHz0qZcxmtyREDdIt&typo=1>

thanks!

On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 9:10 AM Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org<mailto:aborman@museumofplay.org>> wrote:
Hi Miziziziz,
Sorry for the delay. I will answer the questions in-line:

How did you get into game preservation?
My interest goes back to Resident Evil 2. Every once in a while, I was lucky enough to get a new gaming magazine, which I was always excited about. Having played Resident Evil, I was extremely excited for the sequel. In particular, the screenshot with the zombie arms coming out of the jail cells. I eventually got my hands on the demo version included with Director’s Cut, and by then the police station looked entirely different. While the jail cell didn’t show up, I held onto hope that it would in the full game. Well, it didn’t, and from there, I was really made aware of how much a game can change in development.

My interest grew after the SEGA Dreamcast was pulled from store shelves, with games like Half-Life and Propeller Arena Online. Add in a few more games that would get cancelled, and I suddenly found myself in a new world of gaming.

In 2005, I started PtoPOnline, which would eventually morph into a YouTube channel focused primarily on game development items. This involved doing research and talking to developers, which was exciting for me! I went to college for Information Science, which focused heavily on research, eventually receiving a Master’s Degree, though focused on school librarianship because “game preservation” wasn’t an option. I continued to push forward with what I thought game preservation could be.

About three years into teaching, a job opened up at The Strong Museum, and rest is history!

What do you do as work sort of on a daily basis as a preservationist?
My day-to-day work can vary greatly. Part of my job is working on exhibits, which I find to be extremely exciting. We’re currently working on an expansion that will add nearly 90,000 square feet to the museum, much of which is focused on video games, and is currently taking much of my attention.

Part of what I do is the “curation” bit of my Digital Games Curator title. That is finding new things for the museum collection, whether that is online on sites like eBay, or through talking to developers and working with people on donations. When the collections arrive at the museum, I catalog them and help place them in a physical storage location, after which they are photographed. This can be an extremely time-consuming part of the process, but it ultimately helps make our collection findable, both to us at the museum and those outside of it.

Another part of what I do is what most people probably think of as game preservation, and that is backing things up and digitizing. Much of that work goes towards supporting our Library and Archives staff, focusing primarily on the rare and unique items that we have, like floppy disks from game developers. I also have opportunities to start thinking ahead to how we might make some of those one-of-a-kind items like prototypes more accessible, such as through the use of something like the MiSTer.

I also help support researchers at the museum, setting up original console and computer hardware to provide access to games.

There is a bunch more that I do in a given day, but this should give some idea as to the wide range of tasks that fall under game preservation.

Why do you think some companies do or don't like working with preservationists?

We’ve been fortunate enough to work with many large companies. We’ve gotten wonderful donations from companies like Microsoft, where they sent us many kinds of prototype hardware and other artifacts. We also worked with Activision and Toys for Bob to preserve the history of Skylanders, which included digital files, physical artifacts like prototype figures, portals, and even some manufacturing molds, along with interviews of people at the studio. This is in addition to many other developers, both individuals and companies, and conversations that are always ongoing.

One of the biggest challenges is time. Game developers are focused on putting a game out there, and don’t want to pull valuable resources and people that could help make that end result even better. But many have started to hire archivists and other staff to support internal preservation, with companies like EA having a team dedicated to just that.

What you are less likely to see though is companies putting everything they have on the Internet. There can be many reasons, like those highlighted above, but it is also extremely complicated to do so legally. To open-source something properly, you would need to make sure you have the license to do that for all the code, which often contains middleware and other packages that they likely don’t have the rights to redistribute. If you look at the instance where Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy source code was released, it briefly had to be pulled down because of Bink video code. This gets more complicated if a game uses more libraries than just video.

Putting things online may seem like an easy thing to do, but it often isn’t the case. That’s where we have found a lot of opportunities to work with developers, as use is limited to onsite at the museum, with paperwork signed by people accessing it. Controlled access allows us to share with researchers many development artifacts that likely would never have been accessible otherwise.



Hope this helps, happy to answer more!

Andrew
From: Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com<mailto:tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>>
Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2021 1:19 AM
To: Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org<mailto:aborman@museumofplay.org>>
Miziziziz <tallnarwal@narwalengineering.com>

Thu, Feb 18, 4:49 PM

to Andrew
What kind of research did you do to learn more about those dreamcast titles?
Borman, Andrew <aborman@museumofplay.org>

Fri, Feb 19, 9:45 AM

to Miziziziz

It started by looking at what information is out there, screenshots, video, and interviews. From there, it could be a wide range of activities, from reaching out to developers, talking with collectors, or looking for press resources on less-known websites.