{"id":661,"date":"2019-03-02T17:34:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-02T22:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/?page_id=661"},"modified":"2019-03-02T17:34:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T22:34:42","slug":"hodges","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/volume-4-2015-2016\/hodges\/","title":{"rendered":"Unauthorized Archives and Unreleased Software: Preserving a Cancelled Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

James Hodges
The Electronic Media Review, Volume Four: 2015-2016<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unexpected\ncancellation can strike any time in the software business, forcing developers\nto re-evaluate their recent projects. This paper examines one such cancelled\nproject, the Sega home video game Sonic X-Treme, in development between 1994\nand 1997. After the project\u2019s cancellation, collectors and bootleggers began to\ntrade development materials with members of the Sonic X-Treme production team.\nToday, former lead designer Christian Senn has emerged at the center of a\ngrey-market, peer-to-peer preservation effort. This paper suggests that such\nunauthorized preservation efforts can help to produce robust historical records\nof their era, allowing multiple narratives and collections to be constructed in\nthe process. Using a sociology of knowledge approach to this phenomenon, the\npaper treats Senn, his collabo\u00adrators, and the materials themselves as active\nparticipants in the ongoing construction of a Sonic X-Treme archive. The Sonic\nX-Treme project provides a pertinent case study in recovery from data loss,\nemphasizing that many preservation emergencies are caused by social, legal, and\nbusiness factors, rather than by physical degradation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracing\nthe history of materials collected in Senn\u2019s current X-Treme Archive<\/em>, the paper addresses three specific iterations of\nthe material, in terms of their audio\/visual formatting and social\/historical\ncontext. In each case, the materials\u2019 formal char\u00adacteristics are emphasized\nover their specific contents. While the collection contents possess obvious\nvalue as primary sources in the business history of the video game industry,\nfocusing on their formal and material traits helps to reveal the role that\nindividual actors play determining the legacy of both a project and its\ndevelopers. Examining the format of image, video, and software contents in\nmultiple Sonic X-Treme collections, file formats become key players in the\nongoing production of historical narrative surrounding the unfinished game. In\nconclusion, the paper notes significant ways in which Sonic X-Treme, far from\nunique, provides an illustration of processes that can also be found at work in\nnearly all technological development. For Latour and Woolgar (1979), for\nexample, technical artifacts and the knowledge thereof are constructed over the\ncourse of various social operations. Human actors attribute meaning to physical\nobjects in a process of inscription, while the successful stabilization of an\nobject\u2019s form can only take place in a social context that makes it legible. In\nterms of Sonic X-Treme, each collection of game-related material is the result\nof an attempt to stabilize social situations in a way that give the game its\ndesired significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Latour,\nB. and S. Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life:\nThe Construction of Scientific Facts<\/em>. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton\nUniversity Press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Hodges
PhD Student
Rutgers University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James HodgesThe Electronic Media Review, Volume Four: 2015-2016 Abstract Unexpected cancellation can strike any time in the software business, forcing developers to re-evaluate their recent projects. This paper examines one such cancelled project, the Sega home video game Sonic X-Treme, in development between 1994 and 1997. After the project\u2019s cancellation, collectors and bootleggers began to … Continue reading “Unauthorized Archives and Unreleased Software: Preserving a Cancelled Project”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":616,"menu_order":23,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-661","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/661\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}