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[crushinator]

Hello! My name is Cherie Heiberg, and I’m a Masters student at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. I’m writing my Masters paper on emulators. Specifically, I’m writing about how hobbyist creators of emulators and ROMs preserve video games. I’ll be comparing the work that hobbyists do to the work of professionals. The goal is to start building a professional model that can be used to preserve video games using emulators. A lot of the work will involve me observing what goes on in online communities that make emulators or deal in Abandonware. I’ll be looking at what kind of games get preserved, what kind of information/metadata gets attached to these games, how they’re distributed online, and how people get access to them. The most important part of the project, though, will be talking to the people who actually create ROMs and emulators.

That’s where you come in! I’m looking for people who would be willing to be interviewed about their process of creating ROMs and/or emulators. If you are over 18 and live in the United States, I really want to talk to you! I won’t be collecting any information that could identify you, like your real name or your home city or your birthdate. You don’t even have to use your handle; you can pick out a completely new pseudonym and that’s good enough for me. I want to know why you do what you do and how you do it. If you’re interested, let me know by replying to this post or emailing me at heiberg@email.unc.edu or responding to this post with your chat handle and your preferred chat client, and we can set up an interview by email or by a chat client of your choice.

-Cherie Heiberg
UNC SILS 2013

PS I'm willing to answer any kind of question you might have here!

[StaaViinsZ]

Heh, Well, I'm 15 and I've only created 2-3 Disc Images in my life, and never an emulator, but I'm here.

[Smiling Spectre]

I am too shady person to give interviews, as I am from criminal-full Russia, so I hadn't any legal disc in my life (except Russian ones, of course). So I am bad role model too, sorry.

[crushinator]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

I am too shady person to give interviews, as I am from criminal-full Russia, so I hadn't any legal disc in my life (except Russian ones, of course). So I am bad role model too, sorry.

Haha, I think I'm going to try to revise that part of the stipulations (it all has to do with my institution's Internal Review Board and international laws on human studies and blah blah blah). If I can get that revised, would you be interested at all?

[Smiling Spectre]

Well, as you can guess, personal meeting is impossible, as I will hardly leave Russia for interview. And my bad English will stop me from vocal conversations anyway. But I can talk with you thru any text chat, no problems.

[MrFlibble]

Originally Posted by crushinator

Specifically, I’m writing about how hobbyist creators of emulators and ROMs preserve video games. I’ll be comparing the work that hobbyists do to the work of professionals. The goal is to start building a professional model that can be used to preserve video games using emulators. A lot of the work will involve me observing what goes on in online communities that make emulators or deal in Abandonware. I’ll be looking at what kind of games get preserved, what kind of information/metadata gets attached to these games, how they’re distributed online, and how people get access to them. The most important part of the project, though, will be talking to the people who actually create ROMs and emulators.

Hmm, while you seem to be more interested in console/non-IBM PC-platform games, maybe the following websites could be of interest to you as well:

Demu.org/Classic PC Games
RGB Classic Games
dosgames.com
DOS Games Archive

All of those only preserve legally distributable copies of games (shareware, demo versions and liberated games) for DOS and Windows platforms. No idea if they would fall into "professional" or "amateur" groups in your classification but the admins of those sites would be happy to share their experience I think. I can tell them about your project if you want me to. Swizzle, the maintainer of Demu.org, is from the US, DOSGuy from RGB Classic Games and Emmzee from dosgames.com are Canadians (then again, you said that you could make the scope of your research broader).

At any rate, good luck with your project!

[crushinator]

I'm happy to interview anyone from around the world at this time.

Originally Posted by MrFlibble

I can tell them about your project if you want me to. Swizzle, the maintainer of Demu.org, is from the US, DOSGuy from RGB Classic Games and Emmzee from dosgames.com are Canadians (then again, you said that you could make the scope of your research broader).

At any rate, good luck with your project!

Yes, that would be very helpful! I absolutely do want to talk to people about any kind of emulation work they do, whether it's console or DOS games or what.

Thank you so much, everyone! You are superb.

[MrFlibble]

I've forwarded your message in the first post to Swizzle, DOSGuy, Emmzee, Jorrit and also Hallfiry, leilei, Litude and Smush the Cat.

I guess they will contact you via your e-mail if they agree to get interviewed.

Oh, I nearly forgot, I think it might be a good idea for you to re-post your message at VOGONS (which stands for Very Old Games On New Systems), as more potential informants might be found there.

Also, have you contacted Jason Scott already? I fancy he's one of the people one would try to get in touch with first if you're doing electronic records research.

[Edit] I've just stumbled upon this project (while browsing archive.org), I guess this is the typical professional old game preserving initiative, right?

[crushinator]

Originally Posted by MrFlibble

Oh, I nearly forgot, I think it might be a good idea for you to re-post your message at VOGONS (which stands for Very Old Games On New Systems), as more potential informants might be found there.

Also, have you contacted Jason Scott already? I fancy he's one of the people one would try to get in touch with first if you're doing electronic records research.

[Edit] I've just stumbled upon this project (while browsing archive.org), I guess this is the typical professional old game preserving initiative, right?

I will absolutely do all these things. Thank you so much for your help; I never expected this magnitude of welcome and interest. You really are a hero gamer.

PS - I've heard from Jorrit and Hallfiry already. Thank you again!!!!!

[MrFlibble]

I'm happy to help! Especially since your research seems quite important.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I also informed Theodor Lauppert of your interest.

Also, did I mention that VOGONS is the official forum of DOSBox, the most widely used cross-platform DOS emulator (or, more accurately, an emulator of "an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, joystick, modem, etc., necessary for running many old MS-DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux and FreeBSD" [source])?

I don't think I know any "hobbyist" DOS emulators that were written from scratch, but since DOSBox is Open Source, there are numerous custom builds and a fair share of frontends that are aimed at making DOSBox more user-friendly for those who don't like using the command prompt.

I have used console emulators in the past, and this website seems to be a very decent place. I think it only offers legal content, and lots of useful tools in addition to emulators for various systems.

And here's a website about Amiga emulation: Lemon Amiga. Another site that may be useful to you is this database of Amiga games. I haven't used either much, but they seem to be good sources anyway.