The Fatman Makes History

Business Week is running an article about George "The Fatman" Sanger, the man behind Wing Commander's original score and a continued force in game development. The writeup talks about his role in starting Project Barbeque, a semi-annual think tank for video game sound developers.

More interestingly, it reports that the University of Texas at Austin's Center for American History is working with Sanger to build an archive of historically important game development materials. It seems entirely appropriate that my alma mater would be taking over the kind of work started by non-academic resources like the former Origin Museum and our own Development Archives!

"I couldn't believe the timing," recalls Sanger. "Since many of the group's action items lined up perfectly with what the archivists hoped to achieve, I put them in touch with each other."

And, in fact, the Game Development Archive was informally announced earlier this month at a developer event held by Austin Business Computer. It is now accepting financial donations as well as lists of historical items which people intend to donate, including documents, digital files and art relating to game design as well as physical game platforms that are no longer generally available for play.