Episode 46: Spielkultur-Erbe

Popkulturfunk

Videospiele für die Ewigkeit - PT. 1

Fast alle Menschen, die gerne und schon lange Onlinespiele spielen, haben es mal erlebt: Game over für Euer Lieblingsspiel, weil der Hersteller den Server-Betrieb einstellt. Eine Initiative will erreichen, dass Videospiel-Herausgeber gesetzlich verpflichtet werden, ihre Spiele in einem spielbaren Zustand zu erhalten. Die Frage, wie man das sogenannte audiovisuelle Erbe bewahrt, beschäftigt Menschen aber nicht erst seit dieser Initiative: Seit 1997 bemüht sich das Computerspielemuseum in Berlin darum, digitale, interaktive Kultur zu bewahren. Zu Gast in dieser Folge ist Matthias Oborski, Ausstellungsleiter des Computerspielemuseums.

Der Popkulturfunk bei Instagram

Auch vorbeischauen auf Valentinas Blog

Gast: Matthias Oborski, Ausstellungsleiter des Videospielemuseum

Stop Destroying Videogames: Scott Ross auf YouTube

Hier findet Ihr die Website der Initiative Stop Destroying Videogames

Hier gehts direkt zur Petition

Bericht auf heute.de zum Thema

Last but not least gibt's hier mehr über den Welttag des audiovisuellen Erbes

Empfehlungen

Matthias empfiehlt Videospiel-Herstellern, sich DOOM als Beispiel zu nehmen. Die Macher bei id-Software haben den Quellcode freigegeben. Das hat Nachfolge-Projekten kommerziell nicht geschadet, aber das Spiel unsterblich gemacht.

Valentina empfiehlt das Indie-Spiel ODDADA. Ein "rogue like music builder".

Ich habe die Organisatoren von "Stop Destroying Videogames" auch angeschrieben. Das ist die Antwort von Daniel Ondruska & Aleksej Vjalicin auf meine Frage, wie man mit solchen Fragen wie Moderation und Jugendschutz umgehen will. Ich fasse das auf Deutsch übersetzt im Schlusskommentar zusammen. Hier aber die ganze Antwort auf Englisch:

"There are several ways for publishers to fix the issue even for large online games as has been done before - for example Knockout city, Astonia, Gran Turismo Sport and others.

From a legal and technical point - we do not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, nor does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state. Meaning people who bought the game legally while being sold should be allowed to play it reasonably once official support from the publisher ends. To be honest, 95% of games already fulfill this requirement today. For games that don't - the publisher can do whatever they want with the game if he supports it and we're asking for them to create an end-of-life plan for games that have this server dependence - this can take form of of patches to eliminate the server dependence, allowing for private server hosting, releasing server binaries, and others.

Our Initiative is aimed at ALL games, not only large online ones (that make up a very small part of the market) but the same solutions apply in the same way as described above. Our group of volunteers and supporters contains software engineers, server developers and game developers who are technically skilled to explain this in detail should you wish.

The publisher carries NO liability or has any responsibility once they stop supporting the game - similar to a car maker who carries no responsibility for what a person does with their car once bought. In terms of child protection, that is up to the communities that run private servers in the same way as the publishers do while they support a game, if children are even allowed. Publishers are doing a bad job of it as it is already, if they do it at all like in the example you've given, in games like WoW, online shooters like Call of Duty or MoBAs like DOTA, whose communities are very aggravated and toxic - the system can be the same as the publishers employ, a malicious player is reported and banned by an admin form the community or any number of other mechanisms such as text chat locks, age gating, etc. These tools are not run only by the industry - I would give the example of the MMO Age of Reckoning now run completely by the community that moderates itself very successfully. We consider the argument to be a red herring from publishers (pearl clutching) - once they end support of a game and no longer sell it, minors should not be able to legally acquire it…if they do it is piracy, which we do not support, and the publisher has no control of it anyway even if they support the game and cannot be held liable and no one is monitoring such illegal activities. This is similar to the licensing issue."