Symposium: Let's play Dutch game history

Pioneers of the Dutch Game Industry
鈥淣estors of the Dutch game industry鈥

On November 18 2016, Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision organized a joint symposium on the challenges of creating an archive for the history of Dutch games and game development as national cultural heritage. Through a series of presentations and panels, the audience was challenged to think about what Dutch game history entails and what this process would look like.

An active group of students, game developers, cultural heritage experts and game collectors were present and shared their views on and were able to voice both suggestions as well as critical concerns on such an effort.

Contributions

The contributions during the afternoon were:

  • Ren茅 Glas & Hugo Zijlstra (Utrecht 木瓜福利影视): 鈥Let鈥檚 Play the Archive鈥
  • Panel: Philip Fokker (host), Cees Kramer (Radarsoft), Rudolph Wolterbeek (Davilex), Robert van der Noordaa: 鈥淣estors of the Dutch game industry鈥
  • Csilla Ariese, Krijn Boom (Leiden 木瓜福利影视) "Heritage in Games, Games as Heritage" 
  • Jesse de Vos (Sound and Vision) "Archiving games: for whom?" and "Save Game!? Towards a national approach to preserving games as Dutch cultural heritage"
  • Panel: Tjeerd de Boer (host), Rogier Kahlmann, Olaf Andersen (OCW), Tom de Smet (Sound and Vision), Ren茅 Glas (Utrecht 木瓜福利影视) 鈥淧reserving games as Dutch cultural heritage?鈥

Let's Play Exhibition

A short general impression of the symposium can be found with the full video of the symposium to be found and photo鈥檚 . The symposium was part of a larger at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision currently cooperate within the Game On! Research project funded by a NWO Museum grant as well as support from Utrecht 木瓜福利影视鈥檚 Game Research Focus Area. This research project has set up the first unified effort between game research, cultural heritage institutions and the Dutch game industry. It seeks answers to questions around definition, preservation, archiving and exhibition of the history of Dutch digital games and game development. Within this approach, the goal is to develop a national approach to game preservation.