[Music]
my name is Jared Lee I'm a software
engineer Electronic Arts and my work
encompasses all that is preservation I
handle the preservation of some of our
headlining sports titles and I make it
so that they can come back again one day
whether it be 10 years later 30 40 even
a hundred years I make sure that that is
possible my initial role though while do
engineer work day-to-day I sure got my
start developing tools developing tools
specifically in a technical art space so
I kind of have experience with both
making games and kind of doing weird
preservation work with them so that's my
background that's what I do and you'll
see soon that how that actually plays
into preservation that said let's kick
things off what is this thing called
preservation many of you probably know
what it is some of you might even be
doing it let's talk a little bit about
it so preservation is simply put the
process that puts a game away all the
things that went into the game all the
files all the data and all the documents
in such a way so that it can come back
again and many of you right now have
seen the direct success of preservation
who here seen any of these titles at on
the screen right now excellent you have
seen preservation success but
preservation is not something that is
always perfect and there are stories of
tragedy in the preservation space and
we'll get into those in a little bit but
preservation is much more than simply
this what I just said
we see the end goal of it but there's a
lot that goes into this and actually one
expo is what we Electronic Arts do and
what we look at preservation as in form
of a maturity model and simply put this
will allow you to see where you sit in
the realm of preservation at least from
our eyes so let's open up this
discussion with simply a tier-one
archive now a tear when our kyv is what
we see as take a box any box it could
mean SSD it can be a hard drive it can
be anything you constitute as a box you
take all the things that comprise your
game or your work that can be the tools
that can be your data that can be your
code and you simply merge the two
together to form the archive who here is
doing this right now
okay some of you that's awesome that's a
great start now some of you might see
this and go that's awfully familiar to
what we call it back up and you're
technically right to a degree a backup
is very similar to this and anyone who's
currently doing a backup is already on
their way
that's excellent the difference between
a backup and a Tier one archive released
to us is that do you archive your
documentation about your team photos
what about your server tech how much do
you preserve of the actual game besides
just the content that built it if you
preserve the documentation as well and
all those kind of exhilarating --zz
those are what can make this a Tier one
archive as opposed to a backup but
ultimately speaking we want to preserve
things because there's value in what we
can bring them back for this while it is
valuable because that is what the game
was built as it you still have to have a
familiar knowledge with how to take this
jump of stuff and remake that game again
with it so the value in Tier one archive
is limited so what we did is we said was
the next step was the next tier of value
that we can control with this that led
us to the tr2 archive now to or to
archive starts a bit differently we
actually start with a machine we take
the exact same things again but we do
with something a little bit different we
take those tools and we install them we
configure them how would an artist use
the artists software how Dannette build
engineer reproduce builds what software
did they use how was it configured all
of this needs to be done so that's they
can interface with this archive exactly
how they would have in production the
data can this machine take a brand new
piece of content and inject it straight
through the pipeline into a new build of
the game if you can excellent but can
you also build a new release of the game
if you want to patch any patch an
archive title let's say someone
discovered a security flaw in your build
and ten years later you're like oh boy
we should get that fixed you need to be
able to reproduce a patch with that
archive and there's many other things
you would do with it - you're - but
simply put can you reproduce the game if
you would have stand this machine up
could you produce a new release of the
game new content for the game and your
DLC for the game that is what it's here
to archive is for but let's not forget
there is one specialty requirement of a
tier 2 archive something we probably
would all fail to check for right now
can it all be done without any access of
the Internet
who here says all their work would 100%
function without internet exactly the
point of an archive is so that this
thing will it function in let's say 50
years if you have internet access right
now you're probably interfacing with
network shares server let's say server
programs the works maybe domain accounts
if you turn your machine off you prove
can this work independently amongst
itself and so that is the ultimate
verification step for a teacher to
archive and it's obviously speaking
quite difficult to do but it is a
valuable step because this truly allows
us to push the game further
now that's tier 2 and a lot of the time
