http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/kotaku.com.png http://kotaku.com/tag/history is fun http://kotaku.com/tag/history is fun

Along with 'legitimate' means of preservation, there's the whole specter of abandonware, which Les Chapelle takes a look at over at the Escapist. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5100108&view=rss&microfeed=true

I've mentioned my love for the delightful How They Got Game, which catalogues some of the neat holdings of the Stanford Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection (among other things); now, they're getting some love from the Stanford alumni magazine, which highlights the Library of Congress 'Preserving Virtual Worlds' project (including, naturally, the Stanford initiative). Curator Henry Lowood discusses what Stanford is doing, and how, while Beth Dulabahn of the Library of Congress talks about why the LOC is behind all of this: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096782&view=rss&microfeed=true

I'm an archive junkie — I consider it a side-effect of my profession, since we spend half our lives in temperature-controlled buildings with lots of old stuff. So I watch the growth of the video game archives across the globe with no small measure of excitement — not only does my little historian heart go pitter-patter at the fact that people are being so proactive in figuring out how to preserve our beloved medium for future generations, but it means a couple more places to poke my head in when I have a good excuse. The recent announcement of the UK National Video Game Archive has led to some fruitful discussion on how to preserve games — not just in terms of the hardware, but also as a culture. Which, of course, is a hell of a lot harder than making sure books don't rot: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5089608&view=rss&microfeed=true

In a move that seems designed to provide Chinese historians with even more ways to torture their poor students (I know at least one thing I'm forcing my sections to do next quarter), IBM and the Palace Museum have teamed up to offer a virtual, immersive, and interactive version of the Forbidden Palace of Beijing. In contrast to the more typical 3D 'tours' that abound, the "Forbidden City: Beyond Space & Time" is sort of Second Life meets the Qing dynasty and eunuchs (minus advertising, a virtual economy, and sex). It's running like a snail on my computer, but is certainly a very neat idea — and in the future, we'll perhaps being seeing more creative uses of virtual worlds for 'cultural' purposes? Full release after the jump: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5062167&view=rss&microfeed=true

Rob Zacny has a thought provoking piece up at the Escapist: on the whole, we're the worst genre when it comes to preserving our history, even the great classics acknowledged as 'great.' In a society — never mind technical area — where progress and marching forward is the name of the game, it's not exactly surprising, but a problem nonetheless. And not just for the history buffs among us: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5020580&view=rss&microfeed=true