Demystifying Game Development
October 19, 2020 1:16 AM   Subscribe

Bijan Stephen interviews Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin (The Verge) of the Video Game History Foundation on their efforts to preserve videogame history by studying original source code, art, sketchbooks, documentation, and correspondence. They’ve already deconstructed Aladdin, reconstructed Days of Thunder, and recovered the NES version of SimCity. On October 30, they’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the The Secret of Monkey Island by looking through its source material with creator Ron Gilbert. posted by adrianhon (3 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love stuff like this. For me, it was magazine articles in the 90s and then books in libraries, but now we have access to things I never even imagined possible. A perfect example of which is, the delightful Julia Minamata is a solo developer creating her game on livestreams over Twitch.
posted by seraphine at 5:13 AM on October 19, 2020


Julia Minamata previously on Metafilter! ("If this works, I’ll be so mad")
posted by adrianhon at 6:55 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Just sussed out something bonkers yesterday -- some Australian bloke went around re-assembling MICROPROSE GAMES from the detritus of 20 years of abandonment, purchasing the trademark from whomever/whatever last acquired it, and also microprose.com from the last squatter who got it as it rolled off.

So now he's got plans and several projects on Steam to make new, modern wargames like the 1990s stuff. Nothing terribly compelling yet, but it's good to see fellow indie dreamers!

I was a teenager when Wargames came out, and had just gotten into programming on my school's Apple IIe . . . coming up on 40 years later, still have that indie dream, of sitting down and knocking out the Great American [Indie] Game.

Like writing fiction, it takes a lot of effort to make total crap. Anything actually good requires real sacrifice and/or genius.

posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:27 AM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


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