we at Electronic Arts are able to get to
this point but even for us it is a very
very challenging thing to do here to
archive is not easy as one can imagine
so we try and aim for tier two but a lot
of the time we do end up at tier one but
like anything else and many tools
developers in this room will know we
want to go to the magnum opus you want
to get to the end goal the greatest
possible method of this as we can so we
formed what I like to call the mythical
tier the mythical tier starts the same
way as a tier 2 archive you get a
machine you get the same things of the
game but do you use online services all
of those need to be preserved as well
now let me hit home how complicated this
is for instance if your game runs on a
server can this machine or run a local
server that you were using and can it
connect to that server can you run a
client and connect to your server ok
that's stage one if you can awesome sage
- most people have gone there builds to
a distribution service for instance we
use origin could you localize origins so
that you could technically build a new
build with game
with this run it through origin locally
and use origin to distribute it again
with that single machine
do you have metrics gathering tools
analysis tools the list goes on and on
if you can get this archived you've
truly achieved in mythical progress but
that is incredibly difficult to do and
Electronic Arts we strive to try to
reach this model but is it not simple
and those are the three tiers of
archiving those are the three tiers of
where we believe people will sit and
kind of the grand scheme of archiving if
you currently sit kind of close to tier
1 or even in tier 1 excellent if you're
just sitting just before tier 1 we're
not doing documentation push a little
bit more it'll feel really good when you
can look back and say wow we built this
15 years ago this is incredible if
you're sitting at tier 2 awesome let's
have a conversation I'd love to see how
are you doing it if you're at tier 3 I
have a lot of questions for you now
that's preservation as a concept let's
see what Electronic Arts does let's talk
about like preservation at Electronic
Arts so Electronic Arts many of you know
us you probably heard our names in the
news and simply put we have about 35
plus years of titles both archived and
analyzed for decades what's great is
this both allows us to see how games as
a medium has grown over those years but
also how has preservation grown how has
preservation grown since let's say the
early 80s as opposed to now probably
quite a lot but I'll be doing an
injustice to games if I didn't talk
about how big they are who here works as
a game developer who here is act knows
fully well the complete size of
everything you built for your project
perfect some of you that's awesome
it's a rare question to ask because if I
asked you how big your game is let's say
for Electronic Arts we have these
monolithic numbers of builds released
daily you output a lot of data and we're
talking about preservation and we look
at something like this we wonder how we
supposed to preserve that in what right
mind do we preserve that that is an
extremely important question to us
Electronic Arts
but simply but there is not one person
to do it in fact we have three groups I
like to see as the responsible partners
for the preservation process let's can
look at those three partners the first
part are the content creators the
content creators are the programmers the
artists the animators the producers the
ones who really just make the game they
are also in charge not solely of just
making the game how can they better the
process of archiving can they embed
tools in their workflow that make the
archiver's job easier so they do have a
hand in this but they ultimately create
the game and now it needs to be
preserved so who does that who handles
preservation Electronic Arts we don't
technically have a single sole archiving
team we have many people from both game
teams themselves or technology teams
like myself who are responsible for
performing the process of archiving and
so we kind of call them archivists and
preservationist s-- now the archivist
and preservationists are solely
responsible for taking all that built
all that went into building the game all
the tools and software that they use to
preserve the game and using that to
produce an archive whether it be in tier
1 tier 2 tier 3 or some other unknown
tier they are responsible for that
process as you can imagine what we dig
quite a bit into this and to see what
this actually looks like but these are
the folks who really dig into that what
happens next
who does archiving after that they
simply put you can't just archive a game
and leave it in a box somewhere so we
have a dedicated team who managed the
archives there the preservation managers
they are the team responsible for where
do I put this and how can it survive for
a hundred years what happens if the
entire server goes down and all of our
archives get lost
do we have backups how do we maintain
them are we able to see technology grow
and still say that these archives are
functional they are the maidens people
of these archives and these are the
final holders of those archives now many
of you probably have either a small
department or just a few people who
handle archiving and as you grow you'll
