O.k. Here I am finally. I am the director of the computer game museum and as such responsible for what most of you blame. Sorry for being so late, please don't take that as a sign, that we don't care - we do.
Where to start? First of all I appreciate your feedback in regards to our presentation of the arcades, which are indeed one important part (of other) of the video game culture. Secondly I understand your critic well. In our first permanent exhibition, which we opend 1997 and operated for four years, everything was presented interactively on original machines, which was somehow an ideal kind of presentation (in spite it took some time to switch the show on in the morning
). But we had only 5000 visitors a year. Nowerdays we had 12.000 vistors in the first four weeks, which is a difference, which must be considered. Thirdly we try to advance our show permanently. It is not that uncommon, that an exhibition is not finished for eternity when it is opened, all the more, if it is a technical complex exhibition. There are a lot of conditions which have to be taken into account, e.g. the budget, which is available to produce the show, is not the most unimportant. Sometimes some patience is needed. Personally I am not satisfied with our presentation of arcade culture, too and we work on advancing it.
But let's come to the more principal points, which are raised. The question is: How much alteration is allowed for what purpose? We are aware of this question and that it is crucical for a museum to set up its policy in this regards. But even in the wider museum community it is not a decided question specially in regards of technical artefacts. For collectors it is more easy to say, only originals are counting, because originals are what they collect and what gives a collection value. But museums are also commissioned to preserve their collectibles for future generations and I wonder what your strategies are to preserve your collectibles over the next decades in a working state. I am not claiming that we have the final answer yet, but emulation is definitely an option for us.
An other principal point which is touched here is the question, what is the original in the digital age? Blanka already mentioned, that even arcades games where produced in several version. This question is even more difficult to answer when you think at the home consoles, which very much depend on the TV. But these very much varied naturally. Also the different controllers which were and are available are influencing the feel of the game significantly. Please don't misunderstand me here: I am not raising this questions as an excuse rather to point to their significance. The recent state could be considered in trying out different strategies and we are more flexible in that as you might be aware.
e.g. we have collaborated with the Berlin Humboldt University two years ago. A class of the computer scientists has renovated our SU 2000 Cybermind arcade from the scratch (for those of you, who can read German:
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/jml/lehre_ws0910.html). It is exhibited in our new show as well, but could be only switched on occasinally, because it is still not robust enough for permant operation (in spite quite a few skilled people invested a serious ammount of time for the resatauration).
So we are somehow in the process of figuring out, what the best strategy and I appreciate to discuss that with collectors as well as with other players in that field.
Last but not least I want to pick up a more concrete point, that have been made here several times. Yes, I will try to exchange at least one of our TFT monitors with an CRT (which unfortunately all were broken in our acrades). And I regret very much, that our Tempest monitor broke during it was showed back then in our first exhibition. I agree that the vector optic is special and that it can be simulated not that well on TFTs. To be able to show our vistors the look of vector screens, I have decided, to set put the Vectrex it in a glass display in our wall of hardware, which can be opened, so that the Vectrex can be played. Of course this could be considered as work around , but doing a project of our size allways means to live with compromises. It is important one try to advance it and I assume that discussion is helping us in this regards. So far for today,
Andreas
