Whilst I don't know what terms rights licensing or purchase agreements have been made with the authors, in scenarios like this, if it is the case that the publisher owns the IP, it should be forfeit and returned to the author(s) so they can distribute it themselves. Hopefully their agreement has some kind of clause to facilitate that if necessary, but I doubt it.
Whilst it isn't going to fill their coffers overnight, authors being able to go direct to consumers with digital and print-on-demand would go some way to putting things right. Not what backers wants to read I'm sure as they already paid for a copy, but as someone who wasn't a backer, but wants a book (some excellent looking stuff that has me intrigued) but would rather pay the author(s) directly, it's tragic to say the least.
To any authors reading, I want your books, as do friends—there is a demand for them. The market exists.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment and said similarly in another comment, these projects run on the efforts of volunteers.
Yes, some people will be old and will only have knowledge of old methodologies for things beyond their area of expertise. They don't have the financial obligations of the youth with families, mortgages et al to worry them. Likewise, some people will be old because they are experts and helped create the hardware itself or the cultural works themselves.
In typical FOSS style, I'll tell you "pull requests welcome", or ask "will you be volunteering?".
These projects work with who and what they've got. Without these "old doofuses", I'm quite certain that neither you nor most of the youth would be creating floppy drive emulators for decades-old Japanese computers in their place. It isn't like ripping CDs or DVDs. Have some respect.
We all have a part to play in the preservation of our cultural heritage as a species.
@Crabbitsteve, it isn't about what you personally do or do not need. This is about preserving the cultural record for the species as a whole. Our history is being lost at an alarming rate because of attitudes like yours.
I am glad that what you care about has been "preserved" (if it lasts long enough, I bet most of it will likely go to landfill when you die—yes, that sucks, absolutely), but for many, myself included, a lot of lost media will never be recovered and is gone forever.
It represents a huge loss culturally and historically—we understand ourselves less as a species, as communities, and as people due to it. We even understand other cultural works less due to the loss of context.
You only need to look at how many losses of manga, or books that were translated into Japanese that contained mistakes or intentional censorship. There is now so much context that we lack.
Games? You surely can't be serious in saying that everything that matters to you has been preserved by you if you don't know it even exists until you or someone else wants it. No one individual can possibly have that level of insight into the cultural output of an entire country in any single given medium. Not possible. This is why there are multiple experts that are consulted with on these matters and not just one.
I've run several archivism projects, both in terms of finding the physical or digital source, copies of it, restoring or helping understand what was discovered, and helping with the re-release ultimately.
I am passionate about archivism, hence there are volunteers for these projects in the first place. Ripping some analog or digital media to a NAS at home for your own use is not archivism or preservation in any meaningful capacity. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter, of course it does, it is individual efforts that frequently save the day in terms of eventually tracking things down to be properly archived in the long-term. Absolutely not knocking what you do for yourself—keep that up.
There's a reason game devs are honorary members of this project and not armchair commentators with a NAS. That's not me knocking you either, but that's me drawing the line to distinguish between someone who contributed to creating these cultural works versus someone who consumes them and thus has no vested interest or understanding of their importance.
You preserving something for yourself is comparing apples to oranges. They are not the same thing whatsoever.
I'm absolutely all for making sure this isn't lost, but if we are going to ask the question of "why is this failing?" then we really should be looking at the obvious.
We should be prepared to say these things with the context of helping rather than hurting. The survival of efforts like these is of utmost importance.
The lack of downloads for a PDF newsletter is not difficult to grasp. Even when the project began, this was an archaic method of distributing information, let alone having it crawled and rank well on search engines.
If you were to follow the same model with Time Extension, it would not see much traffic or interest whatsoever. The quality of the content is not the problem, but the method by which it is made available.
How many people want to download a PDF to read articles they don't even know the headlines of? People also can't share specific articles from a PDF. PDFs are also bandwidth-intensive.
The only reason I always read every Time Extension article is because there is an RSS feed. The PDF push and no RSS feed I can find is why I and many others I know miss that content.
If people who know of the project can't even successfully follow the content due to the distribution method then does that not tell us exactly why it isn't growing in terms of new people discovering it and hanging around in the long-term?
Comments 5
Re: Writers Of 'Did You Know Gaming' Book Published By Unbound "Received £79 Each For Over 7 Years Of Work"
Whilst I don't know what terms rights licensing or purchase agreements have been made with the authors, in scenarios like this, if it is the case that the publisher owns the IP, it should be forfeit and returned to the author(s) so they can distribute it themselves. Hopefully their agreement has some kind of clause to facilitate that if necessary, but I doubt it.