notice that the requirements of
archiving becomes so great that at this
becomes more reasonable but what is
actually goes into archiving I've talked
a lot about archiving the concept the
teams that handle it
I want to dig in I want to reveal
exactly what I do day to day to preserve
any one of our games so let's talk about
the tasks of preservation I'm gonna go
over exactly what a tear to archive
looks like at Electronic Arts and all it
always starts the same way this set up
the set up simply starts with a research
who here loves research all right I
appreciate it research is absolutely the
most important thing as I mentioned
before the archivists and
preservationist group they don't always
work directly on the title there are
sometimes a technologist like myself we
do not have familiarity with the title
so how would we be the best ones to
reproduce the environment for title this
gives us that information go through all
the documentation you can find speak
with some members of the teams and
gather the information do you know SDKs
the game were built on what about the
platforms what's technology do they use
how was their builds produced what game
engine to use the list can go on and on
and on
ultimately this is just to gather and
make you as prepared as you can be for
what you're about to do what comes next
is getting the hardware for this as one
can imagine as I mentioned before and
especially those who know how big their
games are you're gonna eat a lot of
hardware for this simply you need
terabytes and terabytes of storage data
for this process and it's taking
understanding and this is actually
gathered in the first part you need to
understand how big your game is first
before you request this so once you have
all these like crazy machines set up you
have all these terabytes of data or of
hardware let's give them set up now this
step is completely impossible if you do
not do your research how did an artist
interface and build content for the game
does anyone in view in this room know
how to do everything possible to remake
the game from scratch probably not well
some of you were like I know quite a bit
about it that's awesome as you grow in
your game gets bigger this becomes
inconceivable to be able to do
everything so work with your artists
work with your programmers get the
Machine set up maybe you've asked them
to play
with it once you have all the software
installed you're certain you've
successfully set up now you can move on
to stage 2 requisition requisitions a
short phase technically but it all
starts out with the same way acquire
absolutely everything literally
everything you can find now this is
awesome and easy if your data was stored
in the same place that is a dream and
that does not happen in the real world
most likely people will store it may be
on the main perforce server or the git
server but some people will store it in
their onedrive they'll store on their
local desktop which is truly the worst
people will not always start the same
way
Sudheer due diligence scan through
everything you will eventually find all
that you need to find get that on to
these machines now get it to a local SCM
server SCM just sends for version
control
if you use perforce and get all that
data onto perforce if you were to use
this archive to operate upon that data
you have effectively altered the data
that was use in production you do not
want to do that you need the original
files because that is what the
production people used if you toy with
it you've rendered it not
production-ready or you've rendered it
not exactly what they did get it onto
local server so you can make copies with
that you can play with those copies and
it's also better to have multiple copies
than one once you've done that great you
have everything the machines set up to
do stuff lets do stuff reproduction
reproduction is truly the longest step
because this is the first step reproduce
every release in many games and
especially in the larger triple-a
companies they will have a lot of
releases alpha-beta
final that models pretty much standard
then you have patches one 3x DLC one 3x
perhaps you'll even have variants of
them for instance if you released a
Japanese version of the game that's
probably a wholly separate build than an
English version of the Brazilian version
what do you need in 10 years what do you
think the people will need in 30 years
every possible release has to be
verified that can be produced by these
archive machines probably a lot to ask
of a
and so to give you a figure if I if I
for instance asked you to do ten patches
per region less you have six regions per
release let's say there's eight releases
that's probably a lot of build you need
to verify so it helps to make sure this
machine is quite capable of doing it all
again but it's not everything though
obviously this machine needs to be able
to function and create new stuff not
just reproduce the old repeat is all the
content as well this means taking an
audio file putting through the pipeline
and getting it into until when you build
a game ask an audio an artist or an
artist or if an effects artist make
these new content files on this machine
if they can great they should feel at
home they worked on this game they can
work on this machine
that's perfect match made in heaven that
is an important step and America member
