What are the data preservation activities of the four major companies? 'Let's talk about the forefront of preservation of past game development materials!' Report where key people report on the current situation [CEDEC 2024]

As the game industry ages, there is an urgent need to preserve past masterpieces and their development materials. At the panel discussion "Let's talk about the forefront of preserving past game development materials!" held on August 23, 2024, the last day of the developer conference "CEDEC 2024", Square Enix, Taito, Key personnel from manufacturers working on game preservation, such as Capcom and Sega, gathered together. Let me tell you how it goes.

●Speakers
Yoichiro Miyake(Square Enix Innovation Technology Development Division Lead AI Researcher)
Yuichi Toyama(Taito EB Development Department 2 Producer)
Mr. Yasuyuki Makino (Capcom CS Production Supervisor, Digital Archive Team Producer)
Yosuke Okunari (SEGA Content Production Office Producer)

From left: Mr. Yosuke Okunari, Mr. Yuichi Toyama, Mr. Yasuyuki Makino, Mr. Yoichiro Miyake

How are the four major companies doing their data preservation activities? Key people talk about the current situation

First, the current state of game preservation at the four companies to which the attendees belong was talked about.
At Square Enix,
"SAVE PROJECT" started in the spring of 2020. With the keyword "materials as assets," efforts are being made to preserve development materials that are "one-of-a-kind." Mr. Miyake said he wants to protect development materials that would one day be destroyed if privately owned. After creating a list of materials, we are working to disseminate information to the outside world, such as publishing an explanatory paper on artificial intelligence for Dragon Quest IV. Mr. Miyake explained the significance of these activities, saying that they are forward-looking and allow you to confirm your company's position, and that by looking at its history you can feel proud that you are glad to have joined the company. Ta.

At Capcom, the ``CIAS (Capcom Illust Archive System)'' , which allows access to art such as main art, logos, character illustrations, and pixel art, is in operation with the main purpose of smoothly promoting the rights business and ported titles. I am doing it. If you select the art you want to use from your browser and press the "Use Request" button, an email will be sent to the title's administrator, and approval can be issued with the touch of a button. Pixel art, which is in high demand both inside and outside the company, is saved as PSD data with separate layers, and if the data is passed on to a collaboration partner, it is possible to reproduce the movement even if it is not a game company.
In addition, icons such as ``Objection!'' from the ``Ace Attorney'' series and stage pixel art from the ``Rockman'' series are also managed by CIAS and used in the production of goods. Digitization efforts are progressing, such as discovering and scanning analog data such as original drawings, block copies, and positives that had been left behind in the company, and then having active designers make color adjustments while looking at the actual objects. In the future, they hope to collect plans, specifications, event scenes, ROMs, etc. on a database.

The port of ``Space Battleship Yamato'' , whose board was lost in

Taito has a long history, having been established in 1953, and valuable development materials have been discarded every time its development base has been relocated or integrated. Despite this, the people in charge at each site have worked hard to preserve various materials, including the cases and microfilmed documents. Although we are still in the process of moving forward with digitalization, we are collecting the boards that were scattered around each location and storing them in custom-made "board boxes," as well as storing public relations magazines and pamphlets for users. There are also examples of materials stored in this way being useful in game development.

``Taito LD Game Collection''
, was made possible because the laser disc, ROM, and board blueprints remained.




Sega also preserves various materials, but unlike Square Enix, there was not a consistent project, and it was preserved by volunteers in each department. The project will begin in earnest at SEGA in the spring of 2023, and progress is being made to digitize materials and move them to locations suitable for storage.
As Sega continues to release arcade games and sparked a boom in large cabinets, they also keep their arcade cabinets in storage, and they are displayed at the reception desk at the company's head office and sometimes exhibited at events.

Although the board repair department manages EPROMs, digitization has not progressed. As Sega was once a platform holder, there is a huge amount of various paper materials available. It is also being used to commercialize hardware blueprints into posters and other products, and to digitize proposals and exhibit them at CEDEC 2019 (see related article).

There are various materials stored there, including rare items such as the original film of "Ryu ga Gotoku the Movie" released in 2007. It can be said that this is unique to Sega, which has a long history and develops various IPs.
Mr. Okunari talks about the future challenge of understanding the countless rights that SEGA holds and making effective use of them. Apparently, the number is too large to keep track of, so they are working on creating a database.