Whilst it isn't going to fill their coffers overnight, authors being able to go direct to consumers with digital and print-on-demand would go some way to putting things right. Not what backers wants to read I'm sure as they already paid for a copy, but as someone who wasn't a backer, but wants a book (some excellent looking stuff that has me intrigued) but would rather pay the author(s) directly, it's tragic to say the least.
To any authors reading, I want your books, as do friends—there is a demand for them. The market exists.
Re: Barcode Battler, The Early '90s Classic That's So Crap, It's Almost Cool
@VITIMan —your link didn't work: https://cards.bimbiribase.xyz/
Re: We Might Be About To Lose A Powerful Force In The World Of Video Game Preservation
@Robotoboy, "old doofuses"?
Whilst I agree with the sentiment and said similarly in another comment, these projects run on the efforts of volunteers.
Yes, some people will be old and will only have knowledge of old methodologies for things beyond their area of expertise. They don't have the financial obligations of the youth with families, mortgages et al to worry them. Likewise, some people will be old because they are experts and helped create the hardware itself or the cultural works themselves.
In typical FOSS style, I'll tell you "pull requests welcome", or ask "will you be volunteering?".
These projects work with who and what they've got. Without these "old doofuses", I'm quite certain that neither you nor most of the youth would be creating floppy drive emulators for decades-old Japanese computers in their place. It isn't like ripping CDs or DVDs. Have some respect.
We all have a part to play in the preservation of our cultural heritage as a species.
Re: We Might Be About To Lose A Powerful Force In The World Of Video Game Preservation
@Crabbitsteve, it isn't about what you personally do or do not need. This is about preserving the cultural record for the species as a whole. Our history is being lost at an alarming rate because of attitudes like yours.
I am glad that what you care about has been "preserved" (if it lasts long enough, I bet most of it will likely go to landfill when you die—yes, that sucks, absolutely), but for many, myself included, a lot of lost media will never be recovered and is gone forever.
It represents a huge loss culturally and historically—we understand ourselves less as a species, as communities, and as people due to it. We even understand other cultural works less due to the loss of context.
You only need to look at how many losses of manga, or books that were translated into Japanese that contained mistakes or intentional censorship. There is now so much context that we lack.
Games? You surely can't be serious in saying that everything that matters to you has been preserved by you if you don't know it even exists until you or someone else wants it. No one individual can possibly have that level of insight into the cultural output of an entire country in any single given medium. Not possible. This is why there are multiple experts that are consulted with on these matters and not just one.
I've run several archivism projects, both in terms of finding the physical or digital source, copies of it, restoring or helping understand what was discovered, and helping with the re-release ultimately.
I am passionate about archivism, hence there are volunteers for these projects in the first place. Ripping some analog or digital media to a NAS at home for your own use is not archivism or preservation in any meaningful capacity. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter, of course it does, it is individual efforts that frequently save the day in terms of eventually tracking things down to be properly archived in the long-term. Absolutely not knocking what you do for yourself—keep that up.
There's a reason game devs are honorary members of this project and not armchair commentators with a NAS. That's not me knocking you either, but that's me drawing the line to distinguish between someone who contributed to creating these cultural works versus someone who consumes them and thus has no vested interest or understanding of their importance.
You preserving something for yourself is comparing apples to oranges. They are not the same thing whatsoever.
Re: We Might Be About To Lose A Powerful Force In The World Of Video Game Preservation
I'm absolutely all for making sure this isn't lost, but if we are going to ask the question of "why is this failing?" then we really should be looking at the obvious.
We should be prepared to say these things with the context of helping rather than hurting. The survival of efforts like these is of utmost importance.
The lack of downloads for a PDF newsletter is not difficult to grasp. Even when the project began, this was an archaic method of distributing information, let alone having it crawled and rank well on search engines.
If you were to follow the same model with Time Extension, it would not see much traffic or interest whatsoever. The quality of the content is not the problem, but the method by which it is made available.
How many people want to download a PDF to read articles they don't even know the headlines of? People also can't share specific articles from a PDF. PDFs are also bandwidth-intensive.
The only reason I always read every Time Extension article is because there is an RSS feed. The PDF push and no RSS feed I can find is why I and many others I know miss that content.
If people who know of the project can't even successfully follow the content due to the distribution method then does that not tell us exactly why it isn't growing in terms of new people discovering it and hanging around in the long-term?