there's a lot of realms of content so
don't just associate art and audio as
the only two parts of content there's a
lot and lastly you gotta verify remember
you're not doing this for yourself this
is the person in 30 years from now is
gonna be opening this hey what you
probably might not be at a company or
you may be somewhere else at the time do
your due diligence verify everything
what I'd like to do get a build onto a
console if you produced a new and I know
patch 18 build or whatever get that on
to the console and verify that it runs
if you've created a new asset let's say
you made a new character get the
character into a build get the build
onto a console that is probably the best
stress test of the reproduction of stage
as you can get and so as you'd once
you've done all that you've done
everything
this machine is pretty much perfect
you're probably tired you want to go
home let's get to submitted and you can
so this mission starts off with
cataloging I know you probably haven't
heard that word in a long time
Electronic Arts we have this great tool
that we use that allows us to catalogue
everything it's a tool that we use so
that it can be accessible by any
developer at anytime it is filled in by
the archiver's and it's able to depict
details about what was our tired for
instance if you we made a title in 2001
we can say what was our cut what was put
in that machine what tools did they use
at the time
instead of dredging up that machine
again I can just look at this like
webpage that's all I need to do I
recommend if any of you are really
investing in the archiving space get a
catalog of people who actually really
want to see that for those artists in
the room wouldn't you want to see what
you did five years ago see the original
files maybe even play with them again
it'd be cool once you've done that you
catalogued everything submit it
send your final email get it to the
responsible parties who manage these are
these archives the most likely
peripheral perform their own
verification two-sided verifications
perfect don't want to just have you be
the final person to verify once it's
done transfer it to their final storage
place mostly with us we try to do a
cloning will clone the actual machines
into our final storage so what you have
is merely a copy with that copy and
you've got it stored your game has done
everything with an archived you show
everything everything just did for
months and months just trash it it's
been cloned it's been put away destroy
all your machines put the hardware back
into the pool you're done and that's
what your to archive who feels they're
ready to do this right now it's probably
not this is difficult it's very very
time-consuming but I believe all of you
probably can if you'd look into it and
you try
however we weren't able to get this the
right away this tear especially not tear
3 but this tear was very very difficult
to get to and it wasn't just one person
saying I'll do archiving this can be
easy it spent years of conversations and
discussions to convince people that this
is important it wasn't until we created
a cultural change and got the team on
board with this that it finally started
and all that always starts with the same
thing why do we archive why do we put so
much time and money and thought into
preserving what we've done we'll simply
put there's a lot of reasons we archive
for remastering purposes if we want to
bring it up into a legal matter for
patching if for instance again security
for
found you could patch your game you want
it analyzed what tools were available by
our competitors as opposed to this thing
we built ten years ago once you have the
fundamental understanding of all the
realms archiving can play in you've
created a great foundation for the
reasoning behind archiving but I really
doubt that just showing LSA and
executive producer or a lead the people
who can make those decisions to adopt
this this is not enough for them they
want cold hard facts and they will come
at you with cold hard questions let's
talk about a really common one who here
has heard this question before or even
you yourselves have said this before you
probably have seen this question said
and it's totally fair it's absolutely
fine you may never want to remaster your
game it may be something that's just not
applicable to your work but I highly
doubt that these titles and these
companies thought the same way do you
think when Starcraft was made that
they're like oh yeah we're gonna release
this again in like 15 years probably not
even Dark Souls it wasn't released that
long ago in known perspective I really
doubt that they thought that as well
it's normal for companies not to think
of archiving remasters are not a thing
you typically think about that's not the
only thing leads will come at you with
again they have a list of questions it's
too expensive it is expensive you have
to dedicate someone to it you have to
make sure it's good there's quality
checks involved the bigger you get the
harder it'll be it is expensive but it's
also it pays off let's take let's talk
Spyro for example I love the headline
there's actually the headline says this
little purple dragon flies in the top
chart in the UK despite all the remaster
topped the UK sales charts so much so it
actually feed out red redemption to a