On this day, a panel discussion moderated by Mr. Miyake was also held.
It is said that the reason why Capcom has been able to store materials up until now is due to the tenacity of Mr. (Masayoshi) Okano, who has continued to collect materials through his lone efforts. Mr. Okano's activities became well known within the company, and people leaving the company began entrusting materials to Mr. Okano.

Mr. Makino says that the preservation of materials must also lead to results. Companies tend to ask us how much profit we can make, so we publish special issues of the magazine "Pen+" packed with materials from the time, "Street Fighter: The World of Those Who Are Stronger Than Me", etc. He says he feels he has to make the archived materials available to the world and make them a hot topic.

In response to this, Mr. Toyama said that although there was a time in the past when Taito did not value its own IP, the current reprint is thanks to the people at the time who did not throw away past materials. Thank you to our predecessors. Since it is important to preserve materials in order to continue IP, we encouraged other companies to move forward with preservation activities as well.

At Square Enix, making storage a project has raised awareness within the company, and, as in Okano's case, they have begun to receive requests to preserve materials. Mr. Miyake said that it is important to continue preservation activities, and that the profits from this should be viewed from a broader perspective than just monetary terms.
Thanks to the activities of Mr. Miyake and others, preservation activities have received more attention as a cultural project, said Mr. Okunari. If you are involved in reprint work, you may receive emails asking for development materials.

Treasures such as the proposal for "Outrun" may be mixed in among these activities, so we hope that by continuing our activities within the company, we may be able to increase the momentum for storing them. He talked about the importance of continuing and disseminating information.
Also, when people want to find out about past works but don't know who to ask, many people ask Mr. Okunari for guidance. He calls himself ``the company's police box that provides directions,'' and this can be said to be the result of his continuing preservation efforts and making his activities known within the company.

So, what is the reaction from within the company to the preservation activities?
Mr. Makino's Capcom doesn't seem to have such a strong voice of support, nor does he hear anything negative about it. However, this does not mean that they are indifferent, and that if they continue to produce results, other employees will approach them.
For employees who have been here for a long time, it's a normal thing to have materials in the company, but for someone like me who joined the company mid-career, it's unusual for me to have materials from games I played as a child, such as ``Final Fight.'' It seems that the desire for people of the same generation to see the material is the driving force behind the use of the materials. In other words, there is a temperature difference between inside and outside the company, and this has an impact on the preservation of materials.
A similar case was also seen at Sega. At SEGA, the employees who had been here for a long time had the mindset of ``We won't make a sequel even if it was a hit'' and ``We won't look back on the past,'' so people who joined later as mid-career hires would ask, ``Why don't you cherish the past?'' ”You might be surprised.
It is said that these people's respect for the past led to the project of ``Mega Drive Mini'' and the reboot of ``Crazy Taxi''
. Similar to Mr. Makino's example, it seems that an outside perspective will become important when it comes to preserving materials and utilizing IP.
Also, when reprinting "Rainbow Island EXTRA" with "SEGA Genesis Mini 2", I searched for the ROM and did some research and discovered the surprising fact that ``At the time, American cable TV seemed to be distributing Genesis titles.'' It seems that this has been revealed, which shows how important preservation activities are in terms of researching game history.
On the other hand, in order to excavate materials, the knowledge of a veteran who knows the company's history is also required. When Mr. Makino went looking for materials, he discovered a cardboard box containing development materials for the PS2 game "Glass Rose"
released in 2003, and a veteran employee who accompanied him reacted to this. When I looked into the contents, I found out that it also contained early development materials for
"Monster Hunter", which is strange. Because they are people within the company, they know the value of ``Glass Rose,'' and further treasures have emerged from it. This is an interesting case because it is safer to rely on the knowledge and sense of a veteran than to comb through a huge amount of data. The talk seemed to be getting more exciting, but the time had come, so we decided to end it. Mr. Miyake said, ``This session was held with the belief that preservation activities should be carried out by the entire game industry.If you would like to participate in preservation activities yourself, please let us know.''

What struck me in this lecture was the difference in temperature within and outside the company and the importance of veterans who know the company's history. What is common sense within the company may not be true to those outside the company, and treasures may not be utilized. On the other hand, as in Makino's case, a veteran's sense of smell can sometimes uncover unexpected treasures. When it comes to preservation activities and the use of materials, it may be best to have both external and internal perspectives aligned.

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