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Hey Sierra Friends!
I just wanted to share with you all some amazing news I today. Apparently the Williams’ just donated an immense amount of material to be archived at The Strong. The press release is available here:
The press release summarizes the holdings as “hundreds of items, including approximately 140 games, plus game design documents, artwork, newspaper articles, memorabilia, photographs, copies of Sierra’s company magazine Interaction, business records, press releases, catalogs, annual reports, and other materials […]”
I imagine this will be important material for the Art of Sierra, and all the rest of you who have interests in archival/research projects involving Sierra. This is particularly a big deal because there has been no prior effort to preserve Sierra artifacts on an archival level, and Sierra is regularly misrepresented or ignored in contemporary video game history writing. Very exciting! Hope you all enjoy the possibility of visiting the Strong.best! -laine
Hey guys–
Thanks for the feedback. I’m aware we’re hunting down something pretty rare, but one has to start somewhere. You’d be surprised at the 100s of materials we already have, including stuff with potentially smaller press runs than InterAction. We’ve already got a few issues, donated by large scale collectors who had copies not because of any interest in Sierra specifically, but because they wanted extensive materials collections.
The PDFs are a great resource, and one I make use of quite a bit–a chapter of my dissertation is on Sierra (I had an intention of doing oral histories at one point, as some of you may remember, but it has turned out to be too large of a project for just a diss). Unfortunately, a university can’t reproduce these magazines on their own website because of copyright issues, and keeping digital copies on file creates digital media obsolescence concerns, although that’s a potential option for any issues we can’t get ahold of. One reason we go after the real magazines (beyond the importance of studying the physical object) is that websites don’t last forever. Even this website might have closed its doors had Andy not stepped in to maintain it. It’s not hard to imagine that a century from now no one will have even heard of Sierra, and this website will be long gone, and no one’s grandchildren will be all that interested in holding onto a box a magazines from some late 20th century video game company. Our preservation goals are long term, aimed at outliving any of us…not to be too morbid 😉 Point being, we’ll even take donations of individual issues, if that’s all someone has.
If anyone’s interested in video game archives, they’re actually a bit more common than you might think, and you might even live near one! There’s game archives of varying sorts at several schools in CA, in Texas, Michigan, and some smaller ones escaping my memory right now. If you live in the northeast or Canada, the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY is an awesome sight, with extensive collections of material and digital artifacts. The Smithsonian will also have a video game art exhibition up (within the next year, I think), so you should check that out…although sadly, Sierra isn’t in it.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts! And if anyone has any questions or thoughts, I’m always happy to chat.
Best,
LaineReally nice, lively discussion, and important questions to considered in light of digital archiving.
I get the hesitancy to throw any and all games made by minor subsidiaries on the list with our beloved “Sierra Family”. I think there should be a place, however, for acknowledging the presence of these games and the work of these subsidiaries as part of the Sierra Corporation–ultimately Sierra benefited from the profits of these games, and those profits made the company more valuable, thus better able to produce more games.
An interesting way of thinking about it might be to ask, “If we don’t archive Half-Life, who does?” Are there people out there doing similar achival and commemorative work for the games of that subsidiary? Is it possible to provide historical and visual info about the game while acknowledging its problem in terms of ownership (problems which only seem to increase as games and game companies become increasingly investing in heavily capital-based entertainment markets)?