title that was going for Game of the
Year that year was beat out by Spyro a
remaster there are facts like this and
is normal let's talk about Resident Evil
the HDS really a remaster it was the
fastest selling digital game beat Capcom
has ever made of at the time I think
monster entered now just beat it out
but think about that two examples of a
remastered title topping sales charts
they've effectively made their money
back twice that's some pretty good
income if I say so myself but ultimately
speaking we gotta go further we have to
do more push even harder to convince
people so I have three suggestions these
are high level suggestions and I want
you to think about it and your own work
you got a first critter realization what
happens if you don't preserve where as a
dark side of preservation let me share
some stories who here has heard of Blade
Runner the game that actually had more
than I expected
awesome so blender in a game more more
people know about the movie but there's
a game made years ago it was a
wonderfully made game he had a really
good solid cult following during their
liquidation and they're moved from Los
Angeles Vegas to Los Angeles
like Mad Dog magnetic platters or HD or
hard drives that held the game
completely vanished they lost everything
everything that comprised that title
went missing let me hit this home and an
interview with gearbox when they wanted
to trade the rights over oh what do you
think the number was estimated as to
replace that data forty million dollars
forty million dollars with a Content
lost as you can imagine that can't be
franchise died and there is no
possibility of a remaster you'd have to
remake it from scratch but many of you
don't know Blade Runner and that's fair
let's talk about an example we probably
all know about who's here heard of
Starcraft probably a bit more bit more
of you so we think that triple-a titles
are impervious to the issues of
preservation no-one is impervious to
this Starcraft and actually you can go
look up yourself an interview with the
art director during when they're doing
the HD remaster of Starcraft it was
figured out that we lost all the art
content what do we do then actually he
states I had to tell my artists to
eyeball everything back into existence
using YouTube videos
copies of the game and photographs off
Google
I wonder how expensive that was so yes
this affects every domain but let me
really hit this home because it's while
those are matters of things just
straight up not being preserved even if
you do preserve you can still run into
trouble who hears heard of Silent Hill
oh yes the list goes on Silent Hill is a
title that was was preserved they did do
their job the problem is that and again
once an interview with the director
they'd love to talk about the stuff an
interview with the director it was
stated that we realized that what we
preserved wasn't the final release of
the game we only preserved the beta so
effectively everything they did post
beta was gone I wonder what kind of bugs
they'll have in the game now as you can
imagine that's not good and so it's a
precaution you see stories convince your
fellows and show them no matter where
you are how big you are or even if you
already have preserved there is still
danger now that's a theoretical portion
of preservation let's talk about the
actual cost of preservation are you
capable of preserving how many heads
counts are you gonna have for an archive
Electronic Arts we typically lean
between one and three depending on the
complexity of the title are you prepared
to dedicate those numbers alright how
many software do you expect him to use
that list alone covers maybe 15% of the
number of software a game typically is
built with can you say that those one to
three people are capable of interfacing
with every single one of those to verify
your archive is completely no capable of
being used or at least you have
something answers as to how to verify
that does all software can be used okay
so let's say you do let's say you you
have a client I can bring some artists
on board you can get them to play at the
archive how long do you think is going
to take how much money you think is
going to cost it's not cheap can you
give me a number if you add these things
these three things together and you look
into a little bit more you form a plan
you can create a cost and tag that to an
archive that is a number you can give to
a lead you can get to a producer and
executive and they can say okay so this
basically if I want three archives it
cost this times three that is pretty
good data to give them again they're all
about data so I recommend taking some
time to analyze how long would it take
to for you to do an archive but
archiving is still a technical process
you still have to do the archiving work
so you got to make sure to reduce the
manual labor or it's going to be
terrible and frankly said archiving
sucks our Chi ving is a slow egregious
process that's based purely on the tools
that were used before so how can we make
this better a lot of people will
typically say let's just throw people
out the problem well increase the
headcount we'll say let's take our
senior engineers or our senior members
and say we need you to work on the title
you guys may have some great archiving
experience and that's great that's
awesome you're probably gonna gain a lot
of time from that but your tools are
slow they're not plentiful and they'll
have perhaps issues in them that will
make this take a long time you're not
going to gain anything it's going to be
probably be the exact same as it was
before so that said let's talk about
some tools tools that I like to use my
own work tools that we use Electronic
Arts and tools that I believe anyone can
use to help better their work both an
archiving and probably anywhere now the
first one I want to talk about many many
of you probably know right now who here
is heard of virtual machines perfect so
let me let me kind of Express the
origins of archiving back in the day
before this kind technology existed
let's take effort by physical PC now
let's say we want all the aspects of the
game put onto that PC how large you
think that PC is going to be a lot of
terabytes in fact is pre normal for us
to get 10 plus terabyte machines now let
me pose a situation an audio engineer
comes up to you and says I want this I
want the audio environments not gamey we
hope to be preserved do you think you'll
be happy when you say here have this
10th era by Machine have fun
probably not very happy
what can we do to rectify the situation
that's where we can pull in virtual
machines now again virtual machines
start with the physical PC what we can
do is we can split up the hardware to
create these small virtualized
environments that all function is
complete isolated machines they all can
be happy tools installed to them they
all function in isolation and now we can
say each one of you take an aspect of
the game let's take at virtual means say
machines say you are the art you are the
audio machine you express all the audio
data they audio tools the audio software
will have another one for art's another
one for builds another one for a server
the list goes on your compartmentalizing
everything in your game so now let's go
back to the situation ananda our
engineer comes up he wants to see the
audio environment how happy do you think
he'll be by saying here is literally
only the audio probably a lot happier
and so this is a great tool that's
really provided a lot of value to us i
recommend everybody here going exploring
a little bit the barrier of entry is not
too extreme and can provide a lot of
value but ultimately speaking while this
helps us set up archives we still have
trouble when it comes to getting it set
up further again setting up the audio
software the arts software the tools
that production used how do we make that
easier well there's a wonderful tool
called chef who hears heard a chef
before after you a few a few less than
the less of you but chef is a wonderful
tool but let me again let me pose the
situations we all can be familiar with
it artists are a fun group of people
artists have a wonderfully large amount
of software in their tool belt too many
to speak of I'm looking at you artists
the problem with the situation is that
how do you preserve that many things for
instance if I say an artist has 20-plus
software and I as a billet engineer
needs to go and set those up how in the
world am I supposed to do that
I have no clue how to operate them so if
I were to install them even if I was
following documentation I'd probably be
led into some human error i probably set
it up wrong I miss a path I'd probably
mess it up I wouldn't know how to
to resolve any issues with it and so it
becomes an inefficient and inefficient
and ineffective process so we've done is
we looked at chef by saying okay so
typically speaking I'm a built engineer
what can I do to use my skillset to
better the process of archiving can i
code it the typical engineer response
can I just code it doing code yes you
can in the world of chef chef allows you
to create what's called cookbooks yes I
know the naming convention is wonderful
you create these cookbooks and each
cookbook has a resist of recipes the
recipes all defined a software and let's
say the software version and a set of
instructions because you are about to go
with this a set of instructions define
encode exactly how to configure install
it and place onto the machine you work
with an artist you say tell me how I
need to install this I will write it in
this CODIS recipe it will be done
through code effectively just codified
my entire game and the practice is
called configuration as code the beauty
of this and while this is great
if you're working on a single title the
more your company grows the more tiles
you have going on at once the more you
need to see that your technology grows
with you because this process is
codified and is frankly just a bunch of
text files I can literally just copy in
and within 10 seconds make another one
with a whole nother set of software
listed in all different versions that's
wonderful and with a company like
Electronic Arts we have so many games
going on at once this is an invaluable
process to us and so I highly recommend
it once again you can access it right
now the barrier of entry is a little bit
steep but I do recommend it they have a
wonderful set of documentation and while
ultimately this provides a lot of value
for us today
what does tomorrow look like what does a
future look like now reap repaired for
it the future is going to be weird it's
going to be intense and extraordinarily
quick in development Electronic Arts we
know this and in fact we talked about
this in a 24 page report from our CTO
Ken Moss he talked about what's called a
project
you can all access it it's publicly
available and talks about yeas giant
pushed to the cloud so far we've defined
a processes about defining building
games without cloud services
what does preservation look like with
cloud services are we ready for that in
a interview with Bloomberg our CEO
Andrew Wilson talked about right now
while we're doing yearly release models
in some of our games what happens if we
bring that down to monthly weekly daily
it's already challenging to get games
done in a year in terms of archiving how
can we do that when it's so much faster
these two things are terrifying concepts
when it comes to preservation but no
matter how scary the future looks we
have to look back at the basics why are
we archiving in the first place we're
archiving because we have history we
have history we have games we love both
as users as developers we have thousands
of hours sunk into making sure our
players are happy if we don't preserve
if we don't preserve making sure our
games are recorded in history everything
you ever loved in games will disappear
now that more bethought out of the way
let's wrap up
don't be known as an industry tragedy
I've told you stories about what happens
if you don't preserve I've hopefully hit
it home that that's not a good thing I
do not want to put you on this list next
year automating build produced manual
labor
right now archiving is awful it is a
slow process our tools suck how can we
make it better is up to you looking to
it let's have a conversation there's
always way we can make it better but
again you have to be prepared archiving
might be stressful today it's going to
get a lot weirder and a lot harder in
the future so with that said thank you
for coming
all right I believe you have time for
some questions we actually have a lot of
time for questions so feel free to stand
up to the stand and ask me what you like
hi
so how does this process differ if
you're like a one-person team all right
so one person team is a great question
so let me rephrase the the question that
you were asking is how does this process
apply to a one-person team now when you
talked about the historical preservation
of things do you want to see your games
again in ten years most likely yes then
you should be doing it if you want to
see your work in ten years you should be
preserving not you don't always have the
understanding of whether you want to
remaster and that's not relevant what's
relevant is that do you want to proceed
your games again if that's your if your
answer is yes then you should probably
do be doing preservation if you're in
terms of process though if you when
you're doing a one-person team tier two
and Tier three is pretty hard to achieve
if you can get virtual machines up and
running however a tier one I think is a
great start I'd say a Tier one and then
if you can grow to a tier two that
answer your question
oh yeah thank you thank you I think it's
kind of related to that one so all right
small team right the probably zero days
off between projects you know what
what's sort of the what sort of tier
zero right like what what is the like
okay you can't even get to tier one
what's the like worst case scenario just
get something in there process for you
guys so the question was small like
small team again what happened what
would the the baseline be that kind of a
good sure that's a good way yeah so what
would the baseline of preservation be
where where could I start if nothing
else it's here I would say backup is a
Tier one if you use version control or
if you simply have your files stored on
Google Drive or anything like that right
click hit download put it into a folder
everything you've ever built put it into
a folder that is I would consider it to
your one yeah and then and then like a
weird archivist 50 years from now might
piece it together
exactly
a totally yeah so yeah again tier 1 and
tier tier 0 inter one is really
difference between the axillary aspects
like documentation if you want to just
get it record a record of your stuff
yeah just hit download that's all I need
to do that's a good entry point cool
thanks
thank you hey thanks for the great talk
I was wondering during the process of
internally in the company introducing
this archiving did you have to at any
point for example involve InfoSec did
you come across with bad practices you
know something that you had to globally
change for example during a a like
taking practical example like one
content team just using a pirated
software or know something that you know
was just completely incompatible but you
kind of like accidentally found it
because you had to review the whole I
guess during the archiving you get to
see all the practices the company does
currently so before I rephrase the
question I just want to clarify yep do
you mean in these practices of
preservation or the practices of the
developer breakfast of how the company
develops software and how you know what
tools use so the question was during my
work in Electronic Arts and during the
work of preservation you typically come
across or new come across bad practices
is that a fair yes or do you have any
kind of experience or got just like even
though you wouldn't start archiving
process now maybe issues still within
your company check are you also doing
this perfect so yes I have definitely
come across bad practices is evident
everywhere not every developer is
perfect not every developer lines up
with preservation a common one is that
where they store files it is a common
thing for developers to store files in
places that is not known whose archiving
it and what is a very dangerous
terminology we use is tribal knowledge
it's a tribal knowledge is when a team
has knowledge strictly with amongst
themselves they have not shared it it
does not exist outside of that that is a
massive danger to preservation because
if the person preserving preserving it
doesn't know it exists it won't be
preserved and so yes there are a lot of
bad practices tools that require let's
say non perpetual licenses are a great
deal of a threat to preservation
and there are so four have perhaps
external vendors none of that can be
archived so that is a red flag and so
yes to answer your question there are a
lot of cases where I think thank you
thank you so I think that you just kind
of touched on it at the end but knowing
that software be Amaya or anything else
as licensing servers and now console
development hardware has licensing word
after 180-day as you get locked out what
is EA doing to try to ensure that you
have some sort of access outside of that
area alright so the question was with
licenses being perhaps not perpetual and
they do expire after a time or software
stopped working after a period of time
what is Electronic Arts doing to combat
that what are they doing to making sure
that they can still operate with that in
mind that good recollection ok so the
question and the answer is that a lot of
it's a weird a weird situation a lot of
companies are working with us to make
sure that what are your needs what can
we do for you and a lot of companies do
opt for perpetual licenses or they will
kind of work with us to get one okay
that's great there are cases where
inevitably we cannot provide a license
for instance audio software are known
for that it's expensive licenses and
it's troubling to just put that into an
archive and so there are situations
where we cannot say that this will 100%
function okay and so yes there is an
inevitable end of we are trying our best
we are constantly communications other
companies to try to get to work but
there is that kind of end that we have
to expect thank you thank you I want to
ask about do you have a preferred
storage medium tape blu-ray glacier and
then how do you keep track of what's in
this giant storage medium evolved
archive data alright so the question was
what is our per forwards towards medium
AWS glacier hard drive yeah and w-30 had
a follow-up point to that as well yeah I
was like so you mentioned the catalog
which is kind of like a web page list of
what's in each individual title archive
I guess but how do you like if you have
you know a bunch of glacier buckets or a
bunch of hard drives on a shelf do you
have a different way or is it you just
do it in the catalog of
track of which hard drive has this title
that kind of thing that's a great
question so the follow point of that is
how are we keeping track of the data
scale of this stuff and so it's great
question thankfully enough technology
has provided answers in terms of tools
we can run masca queries based on the
storage I'm not too keen or privy to the
information regarding what service we
use for the storage I want to say
glacier but I can't I can't confirm only
because I don't know personally yeah
regarding track and scale there are a
lot of command line options you can do
you run a couple day long batch yes a
couple day long batch and it'll just
track and scan everything I mean we can
record that we were doing archiving and
we as archivers when we do our work
we are constantly querying everything
for instance perforce as I version chill
system has a built-in answer for that
and so we probably know that when it
gets put away we most likely do a tool
based scan cool thank you
hi is there much carryover between the
work that ei does privately with like
public organizations companies that are
looking or groups or companies they're
looking to sort of preserve the history
overall of games as a medium you know D
is there information that you share like
that so the question was do we work
alongside other companies who are kind
of in this space of preservation and do
we work on their processes or share our
information that kind of a fear so we
definitely we have a great interest in
this space for example I'm here trying
to meet other people who are doing
preservation we are going to conferences
around the world trying to engage with
partners there are preservation meeting
strictly amongst preservation engineers
to discuss this very topic and so we are
definitely going out and we are learning
about other developers and learning
about how they preserve we have had
conversations with historical Mersey
museums in fact some of our people have
actually had pictures with these famous
articles lulz games we definitely have
an interest in going out of the way in
fact I'm here for that very reason that
answer your question yes thank you thank
you any last questions anyone want to
roast me a little bit all right I think
that is it thank you very much everyone
for coming
you